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.

This is mist in the Severn Valley, looking as though the sea has rushed in. Bristol, Gloucester, Tewkesbury and many other cities and towns would be completely inundated with only the very highest parts above water.

PMK (thanks Red) with a 'you think, it can't get worse and then it does' depressed state of mind.

Not knowing what else to do, I'll write to my MP with a list of current concerns. To be as accurate as possible, it the WA classed as an international treaty?

www.floodmap.net/

Its not too bad for the Uk at 6metres. Less good for the Netherlands.

I deliberately bought on a hill.

Some schools, mostly private, don't do A levels. They offer IB courses.
They include Charterhouse, Godolphin and Latimer, Winchester, Cheltenham Ladies College.

There was a similar controversy over the IB grades last month.

https://www.tes.com/news/coronavirus-ib-results-day-2020-controversy-grows-over-grading-scandal

Is this really down to just an algorithm?

It could explain why WM is so keen to hold on to Scotland

Caveat: that map supposedly presumes both ice sheets melting, so a much higher sea level rise than 6m - but it doesn't seem so far fetched any more

Thanks for the thread and the flood map RTB. The sea level would need to rise more than 10 metres to threaten the part of the Netherlands that we would be likely to escape to, but the rest of the country would be long gone

And my ds1s cohort (next years A level exam students) will be too because this year has been such a disaster that they will be expected to sit exams in subjects that they have missed 4 months teaching on!
Ofqual have said the A level exams next year (unlike gcses) will not change...

My understanding is that OfQual and the UK awarding bodies have just concluded a consultation on curriculum changes for next year. My maths teacher friend says it means stripping out topics to offset the missed teaching this year. I suppose that will make the exams fairer for current year 10s and 12s, but creates downstream issues for higher education as they’ll have to cover missing A level content in year 1.

Also, having read the Oxford Uni statement on this year’s admissions decision posted upthread, where Oxford say they’ve made adjustments for students from disadvantage backgrounds and exceeded their planned numbers to so, there are probably private school parents spitting chips about young Lucius not getting his place at Oxford or Hermione hers at Cambridge but the universities allowing a larger intake to admit state school oiks. I’d anticipate legal challenges from both sides.

No striping out content for my ds1s subjects!

They are for some gcse subjects, as I said.

RTB ....I deliberately bought on a hill

I live on a hill top too and sometimes fantasize about how crowded it might get with incomers from the town below

I'm currently at c35m and our "horizontal semi" (stone villa converted into 2 homes) consists of the 1st and attic floors.

Our back garden is on a slope, so the flat bit is even higher, which means that the refugee camp should be safe

@Tanith

Some schools, mostly private, don't do A levels. They offer IB courses. They include Charterhouse, Godolphin and Latimer, Winchester, Cheltenham Ladies College.

There was a similar controversy over the IB grades last month.

[[https://www.tes.com/news/coronavirus-ib-results-day-2020-controversy-grows-over-grading-scandal]]

Is this really down to just an algorithm?

Charterhouse, Godolphin, Cheltenham all offer A level and IB.

Don’t know about Winchester. Sevenoaks is the only school I know offhand that offers IB but not A levels.

I have a waterfront property when the sea rises 26 metres

And my ds1s cohort (next years A level exam students) will be too because this year has been such a disaster that they will be expected to sit exams in subjects that they have missed 4 months teaching on!

4 months isn’t actually much of a disaster for most humanities subjects. It’s more problematic for sciences, languages etc.

tatiana
We'll have to agree to disagree on that one. Perhaps students from schools/colleges that provided decent online provision will be fine.
Sadly, that doesn't apply to my ds1 nor thousands of other dc around the country.
Ds1 is a conscientious student and has been working/revising hard over the summer hols. He still had 4 months of no/patchy provision.
I think some kids have just given up and written this academic year off. I know several of his peers have left college.

It doesn't alter the point I made: IBs have also been affected.

I made a mistake, Winchester offers pre-Us, not the IB. To my knowledge, they still don't offer A levels at all because they say the exams are not robust enough.
They also offer iGCSEs, not GCSEs.
I think the Pre-Us are run by Cambridge, so I doubt they'd use this algorithm to calculate grades.

Quite tricky to do Geography fieldwork during a pandemic. Would help if he teacher ever answered an e mail too...

Thanks as ever Red & all other contributors, just depressed & weary PMK

I think the patchy provision during lockdown is going to be a huge problem. DD2 has lab work to catch up on, but otherwise her online provision was excellent - in fact they had started on the first modules for Yr 13 by the time they broke up for the summer. They were fully on track for History and Psychology. We have been exceptionally lucky, and this is at an ordinary state 6th form.

Some schools have provided loads of support and teaching
Some have provided non
(both state and private)
But many of the most vulnerable children were neither in school (even though they were allowed to be) nor accessing the online resources (where the only internet connection in the house is a parent's phone for example)

and the repurcussions of that are going to be with us for years.

I know of a child who has been rejected by St Andrews because the algorithm reduced her grades significantly
she is utterly devastated after an already shit last year of school.

We have to get vulnerable kids back into school.
We have to.
Covid-19 or not.

I can imagine this coming week will be equally fraught, as it impacts on what school/6th form college kids can go to - and whether they can even sit A levels.

The Scottish system is more integrated as schools go all the way through to S6 (Y13) and young people can sit/re-sit Nat 5s I'm S5 and/or S6, alongside (or evening instead of) Highers in S5 and Advanced Highers in S6 and/or more (or re-sit) Highers.

One friend's dd failed her Nat 5 Maths in S4 and put off sitting it again (she needs it if she wants to teach) until S6 when she was also doing Advanced Highers.

prettybird
Sixth forms will have discretion on entry requirements
BUT
for lower ability students if the algorithm fucks up and says that they have failed English and Maths
they are rendered unemployable
and have to go back to college to "retake" until they pass

even more of a kick in the teeth at a time when unemployment is about to soar

it is such a shit show

^or lower ability students if the algorithm fucks up and says that they have failed English and Maths they are rendered unemployable
and have to go back to college to "retake" until they pass^

I could just see this working in their favour - with a sympathetic teacher telling them that their grade 1 or whatever wasn't a real grade, giving them some more teaching, maybe explaining in a slightly different way, and them getting a proper pass when they are allowed to actually sit an exam.

Peregrina
Which teachers ? They will have left school. The colleges do not have enough capacity to take them.

I know of kids who took Maths GCSE 5 times (summer and winter sessions) till they finally scraped a 5