The messaging was wrong on Standardisation

The messaging was wrong on Standardisation

Right from the word go that exams were to be cancelled. Using teacher assessments and previous school exam mocks was always going to be messy. Add in standardisation exercise and it is as painful for the Government as it is for the candidates and their families.

The Government messaging on the exam process was poor. They should have accepted the mess and illustrated the universities flexibility into discerning case by case in the same breath. The one size fits all UCAS process clearly has failed at this hurdle.

If this isn’t a shot in the arm for radically over haul of exams then nothing will be. See here on the previous blog of the unintended consequences of cancelling exams.

Over 40 percent of exam results were down graded through this mysterious process of standardisation. This was always going to upset a lot of pupils, parents and schools.

The end result of the standardisation model that can't or isnt designed to predict outliers. An average inner city comprehensive loses both its unexpected high and low performers. The private and high achieving schools only loses its low performers.

What they should have said everything they used the word standardisation is the universities are now more flexible in their acceptance of candidates.

Ministers along with Ofqual’s Sally Collier would have known full well the mess this would have created. It did not need to happen.

The Exam House has always pressed for exams to be put on. The whole exam process is a form of social distancing while schools are empty. So the 4 weeks of exams could have been carried out with careful planning and sensible distancing.

Then pupils would have had their real marks while universities would have been wiser as to whom to accept.

Perhaps the whole UCAS should be scrapped?