"Even after a final term with schools closed for the pandemic, Sam Sharpe-Roe was optimistic about the coming school year."

"Teachers from his West London school had given him grades — three A’s and one B — that were strong enough to secure him a spot at his first choice of university next month. But after the British government used a computer-generated score to replace exams that were canceled because of the coronavirus, all his grades fell and the college revoked his admission. Mr. Sharpe-Roe, along with thousands of other students and parents, had received a crude lesson in what can go wrong when a government relies on an algorithm to make important decisions affecting the public.... Nearly 40 percent of students in England saw their grades reduced after the government re-evaluated the exams, known as A-levels, with the software model. It included in its calculations a school’s past performance on the tests and a student’s earlier results on 'mock' exams."

From "British Grading Debacle Shows Pitfalls of Automating Government/The uproar over an algorithm that lowered the grades of 40 percent of students is a sign of battles to come regarding the use of technology in public services" (NYT).