Results Of COVID-19 On On-line Programs
The Impact of COVID-19 on Online Courses
This has caused significant stress among learners over the past 15 months, with some of them reporting that their education has been seriously disrupted. It was also asked whether the basics of education, such as English and math, could ever recover. With many schools and colleges doing homeschooling and online learning, parents have also felt the effects, with many trying to teach at home even though they were never trained to do it. Unsurprisingly, it has been realized why teachers train so long to teach, and many now know how difficult it is to involve children and keep them focused.
We mustn’t forget the online systems that are quickly thrown together to try to deliver classes. Some schools were way ahead in adopting this technology, but unfortunately others couldn’t quite cope with it. Can we blame them, however, because who would have ever expected a pandemic in 2020 to creep in on us when we were so unconscious and unprepared, causing destruction and chaos everywhere?
Exams 2020 series
When Boris Johnson and his party decided to cancel the exams in 2020, they very quickly announced that all students would receive an estimated grade based on their submitted work. Some were overjoyed and others disappointed that they would not have the opportunity to physically take their exams.
In its announcement, the government wrote that private candidates would also be accepted, although at the time they had not yet decided how. However, that announcement was enough to give private candidates confidence that everything would be fine.
Private candidates are people who do not attend a conventional school or college and consist of learners who are either home-schooled, studying at an online learning college, or just learning on their own.
Continuously throughout the process, private candidates were informed that they would not be forgotten and that the predicted grades would apply to them as well. Seems to be good so far?
As a final hurdle, just before the grades were due, the examination centers published their interpretation of the government rules and since these were not clearly worded, it was left to the centers to decide what the rules actually meant. Because of this, the majority of private applicants were told that unlike high school and college students, they would not get predicted grades because very few would get their GCSE or A-level degrees.
This created chaos as these learners were no longer offering places to study despite the government advising these institutions to take everything into account when admitting students and not make some grades available.
Exam results 2020
Many will remember the feeling of anger and confusion when exam results were released in 2020 and many learners received significantly lower grades than expected.
Little did many know that an algorithm was the culprit attempting to predict the grade students should have received regardless of the grades submitted.
For many, this step was too far as schools and colleges were upset over the results, which were affecting university internships and causing chaos.
The government then turned around and the grades were adjusted, unfortunately it was too late for some potential applicants. With this in mind, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson announced that under no circumstances would any algorithm determine the GCSE and A-Level scores for the 2021 exams and that they would rely on teachers to award grades.
Online and private learning after 12 months
Fast forward to January 2021, we found ourselves in what we thought would be long gone, and COVID-19 is still affecting education. Very early in January, Boris Johnson once again announced the cancellation of exams, which made everyone wonder what the future would bring.
Again promises were made for private applicants and many of us wondered what exactly they envision for private applicants this time after the fiasco last year.
Now we are in June and at a time when all sheet music can be picked up. It seems that the exam centers are much more cooperative now, with some even arranging for private candidates to take mock exams when they are not with other learning providers.
Many private applicants have now submitted papers to get their grades, and time will tell if the plan actually works and the learners will get something out of this difficult situation. Let’s hope that private candidates are on the winning team this time and not lose another year of their training!
