Is it Boris or Gove or Williamson that young people should be blaming?

Peter Symonds College has written to parents to congratulate the students on a very hard year, but they know that a proportion of young people at PSC didn’t get the grades that the college and the young people were expecting. PSC say they are supporting students and we are all thankful that the local college works so hard to stand up for students in their care.

But should it be like this? Children have had a very tough time this year: isolated from friends, teachers except on screen, they have waited for this day, only for their hopes to be dashed.

When he was Education Minister, Michael Gove insisted that A levels should be ‘like they were back in his day’. Unfortunately, every minister relates the Education system back to their own time at school, and to education not in the modern world.

In the modern world, we learn things as we go along, in chunks as we need to assimilate the information. In education that is called a Module; and modules exams can inform the final result. But not this year. Although BTechs remained modular, Michael Gove stopped A level modular exams.

As I understand it, the basis for a result included these elements

• previous experience at GCSE- not necessarily for the subject you are studying or your maturity at year 13.
• the results of the school or college you are at, (and where you did your GCSE’s?)
• the results of any mocks that you did before you had finished the curriculum.

So- how will this year be remembered? As a Boris and Gove fiasco?

Or will we continue to remember that this was a year that the Conservative Government forgot that these weren’t just exams but real peoples’ lives?