An article on children being granted extra time in public examinations, is (at least for me) currently poking out from behind the Financial Times paywall:
The gap between the share of privately educated and state-educated students in England claiming extra time in GCSE and A-level exams has widened.
Forty-two per cent of students enrolled in independent schools received extra time in the 2023-24 academic year, compared with 26 per cent of pupils in non-selective state schools, according to data published by Ofqual on Thursday.
The gap of 16 percentage points is the largest since England’s exam regulator began collecting data in 2018-19, when 26 per cent of private school students and 17 per cent of state school students claimed extra time for GCSEs and A-levels.
It is sad to see how good, but insufficiently thought through, ideas to help deserving cases, get undermined by so many of the well educated and well connected to the extent that it fundamentally undermines the basis of the examination system. Just as not wanting all those pupils affected by covid restrictions to be disadvantaged led to substantial grade inflation which helped no-one except those who only measure academic success in terns of a number allocated on a piece of paper, rather than what pupils have actually learned, we can quickly tweak things to reflect a current concern, but very rarely make things better.
ReplyDelete