UnNews:UK coursework to be graded by Zoella
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| UK coursework to be graded by Zoella | 
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17 August 2020
LONDON, United Kingdom -- Students pursuing the UK's General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) are to be awarded their grades by a YouTube fashion-vlogger, the Secretary of State for Education has announced.
Days before the results are due to be published, Gavin Williamson scrapped plans to have grades calculated with a mathematical model using past performance of schools, instead leaving the decision to YouTube sensation and Girl Online author, Zoe Sugg — known to young fashion and interiors fans as Zoella.
The policy shift comes amid difficulty in England and Northern Ireland allocating A-level grades, because there were no A-level exams. This was because nobody in education took advantage of the COVID lockdown for a bit of extra homework — revising for exams and writing exams respectively.
Instead, secondary education streamed Zoella’s home inspirations, offering glimpses inside the house she shares with YouTuber boyfriend Alfie Deyes. Sugg also looks to celebrities for some interiors “inspo” — namely, Amanda Holden and Chrissy Teigen, who both have clean, if rather sparse, kitchens and according to Hello magazine, didn’t put on weight during lockdown.
The Sixth Form Colleges Association (SFCA) probed 60,000 teachers' and 200,000 pupils' use of their spare time during isolation, asking: “Now, Zoella’s spare time beauty hauls is not the sort of thing you’d be watching all the time, is it? Like, you have seen Carol Vorderman’s demonstration on trigonometry?…Brian Cox’s acclaimed The Planets?…erm…Sesame Street’s Count?”
The conclusion was that most students in sixth-form colleges would have been left with lower grades now than if they had sat their exams in previous years without having ever heard of the subject. A former inspector of schools said, to maintain credibility, GCSE results should now be decided by the “Autumn Doorscape” trendsetter herself.
He said, “While I understand concerns about grade inflation, the important thing is no one will blame the government for that and no one will blame OFQUAL, if an A in mathematics is awarded to someone who knows more about Max Factor than algebraic factorisation. We just have to pray not too many aspire to become doctors or aerospace engineers.”
Sources[edit]
- Amy Walker "Northern Ireland pupils to be awarded GCSE grades based on teacher predictions". Guardian, August 17, 2020
- Chloe Best "Zoe Sugg is launching her own homeware line and you're going to want it all". Hello!, August 06, 2020