LONDON – Barged by protests from angry teachers, parents and students, the UK government has dropped the makeshift college entrance system that it coined for schools in England after the pandemic made traditional testing impossible.
Critics said the government’s approach discriminated against students with economic disabilities – citing the results as evidence. When they were released, tens of thousands of students learned that their preliminary degrees were downgraded.
On Monday, after announcing that it would not make any changes to the complex grading system, the government scrapped it completely.
“I am sorry for the distress this has caused young people and their parents, but I hope that this announcement will now give them the certainty and remorse they deserve,” British Secretary of Education Gavin Williamson said in a statement. . He said it had been “an extremely difficult year for young people.”
It was the latest reversal of the policy of a government that had already been widely criticized for its treatment of the coronavirus. It was also a fresh blow for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who bowed to overwhelming political pressure to back down, agreed to the shift during phone calls from a holiday in Scotland and then left it to his secretary of education to to make the apologists.
The problem started after Britain went into lockdown and schools were closed to most pupils. This made it impossible to keep the standardized exams, known as A-levels, which are the most important factor in determining the entrance of the college.
Instead, teachers provided predictive scores based on previous work and A-level students ’work. These estimates were then assessed by an education regulator, Ofqual, who used an algorithm that took into account the past exam performance of each school.
The architects of this system considered teachers to be generally too optimistic about the opportunities of their students. Assumptions about teachers ‘predictions at face value, regulators’ concerns, could lead to “grade inflation.”
By the time the review was completed, about 40 percent of the predicted grades – around 280,000 in total – were downgraded. Only about 2 percent of markets increased.
The main victims, critics said, were bright students from less affluent backgrounds whose schools had not performed well in the past.
On Monday, Mr Williamson agreed to accept teachers’ predictions, acknowledging that “the process of dividing grades resulted in more important inconsistencies than can be resolved through an appeals process.”
The same approach will also be adopted for another exam, the GCSE, which is taken by students around the age of 16. These results are scheduled to be announced this week.
The decision is likely to be greeted with anger by those who argued that any other course of action would be a betrayal of the Prime Minister’s promise to achieve ‘opportunities’ across Britain.
But the debacle sheds a heavy light on the competence of a government widely criticized for its reluctance to order a coronavirus lockon, for delays in setting up its track-and-trace system, and for an unfair approach of quarantine rules for those arriving in the country.
Under Mr Johnson’s leadership, Britain has suffered one of the sharpest economic contracts in Europe, as well as one of its highest death toll from the pandemic.
An earlier plan to get most young children back to school in England before the summer break was over, and the fury over investigations carries many of the characteristics of a government slow to identify difficult problems or even the warning signs of a political crisis to recognize.
In this case, Mr Johnson initially defended the algorithmic rating system as “robust” and “reliable”, despite the immediate shock, and even when Scotland reversed the course after similar protests last week.
Over the weekend, Mr Williamson warned that there would be “no U-turn, no change”.
Guidance on appealing the downgraded research results was withdrawn only hours after it was issued, increasing the confusion.
“Incompetence has become the watchword of this government,” said Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labor Party. Twitterpost.
However, the pressure also came from conservative lawmakers who believe that young people are suffering significantly from the lockdown and that downgrading so many results was simply unfair.
“This group of young people is already so lost, we need to make sure bright, capable students can move on to their next step,” one government minister, Penny Mordaunt, wrote on Twitter.
The Conservative-lying newspaper Daily Telegraph shook an editorial, declaring that “the failures of the exams in England believe beggars, seeing the time that authorities have to prepare them.”
“Even if they had not done so until recently, they received a clear warning signal from Scotland that a storm was imminent,” the editors said. “Yet, instead of changing, they immediately sail into it with evil consequences.”
The crisis raises questions about the future of Mr Williamson, who made his name as chief whip, responsible for party discipline, under former Prime Minister Theresa May. In that position, Mr. Williamson renewed his reputation as a Machiavellian political fixer and kept a pet tarantula named Cronus in his office.
But after being promoted to secretary of defense, he was fired by Ms. May, accused of leaking details of discussions in the National Security Council. He was returned to the cabinet by Mr Johnson when he became prime minister last summer.
Few observers would argue that things went well for Mr Williamson in his last job.
Before the government went to the exams on Monday, one veteran Conservative politician and former secretary of education, Kenneth Baker, warned that the crisis risked exacerbating not only these young people who became college students, but also their parents, grandparents, friends and siblings.
“The damage is absolutely enormous,” Mr Baker, now a member of the House of Lords, told Times Radio.
