Grade F edition

This time is one some of us remember well, the anxiety, sleepness nights followed by that visit to school or phoning in the preinternet era as you wait to see how the exam grades you took in the late Spring and Summer  actually turned out.

They matter beyond just personal satisfaction as they factor into getting into work, going into the Sixth or a Sixth Form College and for for some University.

If 2020 has been a year like no other, children in the Fifth and Sixth were unable to take those exams as school shut on March 20th so you might of thought schools, examination bodies and the Dept For Education would of used that time to sort out how you might make "compensatory" awards based on the quality of work, any "mock exams" and practicals taken before.

Evidently not and not just here in England in SNP run Scotland, Labour led Wales and the DUP/SF Northern Ireland we've had essentially the same problems around trying in some way to moderate something that did not and could not be moderated resulting in many upto 40% of grades being reduced by eye watering amounts followed on different timescales by each government.

The palpable anger in England resulted in extraordinary scenes such as these children from Codsall Community College in South Staffordshire protesting outside the Education Minister's constituency headquarters in Codsall, just across the road and with good reason.

As a socially liberal conservative I felt it wasn't just a non starter but wholly unfair to attempt to judge a child's work by past results in exams that were not taken that featured others.

It would one thing to look at samples of graded work to see schools were grading roughly the same way for statistical consistency but to use a system that even when trailed by the exam regulator last year was known to produce gross errors is morally wrong.

In England that was reversed by Mid Monday afternoon but that still leaves the question about universities who've closed admittance who had children with provisional offers rejected on the basis of the flawed modified results left to sort out the mess to gain the place their efforts and abilities deserve.