Hail Gavin Williamson, who will save us from the evils of the dreaded ‘Algorithm’. And yea he shall make the teachers do a load of work, deliver us unto school result inconsistency and shall inflate the grades.
Eh why? Last year was an inexcusable exam car crash, and it’s nice to see this year we’ll know what to expect. But we’ll only actually know which vehicles will be impacting and at what time and velocity.
There are arguments for and against exams, and I won’t wade into that swamp here, but the fact is we currently have a large exam component in school assessments. Changing the whole assessment structure should be done with thought and planning, not on a whim or as a populist reaction.
As I understand it we don’t want exams during a pandemic because:
- Lots of kids crowding together spreads infection
- This year’s teaching has been so disrupted that nobody’s learned a consistent curriculum
1 is solved by putting them into bigger rooms and opening the windows. Or they could do it in their own classrooms so there’s no cross-infection.
2 is solved by giving enough questions on enough subject areas to let students pick bits they had done. There could be a range of papers with teachers able to pick the appropriate ones for what they taught.
This isn’t perfect, but it’s a reasonable attempt at the current system, the aim of which is consistency.
Letting teachers do whatever they think is right is lovely and libertarian. But they might have enough to do as it is, and the chances of getting consistent results for tertiary education to compare applicants with is slim.
Gavin, stop copping out. Try to do your job for a change.