Thursday 18 June 2020

Admit This

Applications for university admission close today. This year, it is nothing more than a matter of whether or not you are friendly with the teacher. Onwards, then, to university admission after results, as in any sane country. And to the end of the school league tables, which could not be taken seriously on the basis of teacher assessment alone, and which once gone for a year need never come back. 

Working-class pupils are twice as likely to be predicted an E grade, and black pupils' grades are staggeringly under-predicted, with only 39 per cent of predictions turning out to have been correct. Boys are also ill-served. 13 years of Labour Government did nothing to improve any of this. Quite the reverse, in fact.

The people who make these mistakes are the backbone of the Labour Party's membership, and their children are the direct beneficiaries of the present system. And Keir Starmer is those members' choice as a potential Prime Minister. But there is a world elsewhere. And it is a world with plenty going on in it.

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