With the impending A-Level Results tomorrow many are concerned that harsh post-pandemic marking will disadvantage this year’s cohort.
In light of extreme educational disruption, with covid and teacher strikes, coupled with the fact they missed out on sitting their GCSEs, how fair is it to determine their employability and future outcomes on one day?
Weighing in on this is Employment Consultant Tom Cornell, I/O Senior I/O Psychology Consultant at hiring leader, HireVue. Tom consults over half of the Fortune 100 and is urging all employers to rethink their recruitment strategies to ensure the younger generation is given a fair chance.
Tom commented:
“For the students who haven’t quite gotten the A-Level results they were hoping for, it can feel like the end of the world. But the results aren’t always a fair reflection of the individual’s efforts, rather it shows that the education system’s academic attainment has not yet recovered from the disruption of the past few years; the pandemic, the subsequent shift to online learning and the recent faculty strikes. These have only hampered an already struggling system. A single letter or numbered grade can’t accurately portray a student’s ability and really, we should be looking beyond these grades to truly assess someone’s talent and skills. This is an opportunity for employers to review their recruitment processes and foster a skills-based approach to better identify candidates’ qualities throughout the process. Businesses must not over-rely on educational qualifications that have seen extreme disruption as the sole means to assess a candidate.”