Scrapping GCSEs and A-Levels is unfair and stupid

In Ireland at some point in the 1970s there was such a queue of people waiting to take their driving tests that the government of the day said, what the hell, there’s only one way to get rid of the backlog, and gave everyone with a provisional licence a full driving licence. The result was, as you might have expected: insurance companies registered that a shower of duds would be let loose on the roads that year and, for years to come, factored that into their equations when it came to assessing premiums.

I worry, just a bit, that the same might be true of this year’s cohort of examination candidates now that the government, courtesy of Ofqual, the exam watchdog, has decided that, you know what – we can’t possibly let children sit actual GCSEs and A-levels what with the pandemic, so let’s just let the teachers decide what they would have got if they had sat them.