Exam moderation is a gross injustice
Statistical modelling has cursed the way the Covid pandemic has been handled. Excessively pessimistic fatality forecasts have driven governments across the world to take actions that have arguably caused more deaths and greater hardship than the virus itself. Governments rely on models because they do not know the likely trajectory of the pandemic; and yet they are reluctant to adapt their policies when the data shows they are wrong.
Modelling has also been used to decide results for pupils who have been unable to sit exams because their schools have been closed. In Scotland, results were published this week for Highers – similar to A-levels in England – to widespread consternation. This was always going to be a difficult exercise; but it had been thought that the predictions of teachers would be the overwhelming determinant of results. Instead, the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) seems to have rejected this approach but kept the methodological basis of its decisions under wraps until nothing could be done about it.
The modelling gives poorer marks to children living in deprived areas where schools tend not to perform as well, with little recognition of individuals who buck the general trend. This has resulted in students predicted to get straight As being downgraded to Bs or lower, and some who were expected to pass have been failed. Outstanding pupils in low-performing schools were simply marked down to the general standard, blighting their futures. The vast majority received worse results than their teachers had suggested.
That this is a gross injustice is so obvious that it is hard to understand how the SQA imagined it could get away with it and to have hidden the process from scrutiny until it was too late. Nicola Sturgeon – whose decision to close bars and restaurants in Aberdeen was an overreaction to 54 new Covid cases – said that without the moderation process, results would have been vastly inflated compared with previous years. What mattered was the “credibility of the results”.
But this is not some theoretical exercise. The prospects of individual children are being sacrificed because politicians decided to shut down schools. They cannot now penalise those they refused to let sit exams by making up what they might have achieved. Is the same fiasco about to be inflicted on A-level students in England and Wales next week? Boris Johnson needs to check the moderation process now.