[dynamite-ready]

It would keep exclusive institutions exclusive.

Much of the UK educational system is like that. For example, I don't know how it works elsewhere, but in England, certain students will only be offered certain exam questions, in the same subject, if the teachers determine you can take them.

So immediately, you can see some aspect of these grades are based on a subjective standard. In this case, at the discretion of teachers. One could easily argue that this Covid exam fiasco is a supercharged manifestation of those very same principles.

In the above case, obviously, all students sitting the same exam, for the same subject, should see the same exam papers.

I mean, why would they not?

I suspect the obvious answer would be the cost of teaching resource. If that's the case, this then becomes a political argument, not a technical one. But the 'exam algo' debate is definitely a technical one, and it can and should be used as a lens to examine (pun) a number of questionable practices in the UK education system.

[llimos]

When I took exams in England (admittedly a decade and a half ago) there were indeed different questions based on what you had learned, but you were instructed to only answer one of them (if you answered more it didn't count), and they were all worth the exact same number of points. It's possible some schools taught two texts to let their students choose whatever was easier on the day, but I doubt this was widespread and I don't see this system as being unfair.