[supernova87a]

This virus situation has (or will) produce a lost year of productivity. But people don't want to admit that and are still trying to operate under old constraints or processes. It will break somewhere. They want to keep schools running, and years / classes of students progressing through. But they also want to have some semblance of standards, without being able to teach properly or assess progress properly. All these factors cannot be simultaneously satisfied.

As others have said, you might just have to drop standards and have a lottery, or open enrollment. Putting in these ridiculously bad algorithms is worse than falling back on random chance.

High school/university is where it becomes easiest to hide behind bad logic and less obvious consequences. I hope we're not going to do the same for doctors, pilots, etc. and just let them pass the test because classes were canceled.

[simonh]

It's not about passing the test though, it's about sorting out who gets to go to university and who doesn't.

If the training of pilots one year was compromised so none of them could certified, we'd go a year without certifying any new pilots. We'd cope somehow. Universities can't go a year without any new students though, that's just not a reasonable outcome.

On the face of it basing grades on predicted outcomes and adjusting for the historical record of specific schools to overestimate those predictions seems to be a pragmatic approach.

[heavenlyblue]

You can’t learn to fly without really flying (although that is also probably arguable - there should some skills which are transferable from simulators). However a lot of western higher education is based on giving enough info on how to study yourself.

[BlackVanilla]

It will be interesting to see if this lost year materialises in students. It seems true that as students have had less contact time with a teacher, done less work, or set less-rigorous work, then average attainment will be lower.

If students who missed half a year of good teaching are just as smart by the end of compulsory education than previous cohorts who were not affected by COVID, then this illustrates a massive failing of the education system.

I have a feeling that this won't affect the attainment of students in the long-run, as the education system is flawed. Perhaps, in place of usual teaching, students are taking control of their own education and focus on their weak areas, rather than being told to copy down 10 pages from a textbook verbatim in a lesson standardised for the whole class. Perhaps this can be a much needed demonstration of the education system's weaknesses and an opportunity for change.