Don’t rejoice (or worry), it’s the UK gov’t, not our’s
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As in the U.S., grade inflation has swept the UK … with a huge spike during the pandemic when much schooling was done “virtually”.
In the UK, for about a decade preceding the pandemic, about 27% of the grades that high schoolers got were As. Source
That percentage spiked to 45% in 2020.
The commonly cited reasons:
- Online performance tough to differentiate
- Just showing up online earned bonus points
- Cheating commonplace on online exams
- Students needed motivation to stay engaged
As we previously posted, studies are revealing that standardized test scores are falling as letter grades are inflating.
Well, the UK Education Ministry has noticed the trend and is taking decisive action to deflate the grades.
“Grade boundaries are being reset to the middle of where they were in 2021 and 2019 as part of a planned two-year process to get back to pre-pandemic grade levels.”
Already, in 2020, the percentage of As dropped to 37% (the black bar above) … down 8 percentage points from the pandemic high … but still 10 percentage points higher than pre-pandemic levels.
Students are reportedly having a “tough time” with the course correction.
As could be expected, they feel entitled to keep getting scored along the lax pandemic standards.
College admissions offices are having a fit, trying to figure out what to make of the grading shifts.
Nonetheless, the UK Education Ministry intends to stay the course … and get back to 2019 inflated grade levels.
No word from U.S. educators…
My bet, we won’t be hearing from them.
This isn’t a message that parents, teacher unions or the Feds want to hear.
The Homa Files 