Spare a thought for those due to sit their A-Levels next summer. They have already had considerable disruption to their education. But today’s announcement that this year’s A-Level grades will be done by teacher assessment risks compounding their misfortune.
It means that the current lower sixth will be competing for university places — and jobs — against those who have received teacher assessed grades, which are bound to be more generous than those that an exam would produce. (For all sorts of understandable reasons, teachers will want to give their pupils the benefit of the doubt when awarding potentially life-changing marks).
The disadvantage the current lower sixth cohort is being put at is so obvious that the government will have to address it. This means that next year’s exams will have to be marked more liberally than they otherwise would have been.
For this reason, it is going to take two to three years for this grade inflation to wash through the system and to return to proper, rigorous exams.
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