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Not a teacher or a parent but I live with a teacher... The school they work at is a v expensive international school, it was closed Feb-May 2020 (would have been closed most of Feb anyway due to the holidays), a few teachers were trapped outside the country for the end of last school year but this school year has been totally normal for the kids - all lessons in person, on campus, with the correct teachers etc.
Now the IB results came out yesterday and the results are quite.... surprising. It looks like there's been some grade inflation to make up for the fact that many kids globally couldn't attend school or sit exams this last year. The kids here haven't had that disruption but still benefit from extra points. Not their fault, but it seems unfair for all the students who aren't in the same position.
hats-
I have some inside track on the TAGs, and I can say with some confidence that some expensive, North London independent schools are going to be awarding 100% grade 8 and 9s to their pupils.
This sounds staggering, until you think about it. Exam content was reduced, and the system of assessment made more holistic, so as not to disadvantage students who had had very disrupted learning over the pandemic. The flipside of this is you have kids who literally did not miss a lesson, with highly involved parents, sitting assessments that are much more compartmentalised and marked in a way that is more generous. The results are predictable: extraordinary but, according to the new 'rules', legitimate grades.
What you will be left with is a great number of disadvantaged students who will get the grade they would normally have got, for example, but more privileged ones who are now sitting on higher grades. And if anything, that disparity will be greater than usual.
There's no obvious solution to this, but it's a good insight into various social inequalities and how the education system can either solve or perpetuate them.
RecoveryRide
I think my concern has more to do with inequalities between those who, and who have not, been "left behind." I think I'm even more concerned that this inequality is almost certainly tied to pre-existing other inequalities. This may, quite possible, have a knock-on effect for many people for years to come - starting now with university admissions.