
Algorithmic adjustment of grades causes chaos in UK exam system - daverol
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/aug/16/autumn-term-chaos-feared-over-exam-resits-and-appeals
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viraptor
I'm not familiar with the UK system, so I'm confused here. Did the exams not
take place? Or are they done by the schools? I though the a-levels are
standardised country-wide / not sure where the original grade they modify
comes from.

~~~
neilwilson
They didn’t happen due to full lockdown that shut the schools. A levels are
decided by a single exam in May/June after two years of study.

University starts in September and university places are offered based upon
estimates of the grade an individual will get. This happens early in the year
Jan/Feb time and is called a “conditional offer”.

Those who don’t get the grades in the exam in August to satisfy the
conditional offer go into a system called “Clearing” to see what other
University courses are still available.

The estimates Universities use come from two sources. Either the teachers just
vouch for a set of grades, or the school runs a set of test exams called
“Mocks” in Nov/December and the grades from them are the estimates.

Covid threw a huge wrench in the works of this Byzantine system.

The problem is that mocks and the actual results have been drifting apart for
years, with the universities compensating course by course.

The Ivory Tower technocrats genuinely believed they could impose an
algorithmic correction top down and everybody would just accept it. They have
had a rude awakening to the political reality - yet again.

~~~
sukilot
A system fundamentally broken from the start -- a a stack of separate high
stakes exams for 2 years of work (so if you are sick one day you get rejected
from college), collapses due to one of many foreseeable potential causes.

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jpxw
This really does seem very unfair. I went to a middle-of-the-road
comprehensive, and in one particular subject our entire (small) class happened
to be talented - all of us but one got A*s. My understanding is that this
wouldn’t be possible under this algorithm.

On the other hand, I’m struggling to think of a system which would be better,
which also preserves the integrity of A-levels as a qualification.

~~~
sukilot
This scenario was the climax of the movie _Stand and Deliver_.

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daverol
Background on the algorithms here:

[https://ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2020/08/a-level-
results-2...](https://ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2020/08/a-level-
results-2020-how-have-grades-been-calculated/)

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sukilot
The only reason any of this matters is that higher education is being held as
a scarce commodity, with "elite" schools limiting attendance, to prevent lower
class people from rising above their class.

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g_p
Has anyone affected (or their parents) considered how this sits in line with
the GDPR (implemented as the Data Protection Act 2018).

It has various provisions for purely automated decision making processes that
have significant effects on a person, and some of these require prior impact
assessments to be carried out. It's quite likely these weren't carried out,
given the circumstances.

Might be an angle for anyone affected that's looking to learn some "real
world" skills they weren't taught in the syllabus, and fight back on such a
basis.

~~~
sukilot
There was an assessment. The assessment said everything is fine.

