Govt. lockdowns push educational standards further down the drain

Education, along with most (if not all) other aspects of society, has been ravaged by the Government’s lockdowns. Standards have been slipping for decades, and are now in free fall.

Education, along with most (if not all) other aspects of society, has been ravaged by the Government’s lockdowns. Standards have been slipping for decades, and are now in free fall.

Universities want to ‘teach’ more and more ‘students’ — an objective conveyed to reality through lower entry requirements, inflated GCSE and A-level results, and raised government admissions quotas — since this gives them (the institutions) more and more money (this being the goal which long ago replaced knowledge).

And what better excuse to lower entry requirements than a year of major educational disruption, caused by the Government’s lockdowns (not by the virus)?

In such light, many universities are lowering requirements for courses by at least one grade. But at some, not all courses are included in this.

The University of Birmingham, from which this publication arose, issued a statement earlier today explaining its decision to lower entry requirements in order to ‘mitigate some of the educational challenges as result of Covid, and reduce some of the pressure on students and teachers at this challenging time.’ Most interestingly:

‘The programmes that are not included are Medicine, Dentistry and Dental Hygiene, Nursing and Physiotherapy…’

This decision is likely out of the University’s hands; a result of ‘external regulation’, the statement explains. But it is revealing nonetheless.

The exclusion seems, to me, to be an acknowledgment that lowering requirements does in fact lower standards. To risk such a drop in the arts is, the thinking must go, harmless; but not in medicine, upon which lives depend.

If this were not the case, institutions would have no problem with lowering entry requirements in these scientific fields, too.

Were money not the primary goal of universities, far fewer people would go to them, and requirements would remain high. But such a scenario is for another world, and lockdowns have only made the matter worse.