As headmaster of The British School Al Khubairat and the current chairman of British Schools in the Middle East (BSME), I regularly see how British education is revered as the gold standard across the globe.
Yet the GCSE and A-level results debacle of the past week and the angst, indecision and pain the exams fallout has caused - for teachers, parents and pupils - has been farcical and could do significant lasting damage to the brand - and UK Plc.
Turning their back on the UK
Indeed, we are already seeing students who, even with their A level grades being changed, have decided against attending a UK university and instead are going to European or American institutions.
This is really not a good place for the UK education system to be at a time when universities are crying out for international students.
I have written to the secretary of state for education to raise this concern such is my fear over how this situation is damaging the UK’s education system. But I don’t think the government has looked at the global impact and the potential damage this could cause.
Specifically, I worry they don’t fully appreciate the reach and impact of the British educational system, not least because the impact it has on pupils takes a long time to be seen and politics is, often, focused on the short term.
Tes Reporter Catherine Lough takes us through the events of the past few months, and how they led up to a dramatic u-turn in the way GCSE grades are calculated.
Tough on teachers
It’s also been very tough for teachers to have to go through this process of grading students, then discovering that those grades would be modified by an algorithm - essentially saying, “we don’t trust you to get this right”. This was something many colleagues raised with me.
And then there was the impact on students themselves. We had one student who was given three As in her mocks and three As in her centre-assessed grades (CAGs). But when it came to it the algorithm had revised that to AAC, depriving her of a place at her chosen university.
The U-turn has rectified that, but for the past week, she was more or less set on going to the US to study rather than the UK.
Again, this is a major faux pas for the government to be turning future students and potential employees in the nation away because they got this so badly wrong.
GCSEs fixed - but long-term damage may be done
Nonetheless, is it pleasing at least that GCSE results day has been, relatively speaking, a lot smoother and we are seeing students achieve the grades they deserve, rather than being unfairly affected as was the case with A-level students last week.
And this hasn’t come at the expense of any grade inflation: within our school, we have only risen by around 2 per cent, which is still right on the curve of normal grade improvements. We are pleased we have achieved that and it means the grades are a real reflection of the hard work our students have undertaken, setting them up for their further studies fairly.
However, it’s not enough to think that because of the U-turn the situation has been resolved.
It is vital that trust and authority in the British system is re-established, otherwise the long-term impact of the 2020 coronavirus crisis on education will be even more long-lasting than we ever imagined.
Mark Leppard MBE is headmaster of The British School Al Khubairat in Abu Dhabi and current chair of British Schools in the Middle East
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