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Jessica Johnson gained an Orwell Youth Prize very last yr for her story A Band Apart
An award-profitable author whose dystopian fiction about an algorithm that types college students into bands based on course says she has “fallen into my own tale”.
Jessica Johnson, 18, mentioned the College of St Andrews had initially turned down her after her English A-amount was downgraded from an A to B.
Ms Johnson said it was “ironic to turn into a victim like a single of her people”.
Her piece, A Band Apart, gained an Orwell Youth Prize Senior award in 2019.
“I wrote about the inequality in the instruction program,” the Ashton Sixth Type Faculty pupil claimed.
“I wrote about the myth of meritocracy and it was about an algorithm that split individuals into bands centered on the class that they have been from.
“I really feel like that is really ironic, I have actually fallen into my have story.”
“I feel a target of it,” she extra.
Picture copyright Reuters
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There have been a number of protests in excess of A-degree grades soon after exams were cancelled thanks to the pandemic
Ms Johnson, of Stalybridge, Increased Manchester, desired an A in English Literature for a spot at St Andrews and a £16,000 scholarship.
“I’ve completed a good deal of more-curricular function and I’ve been supplied that scholarship on the basis of my achievements and it just felt like all of that [has] been taken away from me because of the position I stay and the higher education I show up at,” she explained.
About 40% of A-level results – posted on Thursday – have been downgraded from teachers’ assessments by exams regulator Ofqual, which made use of a formula centered on schools’ prior grades.
She mentioned she was “thankful” and “enthusiastic” about the government’s U-convert but felt it really should have been accomplished quicker.
“It is brought about a whole lot of pressure and stress and anxiety that it failed to need to by building us wait around,” she stated.
Professor Jean Seaton, director of the Orwell Basis, praised Ms Johnson’s “prescient tale”.
She claimed the teen “observed into the heart of what the procedure represents and her tale demonstrates the human ability which exams only exist to uncover”.
