Who says you can't buy your grades? 13/08/20

 2020 so far has been a very strange year I think for everyone. Months have passed in which we’ve been trapped inside, isolated from our friends and family. We’ve missed births, deaths and milestones almost in the blink of an eye. ‘Groundhog day’ has become an almost painfully relatable reference and some of us have even started to get round to those DIY projects around the house we’ve been talking about starting for months. Our back garden for one has been reduced to a treeless, one shed bearing allotment instead of the forest it was a couple of months ago. 

The wearing of a mask no longer seems daunting but rather it is just another item to be picked up before we leave the house, of equal importance to our keys, money and phone. To a degree, the world really does seem to have gotten used to living with a deadly virus and rather than hiding away from it, people are starting to resume their pre-Covid lifestyle and routines, simply living with Corona Virus rather than in fear of it. Is this how life will be from now on? The idea that we must become accustomed to queueing up for the supermarket and using QR codes instead of menus to order food at a restaurant? Greeting our grandparents through a window and online zoom conferences instead of face-to-face meetings? 

Of course, all of these things that we’re having to adapt to ought to remind those of us living in the developed, Western world of just how lucky we are. Whilst we may grumble about the inconvenience of not being able to secure a table at our favourite eatery, we should remind ourselves of those less advantaged who consider themselves lucky if they know where their next meal is even coming from. It’s very easy I think, especially with the amount of alone-time many of us have been forced into due to social distancing and isolation, to become self-central and ignorant in our complains of how COVID has affected our own lives. I for one, am annoyed that I’ve been robbed of the full university experience I’d been hoping for. One in which I can go out drinking and exploring Manchester with new friends, and be fully engaged in face to face lectures by people at the top of their field of study. I’m pissed off that I can’t book a driving test because the DVLA are currently rescheduling all the tests that were cancelled due to the lockdown. And I’m a bit miffed that the amazing summer of teaching first aid in Africa that I was supposed to have was cancelled and spent instead at home, in Newcastle.  The thing is, I think I have a right to complain about all of those things, as long as I put them into perspective. 

 Whilst my plans were cancelled, I’ve still spent a summer with my family whom I love. I’ve lived with friends (old and new) and had a great time; the majority of nights spent creased over an menagerie of bad puns and nonsense conversation. This summer I’ve had time to cook (some delicious dishes if I do say so myself), I’ve been powering through my piles and piles of novels I’d been promising myself I’d read for months (even years some of them), I taught myself to crochet, I’ve explored the Durham and Northumberland countryside with my dad, and I’ve gone out with friends I hadn’t seen in a while. Whilst I’ve tried (and I think succeeded) in making the best out of a bad situation, I should remind myself that compared to other people’s’ situations, I ought to consider myself unbelievably lucky to be surrounded by positive energy and kind people. Moreover, whilst undeniably Covid has affected my plans and disrupted my university education, it has not had as much of a detrimental effect on my future as it has for eighteen year olds up and down the country. 

Today thousands of teenagers received their A-Level grades and university places across the country and so many of them were disappointed due to the chaos that is the revised grading system post-Covid. And they have a right to be disappointed. Hell they have a right to be furious. Whilst I and many people I know deem ourselves deprived of the university experience we signed up for, at least we can attend our online lectures knowing that we earned our university places and were graded on our performance. Leader of the Labour Party Keir Starmer is right to point out that something has clearly gone “horribly wrong”. If I was one of the people opening their grades today and I’d been marked down so as to avoid false marking, I would be absolutely fuming. Because it’s not fair. It’s not at all and maybe this is the wake up call the education system needs to realise the obvious flaws in basing everything from a 2 year course on a 2 week long exam period. Which  the students weren’t even able to sit this year due to lockdown. The UK government’s approach to Covid has meant that not only have so many students had to hand over control of their future, but they’ve had to do so knowing that they can’t possibly expect as good an outcome as they should have achieved, had they been given the opportunity everyone else has had in previous years to prove what they know, albeit in a memory test. Not only that, but there’s evidence to suggest that students from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to have been marked down due to their school’s socioeconomic background in contrast to those privately educated. 

An article published in the Guardian states that “Private schools increased the proportion of students achieving top grades – A* and A – twice as much as pupils at comprehensives, official data showed.” It’s disgusting but, having gone to a state school, it is of course unsurprising that with money comes advantage, even for those taking the same exams as everybody else. It is a stark reminder I think, for some of us to check our privilege. Whilst of course state school is by no means the “worst situation” and we ought to be grateful for what we have, the country should be angry that our teenagers have been played by the system and lost, in a game entirely beyond their control.