“Yo, have you logged into UCAS Track?”
I’m woken up by a phone call from my friend Jawwad, and quickly try to log in to my UCAS account to see if I’ve got into my first choice uni, but the site has crashed. I’m not surprised – it’s A-Level results day: thousands of 18-year-olds are visiting the site, desperately trying to find out their fate.
Back in pre-lockdown March, Boris Johnson announced that all schools would close that week and summer exams would be cancelled. I remember watching the announcement and sending voice notes to group chats because I couldn’t convey my excitement through text. No more stress, homework, revision sessions – it was every student’s dream. Then, as rumours circulated that mock assessments would be used to determine grades, uncertainty and fear started to kick in.
I meet Jawwad by the local Tesco, where we always link up before walking to school. To maintain social distancing, our school had sent us specific time slots to collect our results, and we’d both been given the 8:45 AM slot.
Jawwad has an offer to study Economics at Warwick, but needs A*AA to secure his place. Despite the ambiguity surrounding grades, he is quietly confident.
I have an offer to study PPE at Balliol, Oxford. I need AAA, which I’m confident I would have secured had I sat my exams, but under the Ofqual algorithm – which takes predicted grades (based on mock assessments and classwork) and standardises them based on a student ranking system and your school’s past performance – there is a real chance I may miss my offer. I’d put most of my efforts into the Oxford application process, which consisted of an entrance exam and a gruelling four-day interview, so mocks weren’t exactly my main priority.
After a short walk, we reach the school’s main entrance. We’re told to walk into the main hall in groups of five, collect our results and, if we need to go through clearing, make our way to the library, or leave via the main gates if we’re happy with our results. I grab my envelope and head to a quiet corner of the hall. If I miss my Oxford offer, my plan B is something both Oxbridge rejects and Dominic Cummings are familiar with: the long drive up to Durham.
I open my results. Economics: A*, Maths: A, History: B. I’ve missed my offer by one grade, but am relieved to get an email saying Oxford has still accepted me. The atmosphere in the room is sombre. I scan the room and find Jawwad. “Yo, what did you get?” “ABB”. Warwick have still given him his place, but he’s visibly disappointed, slightly angry and, mostly, confused.
“This don’t make sense, man. I’m heartbroken. I got a perfect GCSE record [a straight set of grade 9s], so I don’t know how Ofqual have come up with these grades”.
Throughout the day, I hear more stories of students whose grades don’t make sense to them, and that a number of kids from my school have had to go through clearing after being rejected from all their university choices.
Almost 40 percent of results were downgraded, and there were concerns that the algorithm would hit state school kids the hardest. Helena attends a comprehensive state school in Harrow and had an offer to study Spanish at Oxford. She was predicted A*AA and needed three As to meet her offer. Under the grading system, she got ACC.
“It’s disappointing,” she says. “I know I’m not a C student.”
She has been rejected by both Oxford and her insurance choice uni, and spends results day calling up different universities to see if they have any spaces.
Lubna, from South Ealing, is in a similar predicament. She studies Biology, Chemistry, Maths and History, and was predicted A*AAA by her teachers. She had worked hard to receive an offer to study Biology at Imperial, and was shocked when she got the grades DDBB.
“I got a D in biology, which is what I want to study at uni, so even through clearing no uni will accept me,” she says. She feels like has no option but to retake the entire year.
It’s not just prospective university students who have lost out to the grading system. Felipe, from Peckham, went to a college in Islington and was predicted ABC in Spanish, Media and Business, respectively. He got BED.
“I’m a native Spanish speaker, so a B is a shock – I’m 100 percent fluent!” he says. He was hoping to do a business apprenticeship, but has been forced to take a gap year, with no real idea of what he’s going to do next. “I used to travel over an hour every day to college to get these grades… I feel like I’ve wasted two years of my life.”
The algorithm, say multiple commentators, has exposed the inequality within the British education system. Ofqual claims there was no bias in the standardisation model, but admitted that in schools with smaller class sizes, teacher predictions would be given more weight. Therefore, the model was always going to benefit private schools, which have smaller class sizes. And sure enough: private schools saw the greatest increase in the proportion of students getting high grades.
This weekend, despite the grey skies, hundreds of students took to the streets demanding that the government make a U-turn and use centre-assessed grades (teacher predictions) to determine final results instead. There were heart-breaking scenes as, one-by-one, students told their stories of exam grade injustice.
One girl broke down in tears as she spoke about her dreams of getting into medical school being destroyed, while another explained how she was a young carer and had to look after her mum, so her mock results didn’t reflect her true ability. There was fury directed at the government – and chants from protesters made it clear that Education Secretary Gavin Williamson is currently Gen Z’s most hated figure.
This weekend, Ofqual withdrew its appeal guidance that would have allowed students to use mock exam grades instead. This has only added more fuel to the inferno of student outrage. Year 11s pick up their GCSE results this Thursday, and Ofqual’s algorithm is set to be used to calculate 97 percent of grades.
Traditionally, Year 11s and Year 13s don’t get along in the playground, but it seems they are about to join forces in the pursuit of fair grades.
from VICE US https://ift.tt/3axso6H
via cheap web hosting
No comments:
Post a Comment