UK's Failed Attempt to Grade Students by an Algorithm

After Covid-19 impeded schools from operating and examining regularly, the UK Department of Education attempted to grade students' A-level and GCSE exams with a third-party machine learning algorithm. Britain's A-levels largely determine students' chances to attend higher education and thus have life-long consequences. The applied algorithm predicted students' grades based on their individual performance in earlier -- and somewhat irrelevant and deviating -- mock exams as well as on their school's relative performance to others in the previous year. Many critics labeled this approach as inaccurate and unfair, resulting in significant downgrading and favoring private schools. In fact, over 40% of students received lower grades than predicted by their teachers, compared to only 2% whose scores improved (Heaven, 2020).