Cimarrón – This was a powerful presentation by Cadwalladr although I deviate, as does Craig Murray, from her thinking on the implied malevolent intervention of WikiLeaks in the 2016 US Election. I agree with him that the DNC data was not hacked by the Russians, but sent to WikiLeaks from an internal DNC source Julian will not reveal, but I believe the decision to publish was impartial. The real crime in the US Election was the DNC’s targeting of Bernie Sanders in favour of flawed candidate Hilary Clinton; the DNC have doubled-down on their mistake by backing yet another weak, flawed looser in Biden this time around! Cadwalladr has evolved into an accomplished investigative journalist, but I am both alarmed and confused by her connections to the Integrity Initiative, an organization that was paid by the Tory Party to generate corrupt smear propaganda targeting Jeremy Corbyn to sabotage the Electoral chances of the most progressive iteration of the Labour Party in decades! I would like to know how and why is she involved with this thoroughly disreputable organization?
Truth, Justice and the integrity of the UK Electoral System that legitimizes our democracy still remain perilously at stake as we face yet another disastrous consequence of Boris Johnson’s Tory Government blunders since his unfathomably suspicious ‘landslide victory.’ I hope the industrial scale fraud that facilitated the Covert 2019 Rigged Election will be exposed, just as the fake promise of ‘levelling up’ unravels to reveal the standard Tory agenda of ‘Decimating Down.’ We have dodged a bullet, but the public realize they were lied to: the gross manipulation of the exam grading algorithm stands exposed as rigged to conspicuously disadvantage the already disadvantaged in favour of the wealthy elite. But, each and every time we discover that one man is at the very heart of all of this ongoing corruption: the despised puppet master controlling every decision the PM makes, a man whose Machiavellian manoeuvres serve the warped eugenics philosophy that drives his sick mind, none other than shameless grade ‘D for Dominic’ Cummings!
Downgraded students are now spared the fallout of an injustice designed to sabotage future prospects via a maladjusted algorithm, but the malicious interventions of unelected Chief Adviser Cummings cannot be excluded from the fray. We should not forget that before Boris Johnson was eagerly sniffing Cummings’ dirty bum, Michael Gove was partaking of the Dom’s odious eugenics brain farts. Gove’s assignment at that time was none other than the Department of Education, where Cummings first got to wield his wrecking ball, reinventing Tory Education Policy; a disaster that cost us 50,000 loyal Teachers! A Canary Article entitled, “Dominic Cummings’ blog reveals he’s behind the A-Levels ‘class war’.” This is a shocking theory that, “The scandal over Ofqual’s downgrading of hundreds of thousands of A-Level results continues. But a blog post by Dominic Cummings in 2015, and his links to Ofqual, show where the motivation for what The Canary‘s editor-at-large Kerry-Anne Mendoza called ‘class warfare’ may have come from.”
From whence does this troubling assumption arise? According to the Canary, Cummings himself implies as much, “Because Boris Johnson’s right-hand man explicitly wrote that civil servants and MPs had ‘corrupted’ A-Levels, essentially making them too easy… that the drive to give as many pupils as possible ‘access’ to be able to take them had ‘devalued‘ the whole process. But reading between the lines, it may actually be GCSEs that are the Tories’ real target, and it’s embedded in notions of Eugenics. ‘A-Level carnage…’ The Canary previously reported on a growing controversy over this year’s A-Level results.” They noted: “The proportion of A-level entries awarded an A grade or higher has risen to an all-time high, with 27.9% securing the top grades this year, figures for England, Wales and Northern Ireland show. But exam boards downgraded nearly two in five (39.1%) pupils’ grades in England, according to data from Ofqual – which amounts to around 280,000 entries being adjusted down after moderation.”
The Canary reported that, “Since then, the education secretary Gavin Williamson has come under renewed pressure to resign, with Boris Johnson so far standing by him. Students have held protests over the results. ‘…dissent in the Tory ranks appears to be growing.’ The Conservative chair of the Education Select Committee told BBC Radio 4‘s World at One programme that: some figures suggest that disadvantaged students have been penalised again… If the model has penalised disadvantaged groups this is very serious and if it has disadvantaged colleges that has to be looked at. Ofqual will have to adjust the grades.” Despite creating yet another shambolic Tory mess, they said, “So far, Ofqual and Williamson have refused to budge, with the former appearing to be in chaos. In the space of a few hours on Saturday 15 August, it released then withdrew its guidance over the appeals process.” Where was Boris Johnson, our part-time Prime Minister, as the nation faced yet another perfectly avoidable crisis created by Tory incompetence? Relaxing on holiday again!
In the Canary article, Mendoza was keen to point out that, “at the heart of this story is Ofqual’s algorithm, which favoured private school pupils best and students from the most deprived areas worst. This is because it was partly designed around subject pupil numbers – so the smaller the ‘cohort’ taking a subject, the higher the average grades would be. Some commentators are claiming that Ofqual should have realised this would happen. For example, one analyst correctly predicted the percentage of downgraded results over a week ago. The Good Law Project is planning a judicial review of Ofqual’s grading process. Although it may fall on deaf ears – because, by giving students free access to appeals, the Tories will say the issue is resolved.” Mendoza claims that, “a blog post by Cummings in 2015 shows that this huge downgrading of A-Level results fits almost exactly with his plans for education reform.” A bit like that 80 seat majority Cummings promised the Tories in the Covert 2019 Rigged Election and then miraculously delivered exactly as he had predicted!
According to Mendoza, “In his blog, Cummings criticised a Department for Education (DfE) decision to stop independent annual reviews of A-Level papers. The A-Level Content Advisory Board (ALCAB) did this to see if they were of the right standard.” She said, “Cummings wrote: The DfE hated giving away control, obviously, and hated ALCAB. The very point of the process, a sword of Damocles in the form of eminent professors saying ‘crap questions’ each year was supposed to force the DfE, exam boards, and Ofqual to raise their game. You can imagine how popular this was. Now the situation will revert to the status quo, the DfE firmly in charge and those pesky professors who point out things like specific papers do not test the maths skills in the specifications, are happily excluded, with no ‘unhelpful’ public scrutiny of standards.” This last few words should alarm us all, as it reveals Cummings’s undemocratic beliefs that ‘public scrutiny’ of any variety is ‘unhelpful’ to his aspirations for total control of every area of UK Government!
Essentially Mendoza is claiming this has exposed that Cummings motivations back when he ‘advised’ Gove in the Department of Education are perhaps only now reaching full fruition as if Gove’s tenure at DfE wasn’t damaging enough. She said, “In short, Cummings believes A-Levels ‘need improving’. But there’s another side to this story: next week’s GCSE results. It seems that Ofqual will be using the same algorithm to determine these results. Some organisations are warning that the effect on disadvantaged pupils may be worse than with A-Levels. Once again, Cummings wrote at length about the devaluation of GCSEs, bemoaning the fact that they had been made ‘easier’. His thinking appears to be that the whole education system is being watered down, and that pupils who are not naturally academic are still appearing as such, because of higher grades.” Mendoza notes, “a paper he wrote several years ago reveals why he thinks this is a bad thing;” she describes it as “Brazen Eugenics!” Thankfully that Tory U-turn offered a last ditch reprieve for Students!
Mendoza revealed that, “Cummings wrote this paper during his time as a Special Adviser to the then Education Secretary Michael Gove. From the views expressed therein, Cummings appears to believe that ‘cognitive ability’ is hereditary. Therefore, as he notes: Raising school performance of poorer children is an inherently worthwhile thing to try to do, but it would not necessarily lower parent-offspring correlations (nor change heritability estimates). When people look at the gaps between rich and poor children that already exist at a young age (3-5), they almost universally assume that these differences are because of environmental reasons (‘privileges of wealth’) and ignore genetics.” Cummings has obviously never experienced the depravation of poor nutrition or near starvation in his own privileged upbringing! A serious drop in blood sugar caused by malnutrition starves the brain of fuel, cutting off critical thinking; that is why feeding children breakfast at school and the milk that “Thatcher, Bottle Snatcher” stole proved so vital.
After Cummings immersed himself in discredited pseudoscience he should have lost his credibility to ‘advise.’ Mendoza quotes from Cummings’s misguided fake logic, “It is reasonable to hope that the combination of 1) finding the genes responsible for cognitive abilities, 2) scientific research on teaching methods, and 3) the power of computers to personalise learning will bring dramatic improvements to education – but this will not remove genetic influence over the variation in outcomes or ‘close the gap between rich and poor’. [Emphasis added] From this paper and his blog posts, it’s clear that Cummings has a problem with the focus on improving education for the poorest pupils, in terms of pushing them to get good GCSEs and go on to A-Levels. When you break his rhetoric down, he is essentially saying that by encouraging children who are not (in his opinion) intelligent to try and perform better in school, you’re dragging all other students down with them. Hence the idea that GCSEs and A-Levels are now devalued.”
Cummings’ belief in the discredited pseudoscience of eugenics is alarming. Mendoza points out, “The idea that some children are genetically predisposed to be more stupid than others, and that we have to separate them out to make sure the brightest and most ‘naturally’ able reach the top, is nothing short of Eugenics. And it’s happening now – right under our noses. Williamson’s speech. In July, Paul Goodman wrote for Conservative Home that Tory education reform is coming. Essentially, it seems that the Tories (led behind the scenes by Cummings) will be shifting to an emphasis on more vocational education along with science. Williamson said in a speech on 9 July that: Further education is central to our mission of levelling up the nation. Or quite simply, giving people the skills that they need to get the jobs that they want. Essentially, the Tories want to stop so many people going to university. Instead, as Williamson put it, the focus will be: to put further and technical education at the heart of our post-16 education system.”
Mendoza claims that, “Cummings is in the driving seat.” Saying, “The education secretary also noted: The tragedy is that for decades, we’ve forgotten about half of our education system. When Tony Blair uttered that 50% target for university attendance, he cast aside the other 50%. It was a target for the sake of a target, not with a purpose. This is similar thinking to what Cummings wrote in his blog. He said: There is massive political pressure to focus exclusively on the numbers taking an A Level rather than the quality of the A Level. He also said: Now, everything to do with A Levels is dominated by political not educational concerns about the numbers doing them and ‘access’. This has helped corrupt the exam system. If we had professors of physics, French, music etc every year publicly humiliating exam boards for errors, this would soon improve things from a low base and make it much harder for MPs and Whitehall to keep corrupting public exams.” This might seem to contradict his earlier objection to their intervention!
Mendoza continues, “So, where does Ofqual’s algorithm fit into this?” The unhealthy connections: “The links between Cummings and Ofqual are already being exposed. As Miles King, CEO of People Need Nature, noted: Appears that Ofqual’s algorithm caused today’s A-level chaos. Ofqual chair Roger Taylor, also chairs the Centre for Data Ethics & Innovation (CDEI). Cummings’ fave AI consultants – Faculty, have some juicy contracts with CDEI. And Faculty’s COO Richard Sargeant is on CDEI board. On the same day Johnson took the PM’s office (23 July 2019), Ofqual announced three new board members. One of them was Mike Thompson, a former Barclays executive who specialised in apprenticeships and the new, more hands-on T-Level qualifications. As the then education secretary Damian Hinds noted, these appointments came as: Ofqual oversee an exciting period of reform to vocational and technical qualifications, as well as continuing to ensure the safe delivery of reformed GCSEs and A levels.”
Mendoza takes note of those moving in on the action, “Interestingly, in October 2019, DfE strategy chief Tom Nixon left his civil service role to join Faculty – the AI firm Cummings used for the Vote Leave campaign. This firm is now embedded in the Tory government. As New Statesman Tech reported: Nixon… has been tasked with establishing the company’s Government practice and deepening its work with Whitehall and the wider public sector. In January of this year, Ofqual was already looking into AI marking of exams. Then when it came to designing 2020’s marking algorithm, more people came on board. These included Tim Leunig, a prominent civil servant who Cummings reportedly had ‘quite a good relationship’ with when they were both at the DfE. If Cummings did have a hand in (or influence over) the Ofqual algorithm, it would fit in well with the government’s drive to promote further education for the ‘less-intelligent’ (i.e. ‘poorest’), and universities for the ‘brightest’ (‘richest’) students.”
Mendoza takes a closer look at the, “Material disadvantage: The breakdown of 2020 A-Level award results by socioeconomic status were broadly in line with previous years. But historically, there have been issues with the poorest students having their predicted grades wrongly estimated. ‘High ability’ but poor students (AAB grades or above) have seen this effect the most in terms of downgrading of their predicted results, while over-prediction is high among poor students generally.” However, according to reliable reports from the Teaching sector, there was a far greater in house scrutiny of Teacher predictions this time around than in previous years. Due to the increased responsibility for accuracy demanded by the absence of exams, schools typically reviewed the predictions at three levels before submitting their estimation of pupil’s results. Teaching institutions across the board wanted to be seen to be fair in the certain knowledge that their judgement might come under greater scrutiny due to the Covid crisis situation.
In previous years a predicted grade would only affect a pupil’s potential for acceptance at their desired University, giving those who might otherwise be easily overlooked a fighting chance at consideration in the hope that the student would achieve their best result. But without the confirmatory process of exam results these predictions needed to be more seriously assessed. Mendoza explains the reality, “This disparity between predicted and actual grades could well be due to a student’s socioeconomic status and factors like availability of study resources, time poverty and so on. In other words, when it comes to sitting exams, poorer students may already be at a material disadvantage. This shows in the widening GCSE attainment gap between rich and poor. So, a sudden upsurge in poorer students’ final grades (both GCSE and A-Level), would throw the Tories’ and Cummings’ plans for education off kilter.” She claims, “Therefore, the status quo (rich students doing better, poor students not so much) had to be maintained.”
Mendoza further explains the system that is, “maintaining the status quo. In non-coronavirus times, Ofqual uses previous years’ overall results as guidance for marking. It also uses something called the National Reference Test (NRT) – where thousands of students sit exams to get a benchmark result of what standard certain GCSE grades are at. So in short, this year’s grades will have the effect of maintaining the benchmarks for 2021 A-Level and GCSE results – and this will continue on and on. Moreover, if students don’t get the required GCSE grades for certain A-Levels, it allows the government to immediately start promoting its further education and vocational routes. Williamson and the DfE have already set out increased funding for these areas. The same principles apply to A-Level results and university places. So, by holding back poorer students this year, the Tories have maintained the environment for their ‘class war’ reforms to continue.” This alarming revelation should thoroughly disgust us all.
The exam grades algorithm scandal comprehensively debunks the ‘levelling up’ lie touted by the Tories as they try to maintain the shallow façade of fake legitimacy and they cling to power with their ‘borrowed votes’ scam! It is just a blatant lie; the Tory boot will remain firmly on our necks as they pursue the perennial Tory goal of ‘Decimating Down’ based on an elite, exceptionalist belief that the poor should, “know their place!” Mendoza also reveals that, “Cummings wrote in no uncertain terms that: Many of those now attending university courses in the UK and USA are wasting their time, and their own and taxpayers’ money, and would be better off in jobs or work-based training. In many third-rate HE institutions, there is a large amount of ‘social science’ work (in economics, anthropology, sociology, literary theory, and so on) of questionable value both from an intellectual perspective and from the perspective of the students’ job prospects. Reform of the long tail of HE [higher education] and FE [further education] is crucial.”
This latest grotesque injustice to our already disadvantaged and exploited young people was derailed through determined public protest but, “It seems that ‘reform’ is coming.” Mendoza separates certain undoubted advantages from the truly disturbing underlying agenda; she said that, “While an increase in vocational education is no bad thing, it’s why the Tories are doing it which is the problem. Make no mistake, it is little more than eugenicist classism: that poorer people should know their place, stick to manual jobs, and leave the critical thinking and complex study to those with the silver spoons in their mouths. Moreover, this class-based assault on the education system has long been in Cummings’ sights, since his ‘toxic antics’ as Gove’s ‘master of the dark arts’ special adviser. Under the guise of ‘levelling up’, Cummings and the Tories are hell bent on returning us to a Victorian class system.” Students won this last battle, but she logically claims that, “this year’s GCSE and A-Level students are on the front line in this ongoing class war.”
One of the very few books I have felt compelled to read twice is US author Ira Levin’s, ominous sci-fi novel, “This Perfect Day.” In a book review it says: “The story is set in a seemingly perfect global society. Uniformity is the defining feature; there is only one language and all ethnic groups have been eugenically merged into one race called ‘The Family.’ The world is ruled by a central computer called UniComp that has been programmed to keep every single human on the surface of the earth in check. People are continually drugged by means of regular injections so that they can never realize their potential as human beings, but will remain satisfied and cooperative. They are told where to live, when to eat, whom to marry, when to reproduce, even the basic facts of nature are subject to the UniComp’s will, men do not grow facial hair, women do not develop breasts, and it only rains at night. With a vision as frightening as any in the history of the science fiction genre;” I agree it is one of Ira Levin`s most haunting novels.
The more I discover about the Dom the closer we get to this doom filled drab future for the exploited drones with AI in overdrive and the eugenics mindset of Cummings dystopian nightmare ensconced. Cummings has a warped fascination with AI that is now being heavily funded by the Tory Party who benefited from his weapons grade PsyOps and VICS Voter Intention Collection System of data harvested, almost certainly illegally, from Social Media to manipulate vulnerable individuals and target areas for stealing of postal votes. Without Industrial scale fraud the grossly unpopular Tories could never have achieved the fake ‘landslide victory’ they claimed in the Covert 2019 Rigged Election. Without the blatantly illegal Tory Government payments to the Integrity Initiative to relentless pump out propaganda in a campaign aided and abetted by the fully compliant biased BBC and all the Tory elite Media moguls, the public would have seriously questioned that unfathomable result and demanded an investigation, but it is not too late.
It is vital that we change the narrative despite Tory dominance of the media and our once reliable ‘Auntie’ the BBC. The Tories have become overconfident regarding their seemingly unstoppable success, arrogantly pushing the boundaries of what they can get away with due to their stolen 80 seat majority. The ‘Special Advisor’ who brazenly ignored lockdown and now even an accused rapist MP both remain in post; Johnson is unlikely to fire Williamson as he thinks he and his Tory cabal can get away with anything. The Tory lies that once supported their fake credibility are being unravelled: the people know this exam fiasco was no ‘levelling up’ exercise, so how much longer will it take to pop the bubble of the ‘borrowed votes’? As I have claimed here many times before, Cummings is a massive threat to our democracy, but he also holds the key to exposing the truth about the Covert 2019 Rigged Election. His links to this latest eugenics scandal could enlighten the public to the extreme danger that he poses: we need him gone. Cummings is the grenade; oust him and you pull the pin! DO NOT MOVE ON!