Tuesday, August 18, 2020

From June, how private schools in England game the academic system

The Guardian:
One of the UK’s most prestigious private schools has a policy of asking teachers to exaggerate predicted exam results for some of its lowest-performing students on university applications to help them secure offers, documents seen by the Guardian reveal.

..

The disclosures will be greeted with anger by critics of private schools who fear that such practices are commonplace. While British universities usually make conditional offers of places, they sometimes accept students who miss their predicted results if they have been otherwise persuaded of their merit.

“We’ve known this sort of thing is happening for some time, but it’s the brazenness of writing it down”

...

While it might seem that any advantage gained by over-predicting would be negated by a poor exam performance, such practices “open doors” for pupils who may otherwise never be considered for a place at their preferred university