Exam Shambles

The current government’s handling of exam grades has been bungling and inept. Tory governments aren’t elected for compassion but for competence, and this one lacks sufficient quantities of both. Said the Prime Minister last week:

“Let’s be in no doubt about it, the exam results that we’ve got today are robust, they’re good, they’re dependable to employers.”

A few days later and the awarded exam results were cancelled and the teachers’ ‘Centre Assessed Grades’ were used instead. So much for the robust exam results, so much for our PM’s cheerful assurances. Of course, it was difficult to award A-level grades when the actual exams were cancelled, but there had been enough time to plan for contingency. Is an A-grade now worth an A? Is a D-grade comparable to a D-grade from 2019? The newspapers at this time of year are usually concerned by grade inflation or teachers ’dumbing down’, so this summer’s controversy is just a more animated incarnation of the norm. Except it makes the government look clumsier than usual.

Two issues are raised: the accuracy of three grades to summarise two years’ worth of achievement and the Secretary of State for Education’s capability. Most of us have formed judgements, especially regarding the latter. More terrifying than an inaccurate exam, however, is a terrifically exact one. What if one’s performance throughout one’s entire life was to be judged, every word recorded, and every thought catalogued? The secret things one did, away from gaze and camera, were objectively observed? The Bible says we shall each be held to account for what we have done in the body. Some readers will think themselves satisfied that this will be an easy test. They’ve never stolen or killed and most people, even the Secretary of State, would deem them as having passed muster. Yet God’s standards are far higher; I shudder to think of the final examination each of us must face.

Thank God, Christ sat my exam for me. Though I am a failure and a dunce, His pass rate is reckoned as mine, His grade is written beside my name. This we call the gospel, and it makes the government of heaven look exceptionally competent; it beautifully marries two seemingly irreconcilable truths- that God is entirely just yet desires the sinner’s eternal company. Shambles nowdays means chaotic, but orginally referred to a bloody butcher's yard. If the 2020 A-levels results were shambolic, the day of judgement will be a shambles. 

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay