Thread by @ChristabelCoops

THREAD: The A Level fiasco was *completely* predictable, so why did the government do nothing to stop the car crash?

The people who built the algorithm will have known that it discriminated in favour of private school pupils and against unusually bright children in... 1/8

...historically low performing schools, because they ran the model to try and predict the actual results for 2019.

2/8 tech.newstatesman.com/public-sector/…

If I was a minister in a government committed to “levelling up” the first thing I’d want to know was whether the algorithm was biased in favour of particular regions, particular ethnicities, whether it favoured one gender, and did it discriminate against disadvantaged children.

Gavin Williamson either didn’t bother asking these questions, or he asked them and *still* thought that curbing grade inflation was more important. Either way, it’s clear that he didn’t think or care much about educational inequality. 4/8

That’s not surprising. This graph from a report for @UKandEU shows that the economic views of Tory MPs are much more right-wing than those of Tory 2019 voters. 5/8 ukandeu.ac.uk/research-paper…

Promoting an agenda of Big Government taking on structural inequalities may have won them the election, but it’s not fundamentally what most Tory MPs believe in.

And there’s only so long you can keep up the pretence. 6/8

Cummings’ dash to Durham was another case where Tories failed to understand or anticipate the outraged reaction of many of their voters to perceived unfairness.

This won't be the last time we see a disconnect between the government’s avowed agenda and the instinctive... 7/8

...priorities of its ministers.

And meanwhile Labour’s 2024 attack ads keep on writing themselves. 8/8