As if it was not bad enough...

This Machiavellian target system has a few equally Machiavellian collateral consequences. Hardly surprising: once things begin to rot, all you can do with them is rotten, too.

So we have these perverse targets, used by schools to deceive pupils, parents and themselves. And now Higher Education comes into the game, with problems of its own, like the competition for students. 

It is difficult to understand as it is, that access to universities has become so complicated that applications and admissions have to be sorted early in a calendar year for a start in the following September, with students and universities having to make decisions well before school ends. The usual solution has been to  make "conditional" offers, pending A-level results. 

But targets offer an easy shortcut, as one could take these into consideration to make these offers. So instead of "conditional" offers, now we have the infamous "unconditional" offers, so many students pride themselves of having achieved. Basically, it means that a pupil's target grades, set by the schools, inspire the universities so much confidence in a pupil's abilities that they guarantee them a place regardless of their grades in A-levels. 

Yes, you have read correctly, regardless of their actual A-level grades! I will write it again, so you see I have not mistyped it: regardless of their actual A-level grades!

Shocking? Well, brace yourself - it can and does get worse. I know of higher education institutions which tell the students -off the record, of course- that they don't even need to bother sitting the A-levels. What student will resist such an offer? Isn't it a great way to ensure uptake of degrees at a university?

All thanks to the targets - aren't they wonderful?

Now schools have learned to play this game, as if what they did with the targets already was not bad enough. Now schools will give their pupils high target grades to "help" them into higher education. The purpose is of course not to help the students, but to boost the school's success rates in pupils going to university. It looks good in a prospectus to be able to say that a great proportion of pupils will become so good at this school, that most will get to higher education.

Now, this has to be done with measure, it has to look credible - so which schools do you think will find it easier to feign higher target grades? You can easily guess - those in select areas and neighborhoods, where they won't look out of place. Those in regions or areas where wealth and social class is already playing a role in pupils receiving a better education, because in this education system progression in schools has been made so dependent on the support children receive outside of school (see previous posts for more on this).

So here you have yet a further perverse way to prostitute the already rotten target system in order to widen the gap between classes. This is the "admired" and "prestigious" British education system for you, deliberately doing the contrary of what it is supposed to to, which, in case you have forgotten, is to offer all citizens equal opportunities in life.