There are few more stomach-churning moments than finding out the exam results on which a future career may, in theory, depend. So far, so normal then for the candidates finding out today the results of the A and T-level examinations, the latter being for more vocational subjects. But for the cohort who sat exams this year, it really was not business as usual. They were the first public exams the pupils sat after their GCSEs were cancelled at short notice by the then-education secretary, Gavin Williamson.
That was bad news for those who rely on last-minute exam performance; their results were estimated on previous work and teacher assessments. And then there were successive school closures because of Covid — five months in the first instance, followed by four months a little later. That was almost a year’s worth of education simply written off. That damage was compounded by the radical difference in teaching between state and independent schools during the pandemic.
We should be sympathetic, then, to this year’s candidates who have had to weather these difficulties. Moreover, they follow a cohort whose results were based on teacher estimates, which meant an extraordinary level of grade inflation — 12 per cent in some instances — followed by expanded university admissions. So, 36.4 per cent of A-levels this year were awarded an A or A*. This is a drop of 8.4 percentage points compared with last year when grades were decided by teacher assessment.
What are the lessons from all this? The most important is that schools should not shut if at all possible. It should have been feasible even during the pandemic for them to remain open more often as schools did even during the Blitz. And cancelling public examinations should be a very last resort — these might have been possible if the Government had made this a priority. It did not — never again.
Congratulations to those young people who did well in their exams, and commiserations to those who did not. Older people know that exams are not always so very important in the grand scheme of things, but today may not be the time to point this out to 18-year-olds.
Death of a pensioner
The killing of the popular and friendly 87-year-old Thomas O’Halloran in Greenford is only the latest and most shocking homicide in a spate of them in London recently. Each death is uniquely tragic but the series of killings shows the scale of violent crime in the capital. Shootings in particular have risen sharply; there have been four this month.
If there is any measure by which we can assess the effectiveness of our police it is by the level of violent crime. Bringing down the number of killings is the most obvious priority for the new Met Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley. He has, goodness knows, any number of them — including reform of the Met culture — but the least we can ask is that our streets should be safe for pensioners on mobility scooters.
Leaks and overflows
It has not been a good month for the water companies. A day after the announcement of a hosepipe ban, we learn that there have been sewerage overflows following heavy rain in 40 areas, notably the South, and the Thames has suffered too. Might it help if the bonuses of water company bosses were linked to their success in dealing with sewers?
