I'm not naive, I know teacher grades are optimistic - that's clear from the overall performance. I'm no fan of grade inflation either. I have to recruit and sometimes there's value in exam grades - you don't want to see everyone with As and Bs.
But to think that an algorithm one of whose clear aims is to fit current pupils to a curve within their own school from previous years and not have serious anomalies is misguided.
Yes, this is mainly about universities and they are not for everyone and should not be for everyone. The appeals approach might have worked had results been issued early to students and held back from Universities until they had been received by students and appeals had at least started. But to give them to universities when they were half baked has caused the problem. Apprenticeships have also been screwed over because of this. In some cases deferring a year will be easy but for many in the current economic climate it isn't a genuine option.
Statistical distributions are proven by actual performance. Exceptions can be made for significant changes in the population profile so if a school suddenly starts taking brighter pupils then that can be allowed for. The models are further validated by tracking student performance through their years of education so a dumb ass is spotted and likely won't be credited unduly with an A*, that was both in the sampling and also more importantly meant to be part of the teachers' responsibilities when they ranked the students in their classes. One could argue how granular those rankings were BUT ultimately the teachers were responsible for providing the best assessment for each child as individuals and in relation to their class peers.
The curve SHAPE is being fitted NOT the numbers because that is what populations generally do. Outliers occur but not usually in batches of hundreds or thousands from a single or small set of groups. Such aberrations would be investigated for the virtuous or nefarious reasons they arose. Individual exceptions are dealt with by the appeals process.
The algorithm was used to generate predictions for previous years to see how it matched their actuals and apparently satisfied the stakeholders that it was not mistreating the candidates or institutions.
Read the report, you're probably better at the stats than me so perhaps can spot where they went wrong, it appears to me that something seriously went wrong in translating all the caution and intent in the methodology reported into the algorithm that wasn't subsequently surfaced in testing, perhaps they didn't do enough edge case analysis.
In the current economic climate the kids are the least vulnerable as they are unlikely to have well-paid jobs that they could lose, they are prime candidates for poorly paid jobs that are available, their financial obligations are minimal. Sure there will be sadly plenty who are in distressing circumstances and unsafe households but they are meant to be protected by other existent (if ineffective) services. It is not up to the education system to ensure their safety in that respect.
The universities knew about the situation at the same time as the students and their teaching establishments, they've had all this time to consider how they might accommodate the chaos of over-graded candidates, too many offers actually being achieved and how to handle clearing. Lots of so called professionals washing their hands of responsibility because it's easier to chuck in the faces of politicians. There is no doubt that politics is being played by parties that are not meant to be doing so and that is a disgrace because it has made things worse for the students.
Appeals, retakes and clearing have worked to a greater or lesser extent for decades. The fact that students now are clamouring for admission despite the prospect of 15-20k bills for each of the next 3+ years speaks more to entitlement than sound thinking. In this day of youth entrepreneurs, climate and social activism etc, they had the "excuse" of holding off on studies and trying to work or volunteer or travel or start their own business when it least mattered to the rest of their life choices.
