A-level grade inflation is another fine mess the Tories have got us into. The apparent “simple” solution to the educational challenges of the 2020-21 student cohort was the application of a grade awards system based on teacher assessment that mirrored 2019 results. One can only hypothesise as to the reasons why such a “free for all” was the resulting approach.
Perhaps, once again, the government was playing to its base. The faithful would expect the advantages of private education to continue to result in better grades than state schools even when lockdown negated better facilities, smaller class sizes, and quality of tuition. Learning online, apart from the experience of students on the margins of society with poor access to devices, was a great leveller.
With typical Johnsonian cynicism, a smokescreen was created that delivered the usual desired quota of privately educated students getting places at top universities without the “normal advantages”. And now, as a result of blatant gaming of the system, there must be a reckoning? One more reason to vote “anyone but the Tory” in the forthcoming general election.
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