This year, there were no exams because the United Kingdom locked itself down against COVID-19. Instead, teachers supplied predicted grades. Teachers make these predictions every year, and it is with these in mind that universities make the offer of a place. Offers are made either unconditionally or with the proviso that the predictions are realized or bettered. In recent years, more and more offers have been made unconditionally, and these now comprise around a third of the total.

The Algorithm

This year was also different because, when the results were issued on August 13, it was obvious that Ofqual had intervened. The grades awarded to many students bore little resemblance to the schools’ predictions. Worried that teachers were being too generous and that this would undermine the credibility of the exams, Ofqual devised and applied a mathematical formula to moderate the results. The algorithm took account of the students’ mock results and the performance of each school in previous years, amongst other variables. The calculations determined that 40% of grades should be reduced. This threw offers and plans into doubt, causing umbrage among students, parents, teachers and universities.

Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, stuck resolutely to his guns. By August 17, he had abandoned them, and the original predicted results were reinstated. Williamson had been blindsided by Ofqual, he claimed, and only became aware of the full implications of the recalculations over the weekend. Ofqual struck back, saying that Williamson had known difficulties were brewing ever since March, when he ordered the regulator to adjust grades if they appeared inflated.

It was then made known that the head of Ofqual, Roger Taylor, established and ran a firm implicated in the Mid Staffs Hospital scandal. His firm, Dr Foster,  had come up with an algorithm enabling the hospital to present its mortality rates as low when, in fact, they were dangerously high and its patients were being dreadfully mistreated.

Just what had Gavin Williamson been levelling at? The entire mess was completely avoidable and unnecessary. No exams had been taken, so there were no exams to be brought into disrepute. And there had been no exams because of exceptional circumstances. So why treat the teacher’s predictions as an assault on standards, especially when predictions are made every year and unconditional offers are issued to a fair proportion of students as a matter of course?

Whatever the answer, the response was immediate. Gasps of disbelief at the secretary’s sheer incompetence (“He’s fucking useless,” declared one vice chancellor) were combined with emotional outbursts from students worried that their lives had been ruined, from parents trying to deal with the fallout at home, and from university staff whose summer breaks were interrupted.

All parties most likely suspected that things would eventually sort themselves out if only because chancellors are desperate to fill seats. Having said that, the government and Ofqual displayed a complete absence of trust in teachers and schools. Most disgraceful was the treatment of students with potential and drive who had worked hard against the odds in schools assessed as poor over the last few years. At a macro-level, it meant that the proportion of the most deprived pupils (the bottom third) who achieved a Grade C or better fell by nearly 11%, while the independent schools saw their proportion of A and A* grades increase by nearly 5%.

An education secretary, whose only claim to the job is that he was not educated at an independent school and did not go to Oxford or Cambridge, willfully took away the ladder from the very kids it is meant for. A more callous and spiteful decision in the name of equality is difficult to imagine. However, the farrago matters for another, even more important, reason. It illustrates just how superficial education has become.

Grades Are Everything

The A-levels are not just a passport to university. A school whose students’ average grades fall too far will come under greater scrutiny from the government, which can end in sanctions of one sort or another. These include changing staff pay and conditions; removing staff and governing bodies; turning the school’s budget over to an interim board; closing the school; or handing it (minus its former staff) to an academy. Academies, though state-funded, have more control over management, curriculum, pay, the selection of students and staff, and the freedom to attract money from private sponsors.

Of the 3,400 or so state-funded secondary schools (3.25 million pupils), nearly three-quarters (about 2.3 million children) are now academies. If an academy fails, then it, too, is either absorbed by a more successful one or closed. Independent schools judged to be failing can also find themselves in trouble. For instance, they may be prohibited from taking on new pupils, fined or closed. Proprietors who do not respond adequately to enforcement notices can end up in prison.

Grades, then, have come to mean everything. And because they mean everything, what they are supposed to signify has come to mean very little at all. The education system — and “system” is a good description — barely manages to educate. Where a good education is found in English schools, it is provided by teachers and parents despite the vast amount of nonsensical instructions (misleadingly entitled “guidelines”) issued by the government. In these oases of levelheadedness, staff teach outside the system’s narrow confines, helping children to explore more rounded and deeper understandings of the world, introducing them to new ways of thinking.

The problem is not just that teachers are weighed down and worn out by red tape. To avoid falling foul of the government and its quality enforcers, teachers must consume millions of words of legislation, statutory instruments, notices and guidance that lay out in extraordinary detail everyday practice within the school. It is that education — or rather the fulfillment of standards dictated by the government — has become a bureaucratic procedure, a glorified exercise in form-filling, in which content, imagination, experimentation and sustained and unconventional thought no longer matter.

ભારતીય અને ચીની અર્થવ્યવસ્થા શા માટે વિકસિત થઈ રહી છે?

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• एग्जाम सेंटर पर कोविड के नियमों का पालन करने के लिए छात्रों की लंबी लाइन देखी गई
• JEE परीक्षा छह सितंबर तक चलेगी, इसके लिए देशभर में 660 परीक्षा सेंटर बनाए गए

नेशनल टेस्टिंग एजेंसी (एनटीए) इंजीनियरिंग प्रवेश परीक्षा (जेईई-मेन्स) देशभर में मंगलवार से शुरू हो गई है। ये परीक्षा छह सितंबर तक होगी। इसके लिए देशभर में 660 परीक्षा सेंटर बनाए गए हैं। पहले दिन सेंटर पर कोरोना से बचाव और सुरक्षा के इंतजाम देखने को मिले। छात्र भी परीक्षा केंद्रों पर पूरी एहतियात के साथ देखे गए। वे अपने साथ हैंड सैनिटाइजर लेकर आए। इसके अलावा, छात्र मास्क और फेस शील्ड लगाकर पहुंचे।

परीक्षा में 8.58 लाख स्टूडेंट्स का रजिस्ट्रेशन है। पहले दिन दो पारियों में सुबह 9 से दोपहर 12 बजे और दोपहर तीन से शाम 6 बजे तक परीक्षा होगी। परीक्षार्थियों को दिए गए एडमिट कार्ड में कोरोना और अन्य 22 निर्देशों का पालन करना है। परीक्षा केंद्र में सभी व्यवस्थाएं टचलेस है। इस बार कोड से स्टूडेंट्स के एडमिट कार्ड चेक किए गए। सेंटर से 20 मीटर दूरी तक ही गाड़ियों को पहुंचने की अनुमति दी गई।

एग्जाम सेंटर पर ये अरेंजमेंट किए गए

#WATCH: Candidates queue up outside TCS at Patto Plaza in Panaji, Goa – designated as an exam centre for #JEEMain. They are being made to discard their masks and are being provided fresh masks after their temperature is checked, in the wake of #COVID19. pic.twitter.com/oekpUNmqlk

— ANI (@ANI) September 1, 2020

मध्यप्रदेश
भोपाल में 4 सेंटर बनाए गए हैं। हर केंद्र में करीब 240 बच्चे एग्जाम दे सकते हैं। परीक्षा केंद्रों पर पहुंचे अभिभावकों ने व्यवस्था की पोल खोली। अभिभावकों का कहना था कि व्यवस्था तो दूर की बात रही, कॉल ही नहीं लगा। इसके कारण तनाव भी आया और गुस्सा भी, लेकिन बच्चों के भविष्य का सवाल था। इसलिए फिर खुद ही उन्हें लेकर सेंटर तक पहुंचे।

भोपाल से करीब 100 किलोमीटर दूर शाजापुर के कालापीपल से दिनेश अपनी बेटी को लेकर अयोध्या बायपास स्थित कॉलेज में बने जेईई एग्जाम सेंटर पहुंचे। उन्होंने बताया- एक दिन पहले समाचारों के जरिए सरकार द्वारा बच्चों को सेंटर तक पहुंचाने के लिए गाड़ियों का इंतजाम किए जाने की जानकारी मिली थी। इसके लिए टोल फ्री नंबर 181 पर हम लगातार कॉल करते रहे, क्योंकि उसमें रजिस्ट्रेशन कराना जरूरी था। कोई जवाब ही नहीं मिला। फिर बाइक से बेटी को एग्जाम दिलाने पहुंचे।

यह फोटो भोपाल की है। अयोध्या बाइपास स्थित एग्जाम सेंटर के बाहर अभिभावक खड़े दिखे। उन्हें अंदर प्रवेश नहीं दिया गया। बाहर भी किसी तरह के कोई इंतजाम नहीं दिखे।

यह फोटो रायपुर की है। राजधानी के इस सेंटर में 6 दिनों में यहां 5147 छात्र परीक्षा देंगे।

यह फोटो अहमदाबाद की है। यहां एग्जाम सेंटर के सामने छात्रों के लिए विशेष व्यवस्था की। दो गज की दूरी का ख्याल रखा गया।

यह फोटो बेंगलुरू की है। हर सेंटर पर एंट्री के पहले स्क्रीनिंग की गई। मास्क और ग्लव्स पहनना जरूरी किया गया।

लखनऊ में भी स्टूडेंट्स एग्जाम शुरू होने के एक से दो घंटे पहले ही पहुंच गए।

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