Slave To The ’Rithm – Exams crisis fallout

Inside Briefing with the Institute for Government

Institute for Government

News, Politics, Government

4.6 • 252 Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2020

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The A-Levels fiasco could damage more than pupils’ futures and the career of Gavin Williamson. What will it mean for any potentially beneficial future use of algorithms in welfare, criminal justice, tax and social care? Does abolishing Public Health England make any sense except as a headline – and do panic reorganisations ever work? And can our political classes survive September without warm white wine at an in-person party conference? Special guest Sonia Sodha, chief leader writer at The Observer, joins us to explore the least silly Silly Season on record. “The algorithm gave us workable average results, but children are not averages. They are individuals.” – Nick Timmins “The most selective institutions are now oversubscribed while middle and lower-tier universities are threatened with empty places and financial disaster.” – Sonia Sodha “Replacing Public Health England is extraordinary. It’s rebuilding the plane in mid-flight.” – Nick Timmins Presented by Hannah White with Gavin Freeguard and Nick Timmins. Audio production by Robin Leeburn See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Inside Briefing, the podcast from the Institute for Government.
0:11.9	I'm Hannah White. I'm Deputy Director of Institute, and I'm making my debut in the presenters' chair for the next couple of weeks.
0:18.0	Summer's supposed to be a quieter time in politics as ministers head off
0:21.6	for the holiday and the news agenda drops a year or two. Not this week. We'll be looking at how
0:26.9	the government made such a mess of its exam grading system and what this tells us about the
0:31.2	government's wider use of algorithms. And from the overnight ripping up of the exam grading
0:35.4	system will turn to the government's mid-pandemic plan to dismember public health England, scapegoating or sensible reorganisation.
0:42.9	And after all that, we'll try and recreate the thrill of the party conference season in this virtual studio,
0:49.3	because social distancing rules mean that party conferences won't be taking place in their usual form this year.
0:54.6	Instead, we're going to have a series of virtual get-togethers. How will that work? What will we miss
1:00.1	if political parties can't hang out together for five days in overheated, overcrowded conference
1:04.9	centres? And will we ever go back? I've got a great panel to discuss all of this. We've got Gavin Freegarde, the
1:14.4	IFG's Datadong. Hi Gavin. Hello, hello. Nick Timmins, IFG fellow and former public policy editor at the
1:21.0	Financial Times. Welcome, Nick. Hi, good to be here. And I'm delighted that we're joined by
1:26.5	Sonia Soda, chief leaderWwriter at The Observer.
1:29.5	Hi, Sonia. Hi there. So let's begin with the exam results. There was absolutely no chance of a U-turn
1:37.1	on the government's controversial exam grading system. So he said Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary,
1:42.4	on Saturday. And then just 48 hours later,
1:46.0	after a barrage of media and howls of protest from students across the country, Williamson
1:51.3	Newton. Students no longer have to accept grades produced by an algorithm and can instead use
1:56.8	their teacher's predictions. Gavin, you're the data guru, talk us through how the off-qual
2:02.7	algorithm worked. How long have we got? So in simple terms, what the algorithm did was to look at
	...

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