Mail Weekly Column: 14 August 2021
On 16 August, I hit the road with my team to hold a week-long series of surgeries across the whole of Barrow and Furness – at 22 different destinations – from Seathwaite to Walney Island. Please check my website www.simonfell.org/summersurgerytour2021 to find out when I’ll be near you.
No appointment is needed – do please come along and say hello to us. And if you have a problem, big or small, I will do my best to help.
Turning to the past week, I’d like to say a little about ‘A’ level and GCSE results. I want to offer my heartfelt congratulations to everyone who has had to go through either process this year. The pressures of working under the extreme circumstances of the pandemic, with exams cancelled, lockdowns and untold stress cannot be underestimated. It’s been an exceptionally hard time, and full credit is due to you all that the results are what they are. Those congratulations go not just to the students, but also to heads, teachers, school staff and parents, all of whom have helped our young people to navigate through these difficult circumstances.
There has been a lot of talk about grade inflation and this, to a degree, is an inevitable and understandable consequence of the perception of teacher assessed grades. This should not, however, take anything away from the students' achievements. They have done a remarkable job against overwhelming odds.
One thing that is very apparent to me (and I speak as one who loathed exams) is the need to get back to exams system as soon as possible. Regardless of everyone’s best efforts, nothing quite matches up to the rigour of a nationally agreed set of criteria applied across the board.
The crucial thing now is to get the right ‘catching up’ process in place. By this I don’t simply mean in terms of academic progress, but also vital social elements like teambuilding and leadership – skills that have been missed so much. In Furness, schools have put together an amazing programme of really innovative and interesting holiday activities to help. Thanks are due to everyone involved in this excellent initiative. It’s an important first step along the road to rectifying the disruption experienced by young people during this difficult year, and to helping them have some fun while they regain what they’ve missed.
Finally, many of you have written to me about vaccine passports. My view is that we aren’t a ‘papers, please’ society, nor should we ever become one. I fully encourage everyone to get ‘double jabbed’, as I have. Vaccines are demonstrably protecting people from the worst of the virus, and helping us return to normal. But vaccine passports would be a step too far.
