On the Level

Getting exam results is stressful enough – knowing that you’ve got the wrong ones must be devastating.

Working out A-Level results was always going to be a challenge but some of today's results are nonsensical. For example, one in thirty people taking Maths and Further Maths got a grade B in the former and a grade A in the latter. This is absurd, and something that was extremely unlikely in previous years. 

Thanh Duong, for example, got an A in Maths and A* in Further Maths, and as a result will miss out on his place at Cambridge University. Ironically, Thanh’s father had pre-warned of today’s failure following an analysis of Ofqual’s published data, calculating that 39% of grades between A* and D would be lower than the teacher assessments.

To rub salt in wounds, there appears to be a bias in favour of the children of the wealthy, with the year-on-year rise in proportion of students achieving A or A* grades much higher at independent schools than state comprehensives.

While the awarding bodies have provided schools with standardisation reports, in order for schools to do detailed checking they would need to be given the measures of prior attainment used and how they have been banded in each subject, both for 2020 pupils and for historic pupils, explains Dave Thomson, chief statistician at FFT.

Many, including David Davis MP, are calling upon universities to be more flexible and offer places based on mock results and predicted grades. And even before today’s confirmation of the failings, the Royal Statistical Society called for the UK Statistics Authority to launch an urgent review into Ofqual and the Scottish Qualifications Authority over the algorithms used to predict students’ exam results.

Exam results aren’t everything, but a lot of young people are inspired to become entrepreneurs at university. Our Future Founders report we undertook in partnership Octopus found that young people are more likely to consider starting or have started a company if they are attending (65%) or have graduated from university (63%) compared to 18-25 year olds who haven’t attended university (53%).

(A note of caution though, we shouldn’t use this failing to bash the use of all algorithms. After all, there is evidence that fintech algorithms discriminate 40% less than face-to-face lenders. And for further reading on this, check out Sam Dumitriu’s article from last year, Chris Stucchio and Lisa Mahapatra's thoughtful piece on the way data scientists think about bias as distinct from journalists, and this great debate on algorithmic bias.)

Every Cloud 
Our good friends at Coadec are cooking up proposals for the Government to encourage small businesses to buy productivity-boosting digital services and technologies by providing them with financial incentives and reliefs on their purchases. But they need your help, and have a few questions for B2B tech startups which will help them make the case to the Government. It will take less than a minute to complete (honestly!).

Just last month we produced a report with Xero on this issue. Upgrade argued that if the UK’s 1.1m micro businesses doubled their uptake of key digital technologies, it would lead a £4,050 average productivity boost for the 4.09m workers employed by micro businesses, restoring four-fifths of lost productivity growth since the financial crisis, and enabling businesses to bounce back faster post-lockdown.

Ask the Experts
Getting good advice is critical to any business. Over the years we’ve had lots of entrepreneurs approach us with questions about their business, and while we know a thing or two about policy, we aren’t really best placed to advise on business matters.

Up until now we’ve always connected entrepreneurs in our network to people in an ad hoc way, but this isn’t very efficient. As such, we’ve created an Ask the Experts page on our website so entrepreneurs can quickly find people and organisations that we think it’s worth chatting to about various areas of your business.

Our first recommendations are Kingsley Napley for immigration advice and Form Ventures for regulatory matters. We’ve worked with Kingsley Napley for a number of years on roundtables and so far the feedback from entrepreneurs in our network who’ve followed up with them has always been positive. Leo Ringer of Form Ventures is one of our Research Advisers and is an expert on the regulation of high-potential / high-growth firms that are operating in markets where public policy is a major source of risk and opportunity.

Our experts will answer relevant queries and also support entrepreneurs by contributing to our essential Policy Updates. We’ll add more experts in the coming weeks in other policy areas, including taxation, finance and employment. If you’re an expert who wants to support the network, drop me an email to find out more about how you can help.

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