This is the moment in the year when I used to be really busy as a sixth form tutor, congratulating and commiserating with students about their A-level results. Tutors would get busy helping sort out whether or not universities would still accept students who had missed their target by one grade in one subject, and then dealing with the clearing house system for those who definitely had not been accepted. So it was strange yesterday to hear all this being discussed on news broadcasts as if it were a new system created by this years’s unusual circumstances. Of course it’s not the same as usual but there have always been stressed-out students (and parents and teachers) at this point in the academic year.
It has to be said, however, that the whole thing seems to have been a bit shambolic. Students predicted, for example, a grade B really should not find themselves downgraded to grade E, which apparently did happen. None of the methods of awarding grades or appealing decisions that have worked in previous years really apply to this year’s situation.
Nothing is helped by Gavin Williamson saying things like:
“Increasing the A Level grades will mean a whole generation could end up promoted beyond their abilities”
That is assuming that he really said that and it’s not just another myth. But it has been taken as yet another slur on youngsters from disadvantaged backgrounds. Upper class youngsters don’t run such a risk, or so it is implied. As if all young people moving into the world of work did not have to learn and develop the necessary abilities for the job in hand. You might think that ministers who have rapidly had to develop the skills needed for their jobs would understand this.
Layla Moran, education spokesperson for the Lib Dems had this to say:
“Gavin Williamson is an education secretary out of his depth and out of excuses. He must take responsibility for his mistakes and step down with immediate effect. Our young people and our country cannot afford these blunders to continue into September ahead of a potential second wave.”
Whenever something like this comes up and cries go out for the minister or manager or whoever to resign immediately I wonder if that is really a solution. Surely that person should be made to take responsibility for the fracas and put it right, maybe, indeed almost certainly, with some extra advice and assistance. New brooms sweeping clean and fresh eyes looking at things are all very well but someone new having to get their head round a problem is not necessarily going to expedite a solution. Well, that’s what I think anyway!
However, I am rather glad not to be having to solve the problem myself. Another of the benefits of being a retired person.
We still wait to see whether it will be decided to put Oldham back into full lockdown, with non-essential shops closed and presumably pubs and restaurant closed again. An announcement is supposed to be being made today. Our daughter has a theory that the full lockdown will return, giving the borough two full weeks of major restrictions to try to get things under control in time for children going back to school. She may well be right.
I seem to have spent a good part of this morning on the telephone, catching up with various members of the family - a litany of anxiety about a cat due to go to see the vet, friends about to have babies, others suffering from stress and actual physical illness, and high points such as the six-year-old granddaughter going to “tech-camp” organised by her school. There she has rapidly developed It skills to the point where she can tell her father “It’s quicker if I do it rather than telling you how!” She is also turning into an avid Minecraft fan, taking me back almost ten years to when her older cousins were busy Minecrafters!
What goes around comes around!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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