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The bottom line of the A level algorithm is very simple: it was designed to ensure that some children in deprived schools must fail. It didn't matter who, but some must fail. So it was doubly toxic: both collectively and individually unjust.
The algorithm - like all algorithms - enshrines ideology but seeks to obscure that ideology in an opaque mathematical language: it puts maintaining the failure of deprived students above rewarding the remarkable achievements of students who thrive in deprived circumstances.
It confirms what critics have been arguing for years: education is only about success for some, it is equally about failure for many. This is at the heart of Paul Willis's classic study 'Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids get Working Class Jobs.
Willis argues that 'working class kids' recognise the inequity of the system and so disengage. They fail not through intellectual inability but through rejection - but they don't recognise that this rejection ultimately affirms the system by legitimating their failure.
The danger is that the A level scandal will further demotivate deprived pupils by telling them 'no matter how hard you work, you will fail'. It will do untold harm in the future as well as the present. That makes it all the more important that the algorithm is overturned now.
