The cancellation of GCSE and A Level exams “because of the pandemic” for the second year running is a tragedy.
But from a Tory point of view, it’s great. A consistent Tory line says there’s no point in these exams anyway because why not simply get the schools to point youngsters towards university “admissions tutors” with labels stuck on their backs stating their schoolteacher-determined “rank” or “class”.
(I put “admissions tutors” in inverted commas here because those with experience of formal “education” structures only outside of the British one may be unfamiliar with the idea that guys from a university are allowed to require different exam results from different applicants for admission on to one and the same degree course. Be aware that this system which reeks so strongly of feudalism is standard practice in Britain. You’ll probably never read any criticism of it in any British newspaper. Calling it what it is will annoy petty bourgeois types something rotten. And bourgeois types too, for that matter. Liberals among them will do some “quick thinking” and say its purpose is actually to help social mobility not to hinder it. Seriously! And the monarchy is really republican. And Britain’s got a wonderful “constitution” even if it doesn’t actually exist and nobody even claims to know what the non-existent thing says – at least if one doesn’t count the stupid repetition of lines written by royalist toadies such as that it falls to the monarch to “be consulted, to encourage, and to warn”. They will say there would be fewer Pot Noodle-eaters among undergraduates if the univerities didn’t operate the “offer system”. It’s all for social mobility apparently. Same as the “queen’s” garden party, which operates on the same principle of “it’s my garden party, so I’ll invite whoever I want”. Of course where a fair system is used instead, universities don’t need or have “admissions tutors” – there simply is such no such role or concept. But just try telling that to a British person whose knee jerks to defend “the system”. There’ll be sneering at you for never saying anything that’s “pertinent” as quick as a flash, rather in the way that a cat can grab a fly without thinking about where the fly is and consciously triangulating.)