Westminstenders: PreGrades (Minority Report comes to the UK)

[RedToothBrush]

In Aug 2020, London, DC's prototype 'PreGrades' launched from the education department stops plebs before they go to university, reducing the social mobility rate to zero percent. Social mobility is predicted using specialized mutated humans, called "Teachers", who "predict" grades by marking shit lots of course work and exams over a period of years. Would-be social climbers are knocked down in a computer algorithm which distorts reality and hits the disadvantaged hardest. Central government is on the verge of adopting the controversial program nationwide by applying it in all departments from the DWP, the Home Office, the Department of Health and the Department of Justice to predict benefit fraud, getting sick asylum seeking and crime before it occurs.

DC's vision of the future is based on excellence being genetically ingrained into the elite but he must sell this vision to the unsuspecting public in a series of public votes which rely on the idea of the 'undeserving'. Little do they know that they too will be the victims of this plan until a mysterious bug appears and only the wealthy and well connected are able to get hold of adequate PPE and they are no longer able to buy bog roll nor retire to Spain as they had previously and endless queues for pizza form near Kent.

Glad to hear it Auld He's certainly winning me over.

I've had g.pa up and been mildly distracted here too but he's on the train home wearing my mask today after multiple snappages of paper ones.

New guy, dd and I are going magnet fishing tomorrow! Apparently in London you can win a handgun doing it...I'm sure in Kent it will be mainly shopping trollies.

Just been reading the latest updates from HMRC on Linkedin.

The utter lack of urgency and accuracy implies to me that there will be a single market capitulation near the end of the year.

Either that or the Civil Servants are just thinking fuck it and expecting the food and medicine supplies to collapse

Sorry, single market capitulation by whom? The EU, so the UK gets off without paying? In which case it's a nice win for the Brexiters.

Peregrina
No, the UK. As in Soft Brexit.
The EU have no need or wish to budge.

That will suit me, and would back in 2016 have suited a lot of Brexiters. It only gradually became Hard Brexit or No Deal for the zealots.

@ListeningQuietly

Just been reading the latest updates from HMRC on Linkedin.

The utter lack of urgency and accuracy implies to me that there will be a single market capitulation near the end of the year.

Either that or the Civil Servants are just thinking fuck it and expecting the food and medicine supplies to collapse

But FoM is part of the single market ?

I've been tentatively thinking the same LQ

It would be quite ironic if we end up paying a sight more for something which is effectively associate membership. Which if May and Johnson hadn't been kowtowing to the ERG we could have had EEA membership of some form, which would have suited most.

"Ironic" is one way of putting it!

The issue with universities is t they are encouraging students to defer one year.
That means some places Will already be taken up next year when the current Y12 will be applying. The same cohort that has seen their education disrupted by Covid this year (and next year??).

The ones that are going to loose out are next year A level students :(. I feel for my niece and nephew

Yep.
My ds1 is fucked.

"Therefore its not real debt.
So kids do not think of it as debt"

I would have thought of it as debt, because I would have to make debt payments unless I stayed poor - which would have meant Uni was a waste of time for me

I would not take on debt for Uni

So blase louise?
I guess the whole point was?....

Happy to have been corrected re numbers of places for medical students.

Auld hope your work issues get resolved to your satisfaction, and soon.

pretty - any news on the new CV cases in a school near you?

There still is no plan for Brexit
Like there was no plan for exams

This government alternates between fantasising and putting its head up its arse
it does not do planning in the sense that any competent individual or business would recognise

working a lot. still furious. hi

thank you all for your sanity

Hey squid
Been thinking of you x
Popped into see the HT earlier today prior to gcse results tomorrow...
She looks ill :(

Thinking of everyone with a levels / gcses or kids with them xx

I am so angry about that too!

squid, yoikes

Has anyone else heard the rumour that Boris and Carrie Symonds have split up? I would not be at all surprised because he hasn't rushed to marry her, even though weddings have been allowed for some weeks now. Princess Beatrice for managed to re-arrange her wedding.

@RedToothBrush This article very much fits the themse of your Minority Report OP:

Students challenging the A-levels debacle have exposed the anti-democratic politics of predictive models

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/19/ditch-the-algorithm-generation-students-a-levels-politics

The injustices of predictive models have been with us for some time.

The effects of modelling people’s future potential
– so clearly recognised and challenged by these students –
is also present in algorithms that predict which children might be at risk of abuse,
which visa application should be denied, or who has the greatest probability of committing a crime.

Our life chances
– if we get a visa,
whether our welfare claims are flagged as fraudulent,
or whether we’re designated at risk of reoffending –

are becoming tightly bound up with algorithmic outputs.
Could the A-level scandal be a turning point for how we think of algorithms – and if so, what durable change might it spark?

Resistance to algorithms has often focused on issues such as data protection and privacy.
The young people protesting against Ofqual’s algorithm were challenging something different.

They weren’t focused on how their data might be used in the future, but how data had been actively used to change their futures.

The potential pathways open to young people were reduced, limiting their life chances according to an oblique prediction.

The Ofqual algorithm was the technical embodiment of a deeply political idea:
that a person is only as good as their circumstances dictate

The metric took no account of how hard a school had worked,
while its appeal system sought to deny individual redress,
and only the “ranking” of students remained from the centres’ inputs.

@Peregrina

Has anyone else heard the rumour that Boris and Carrie Symonds have split up? I would not be at all surprised because he hasn't rushed to marry her, even though weddings have been allowed for some weeks now. Princess Beatrice for managed to re-arrange her wedding.

... Blimey, if true, that didn't last long !

However, I've been very surprised there hasn't been a wedding so far - it would be an excellent photo op for BJ, probably a small opinion poll boost
and he would have gone down as the first PM to marry in office since I don't know when - ever ?

I have been surprised too about the lack of a wedding - and no photo op with little Wilfred in Hello! (Unless I've missed that, not being a Hello reader.)

Just seen that the BTec results have been pulled.

What are they playing at!