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PERSONAL STORY THREAD: I hate exams. Always have. Never feel like I do myself justice in them. So 19 years ago this week, waiting for my #AlevelResults, I was feeling pretty nervous
I’d got top marks in my coursework (we had coursework in those days), been predicted good grades, and revised really hard, but I hadn’t come out of the exams feeling super-confident
(I also had undiagnosed dyslexia, but I obviously didn’t know that at the time)
On the morning of results day I went into school, picked up my envelope and the earth caved in beneath me: I’d dropped a grade in two subjects, missing both my first choice uni offer and my insurance
Now I was unbelievably lucky - my teachers thought it was harsh and requested a remark. Three weeks later I’d been marked up a grade and my first choice uni reinstated my offer of a place for the following year; then they had someone else withdraw, so I was able to start on time
But I still remember how awful those three weeks felt. It was like everything - not just my plans, but my sense of who I was - had been smashed to pieces
Again, I was lucky to have very supportive teachers, friends and family (especially my mum, who was amazing), but when you’re that age, and you’ve spent 13 years of schooling building up to this, bad results like that feel catastrophic
So I can’t even imagine what it feels like for the kids who got unexpected results on Thursday. Back in 2001, I was distraught because I thought I’d screwed up the exams. What must it be like when your future has been decided on the results of exams you didn’t even get to sit?
Lots of kids made their offers on Thursday, and that’s great. But there’s a significant group of students who’ve had their world turned upside down. We’ve failed them
Which brings me to the point of this thread... When I got into my first choice uni 19 years ago it was to read law. And academic lawyers spend a lot of time thinking about how you make rules which can be applied consistently while delivering justice in individual circumstances
It’s kind of the central theme of the entire discipline; it’s why (for example) criminal courts literally give defendants the ‘benefit of the doubt’
Which is why what has happened with A-levels this year is so infuriating. It doesn’t matter if the approach is theoretically fair in the aggregate, if some individuals get completely crushed by a system that doesn’t care
This isn’t a new idea: people have been grappling with it for thousands of years. And as @miss_mcinerney and @Samfr have eloquently pointed out here https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/aug/15/a-level-students-gavin-williamson-farceand and below, it beggars belief that the govt didn’t provide a way to resolve the most egregious cases earlier https://twitter.com/samfr/status/1293977343267151872
Since the beginning of this pandemic we have been asking young people to sacrifice their desires and needs (education, leisure, employment, friendship) for the sake of protecting vulnerable individuals from the virus
If we cannot - at this pivotal moment - take the care to treat every A-level student as an individual citizen, deserving of equal justice, then we have broken our social contract with that generation and we should expect the consequences of that
Anyway, it’s not too late. Many have suggested ways to put this right. Let’s just hope those with the power are ready to listen. END THREAD
