British students protest against graduation by algorithm

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Students protest in London: "Really screwed up"

The UK government is coming under increasing pressure to deal with this year's school leaving certificates. In London and other cities, students protested over the weekend against the decision to use an algorithm to set final grades. Some called for the resignation of Education Secretary Gavin Williamson.

The problem: Because of the coronavirus pandemic, it was not possible to take exams for A-Level (Abitur) or GCSE (intermediate school leaving certificate). So the Ministry of Culture asked teachers across the country to predict the grades their students would likely have achieved.

The government announced that the results were significantly more positive than the average of previous years. Many teachers assumed that the students had achieved their individual top marks. Every year some would have a bad day and do less well.

An algorithm should help determine more realistic exam results. In addition to the teachers' assessment, the average grade at the school in question from previous years was also included. The result: some of the students came off up to three grade points worse than their teachers had recommended. As the BBC reports, the grades of around 280,000 students nationwide have been downgraded.

This was followed by an outcry among students who felt they were disadvantaged and sometimes saw their dreams of a university place burst when the A-level results came out last Thursday. A way hastily brought into play by Education Minister Williamson to object to the results was partially canceled by the responsible authority at the weekend.

Initially, it was said that pupils could use a complaint procedure to ensure that the best rating was counted, either from a trial exam or from the teacher evaluation. Alternatively, it should be possible to take the final exam in autumn, which would be too late to start studying in the winter semester. But then the authorities rowed back.

U-turn in Scotland

The education policy spokeswoman for the opposition Labor Party, Kate Green, described the government's actions as a "fiasco that is developing from tragedy into farce". Prime Minister Boris Johnson must make the matter a top priority. Teachers' associations were also critical.

The procedure favored students in private schools and disadvantaged those who went to state schools with larger classes, said 18-year-old Ophelia Gregory, who had called for the protests in London, the newspaper "The Independent". "It really screwed up smart students in schools who didn't do so well in the past," she quoted the paper as saying.

The GCSE grades are due to be published next Thursday. The regional government in Scotland had previously failed and turned around with the same approach. There, the teachers' assessments should be decisive.

lov / dpa