In an article published by TES two days ago, William Stewart outlines 5 big problems in Ofqual’s grading plan. As students, parents, teachers and all those with a vested interest in the education sector wait with bated breath for detailed guidance on how grades will be allotted to students this summer, I wanted to put in writing proposals that address, at least to some extent, some of the issues raised in the TES article. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome.

It perhaps doesn’t need saying, but every “solution” to the puzzle presented when the government announced the cancellation of exams is an imperfect one. Every single solution will have both upsides and downsides, and so, in our opinion, the ideas presented below are far from perfect, but address most of the main concerns about allocating grades as fairly as possible.

2020 v 2021: A World of Difference

The approach of March brings with it a sense of déjà vu, as it was this time last year when the government announced the cancellation of GCSE and A-Level exams in England. But the comparison with last year pretty much ends there. For last year, as imperfect a solution as it was (and proved to be), asking teachers to submit grades and ranking pupils, then plugging this into the infamous algorithm was possible because of one very important variable: data. As someone who was part of the process of determining A-Level Economics grades for the students at Hasmonean High School (Boys & Girls Schools), we were relatively fortunate in that we had a lot of data about each pupil to make fairly informed decisions. In addition to their homework submissions, we had:

• Results of Year 12 Mocks
• Results of November 2019 Mocks
• Results of January 2020 Mocks
• A catalogue of scores for mini-assessments that we conducted with the Year 13 pupils every week

When we made the decision as a department, back in September 2019, to test pupils each week, it was purely as a means of ensuring they were on track to getting top grades, Covid-19 was not in our thoughts at all. In hindsight, we were extremely fortunate because I suspect we had substantially more data and evidence than other schools and departments. Nonetheless, no matter how much data a teacher had at that stage on each pupil, they at least had something to base their grades on. In addition to this, schools knew that whatever they submitted would be “moderated” by the exam boards via the algorithm and so, whilst some grade inflation was inevitable, it was kept in check. The combination of school closures, national lockdowns and the early cancellation of exams mean that this year, unlike last year, the amount of data available to help guide teachers is extremely limited. The declaration that grades will be completely decided by “teachers, not algorithms” also creates a moral hazard. Whilst I have no doubt that teachers would submit grades that they feel is fair, I can assure you that if I was teetering between giving a pupil a high B or a low A, I would absolutely go with the A. I suspect that most teachers would also have an optimistic view of their student’s capabilities, and so the grade inflation you’re likely to see would be at unprecedented levels.

So, what is the solution?

The Inevitability of Internal Assessments: 5 Stage Process

Stage One: Schools “Lock-In” Topics 

One of the issues with having a standard national exam is that schools, justifiably, will not have managed to cover the whole course. Even in instances where schools have covered the same % of the course, they may have taught it in a different order and so, it is impossible to set one uniform exam.

With this in mind, stage one of the process would be for schools and departments to ‘declare’ to the exam boards which topics they have/can cover with their pupils by May. The minimum threshold could be set at 65%-70% of the course, which is fairly reasonable even with all the disruptions that have occurred. One potential issue that could arise is that schools opt to lock in the ‘easier’ topics. Whilst this is unavoidable, it is addressed partly by the fact that they have to declare at least 65% of the topics in the course and by the manner of how tests would be generated (see stage three).

Stage Two: Exam Boards Compile Questions & Assign Difficulty Weightings 

The exam boards do what they do best. Over the next few weeks and months, they can put together questions on each topic of their syllabus. Understandably, it can take a long time for exam boards to put together a whole new set of questions on every topic, especially given the time constraints. To that end, amending past paper questions would be a plausible solution, so that they keep the style of question, but tweak the content. Even as I type these words I can hear some of you screaming, as Mr. Stewart put it, that students would be securing grades by “learning stock answers to past paper questions by rote rather than any actual mastery of their subjects”. Although it is a fair criticism, I would argue that it takes a fairly rose-tinted view of the British education system – those students that tend to do exceptionally well in their GCSE and A-Level exams utilise past papers as one of their main revision tools. In my experience, both as a student and as a tutor for over a decade, there is a clear correlation between those pupils who regularly practice past paper questions under timed conditions and the grades they tend to achieve. The truth is, the UK education system, to a large extent, rewards ticking boxes and not creative thinking that goes beyond the parameters set by the exam boards mark scheme. That debate is to be had at a later date, but for now, whilst it is an imperfect solution, utilising and amending past papers to form assessments is not as shocking as it may seem at first glance.

The second problem that arises from a mix of new questions and amended past papers is that the specifications for most subjects changed back in 2016. Critics may therefore point out that there is only a very small handful of past papers that can be used. However, is this actually true? For the vast majority of subjects, the changes between the old specification and new specification, particularly in terms of content, was very minute. Take A-Level Maths as an example: whilst the manner of questions have been amended slightly, if you took a question on integration from the June 2007 C4 paper and asked it to this year’s cohort, it is entirely relevant and well within the parameters of the new specification. Yes, there are exceptions to this, and in some instances, the exam boards will have to handle the burden of creating entirely new questions, but to dismiss the old specification as entirely irrelevant is to ignore how similar it is to the new specification. Therefore, the argument that there are limited questions that can be amended is a non-starter – there is avalanche of questions that exam boards can use.

Exam boards are therefore tasked with creating multiple questions for each topic. No school should know what the questions are or which past paper questions were amended. Once the exam board put together the list of questions internally, they would then categorise each question into the following:

• Easy
• Moderate
• Difficult

Hold on, you might say, isn’t that very subjective? Yes and no. For new questions, yes. However, for questions based on past papers, absolutely not. Read any examiner report issued by the exam boards for a specific paper and it is full of data regarding the average score that year – determining what pupils found “easy” and what they found “difficult” should be a fairly straight-forward task. 

By assigning difficulty ratings for each question, papers can be weighted so that there is, as much as possible, some consistency in terms of the assessments that pupils sit. 

Stage Three: Generating Unique Internal Assessments 

Students would sit internal assessments at school between mid-May and mid-June, as per usual. Each centre would be issued a unique exam paper that is automatically generated using the following variables:

• Which topics they declared
• Each paper issued to each centre has the same number of overall marks
• Each paper issued to each centre has the same difficult weighting. For example, 35% of the paper could consist of ‘easy questions’, 40% ‘moderate’ and 25% ‘difficult’. The exam boards can determine the appropriate weighting based on the averages of previous exam series. 
• For exams that are broken down into Sections, the system would ensure that each exam has the same number of questions for each centre for the relevant sections of the paper.

By creating randomised and unique papers per centre, it can help dramatically reduce the prospect of cheating. Even if two schools had submitted the exact same list of topics, the chances that they would have an identical paper issued is negligible, especially for subjects where the exam board managed to put together a range of questions. 

For those pupils who are unable to sit the exam on the set date, the school can arrange for the exam board to issue a new and unique paper 24 hours before that pupil can sit the exam at school, in-person, under exam conditions. This means that they would not sit the exact same paper that their classmates had sat, which again, reduces the prospect of cheating. 

Stage Four: Marking & Moderation

One of the problems outlined in the TES article was the overload of work for teachers under the provisional proposals. By asking teachers to declare which topics they have managed to cover and placing the onus of creating the papers on the exam boards, this takes a lot of stress away from the teachers.

Instead, teachers can now focus on what they know best: teaching their pupils and preparing them to answer questions on the topics they have locked in with the exam board. 

Once students have sat their assessments, teachers should be tasked with the responsibility of marking their papers using mark schemes and guidance provided by the exam boards. Again, teachers do this all the time and should be well-placed to give out accurate marks per student. 

What about the temptation to inflate grades? There is also an easy solution to that too. A % of marked scripts (to be determined by the exam board based on their capacity) is sent to the exam board who moderate it. In the event that the teacher has marked too leniently or too harshly, the exam board would then mark all of the scripts for that centre to avoid inaccurate grades. In most instances, this is unlikely to be necessary and the marks provided by the teachers should be accurate.

Stage Five: Awarding Grades & Appeals Process 

By ensuring that all students sit internal assessments that are catered to what has been reasonably covered at school, it now provides teachers and the exam board with the most valuable metric when assigning ‘fair’ grades: data. As I set out from the outset, the big difference between last year and this year is the clear lack of data to support informed decisions. 

Once teachers are notified what scores each pupil has attained in the internal assessments – either the moderated grades issued by the exam board or confirmation that their initial mark was accurate, they can use this to assign each student a grade. Does this mean that whatever a student has scored in their assessment is what the teacher grades them? No, they can submit grades that divert from the scores in those assessments, but they provide a very good guiding tool. For those students whose submitted grades by teachers differs from their internal assessment grade, the teacher would be expected to provide supporting evidence to justify why they have submitted that grade. I suspect that in most cases, teachers would opt to give the grade they had achieved in their internal assessments and so, the number of cases the exam board would need to investigate would be manageable. What evidence might be used to support a claim for a higher grade than what the student has managed to achieve in the assessments? Work that has been marked prior to the announcement that exams were cancelled, any internal assessments that took place prior to the announcement and, where relevant, mitigating circumstances to justify why the student underperformed. The final say on what the appropriate grade is per pupil is made by the exam boards, but in instances where the teacher has submitted the same grade that the student achieved in their internal assessments, the exam board cannot amend this grade. 

Final grades can then be issued, as per usual, in the middle of August. The appeals process could involve the internal assessments being re-marked by examiners, in the exact same way that the appeal process would function during normal years. 

Is it a perfect solution? Of course not. However, does it address, at least to a large extent, the main areas of contention? I would argue yes. For reference, I outline what concerns Mr. Stewart identified, and address them one at a time.

1) Exam boards would not be doing what they are best at

Under this system, they would be doing what they are best at – creating and amending questions for assessments, moderating teachers marking to ensure there is limited to no grade inflation and handling the appeals process.

2) Teacher workload

The idea that teachers should teach their students the material, create papers that accurately assess their abilities, resist the temptation to give hints to pupils about what will come up in their exam and have ultimate control over every aspect of the grading process is frankly absurd. It is already stressful enough for teachers having to manage remote learning and the emotional toll of repeated lockdowns. The proposal outlined seeks to minimise their workload and provide genuine clarity for the months ahead.

By locking in specific topics in the course, they can focus their attention on what they do best – teaching! The automatic and random generation of papers that are tailored to each centre, based on the topics they have declared, eliminates the extremely difficult and time-consuming task of creating assessments in-house. It also gives schools some confidence that whilst there is an element of luck involved in terms of the paper you get issued, the overall weighting of the paper is consistent nationwide and so, whilst pupils won’t be answering exactly the same questions, there is a degree of fairness. 

Most importantly, whilst it does not undermine teachers in that they would still submit a grade to the exam board per pupil, it provides them with the data needed to make a much more informed decision. Whereas before they were throwing darts into the abyss, they can at least see the dartboard now. 

3) Appeals

In 2020 Ofqual decided that schools, but not students, could appeal against the grades it had moderated. 

There is no reason not to revert to traditional appeals processes, even under the unusual circumstances. By asking exam boards to submit final grades, in the event that a teacher has opted to give a grade that does not match the grade they achieved in their internal assessments, they must have provided the exam board with evidence to support such a position. The exam board would have reviewed this before issuing the final grade. As a result, in the event that a pupil appeals their grade where the teacher did not alter it from the mark they achieved in their internal assessment, there is a very easy solution: their exam is re-marked, as it would be in any other year. In the event that they are appealing a grade that has been altered, both the exam papers and the supporting evidence supplied by the schools is re-marked before the exam board makes a final decision on the grade. Schools must supply evidence of marked work to the exam board in instances where grades are downgraded or upgraded, so the exam board would already have this to hand and would have already considered this when determining the appropriate grade. They would not need to mark the vast majority of scripts, as the teachers should have done an appropriate job themselves and come through the moderation process unscathed. 

4) Huge potential for cheating

Having unique papers generated by a computer 24 hours before a school sits their exam dramatically reduces the prospect of cheating. For those pupils who cannot sit the exam on the date, when they are able to, a randomly generated and unique paper is issued for them so that, again, speaking to their peers who had already sat a different paper would be of little help. 

Students at different schools would be expected to sit the papers at the same time, as they would under normal circumstances, and only in the event that they are in isolation would they sit it at a different date. Regardless though, given that each paper is created uniquely for that centre based on their topics and randomly generated questions from the pool of questions put together by the exam board, the only real advantage of sitting the exam slightly later than others is the extra time to prepare, rather than knowing what questions will be coming up.

5) Grade inflation

The moment the government did a U-turn last year regarding the use of the algorithm and declared, this year, that “teachers and not algorithms” would determine grades, they created a significant moral hazard. It is inevitable that some grade inflation took place last year, but it was kept in check by the knowledge that schools needed to potentially justify the grades they submitted and, importantly, that it would be moderated by the algorithm. We are certainly not proposing using an algorithm to determine grades, but the idea that teachers can give accurate and reasonable grades this year with the limited data they have is, equally, a non-starter. If left to their own devices, teachers would justifiably inflate grades far more than was the case even last year. If I’m not certain whether a student is an A* student, an A student or even, if they had a bad day on the exam, potentially a B student, I can assure you that even if my glass was half-empty, I would not submit anything lower than an A. Why would a teacher approach grade allocation, especially those of such importance, with a pessimistic view? If a student has submitted 6 essays that year, starting with ones that had achieved C’s and gradually worked up to A grade essays, why wouldn’t they assume that the trajectory indicates an A* would have been achieved by the summer? 

Teachers need help when determining grades and, as imperfect a solution as it is, exams remain the best metric to give them that guidance. 

Closing Remarks

No doubt these proposals would bring about a political fallout. How could the government announce no exams but then instruct students that, actually, you do have exams, only that they are internal assessments to guide your teachers? However, the consequences of not having any form of assessment to guide teachers grades is substantially more damaging – how can anyone trust the grades issued, based on the very limited data available to teachers? I suspect most teachers would agree that they have far less to go off this year than they did last year. In a nutshell, the political fallout that comes with announcing pseudo exams is far better than the very real consequences of a process that places too much pressure on teachers, is based on limited to no data and which creates more uncertainty than it solves for the most important actors in this whole saga: students. 

There is no easy or perfect solution to this problem. However, despite the complexities and pitfalls of this proposal, we feel that it is one of the better solutions to a riddle that can never be fully solved.

For many years now, the debate about whether the net effect of private tuition is positive or negative has raged. As with many debates that attract polarised views, I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle, which may come as a surprise given that I co-founded a tuition agency and still continue to tutor to the present day.

I recall a number of parents who use our services forwarding onto me an article that was published by the Evening Standard in 2017 where Victoria Bingham, headmistress at South Hampstead Girls School, warned parents about the perils of private tuition. When I replied that, to a large extent, I agreed with many of her points, they seemed taken aback, but allow me to address some of the issues that are often raised and give my insight, for what it’s worth! Given the scope of the debate, I feel it appropriate to break it down into specific areas that I will address in a series of blogs, rather than bore you with a thesis.

Private Tuition Stifles Independent Thinking

A common argument that I hear is that private tuition stifles independent thinking and, as Mrs. Bingham puts it, children who are tutored miss out on the “struggle time” needed to work out problems for themselves. At the heart of this claim seems to be a perception of what a ‘typical’ tutor does, so let’s begin with that.

According to the Sutton Trust 2019 Report, approximately 25% of 11-16-year-olds say they have received private tuition, with that number rising to 41% in London. Whilst the demand for private tuition has soared over the past decade, so too has the supply of tutors. There is no shortage of websites that both experienced and aspiring tutors can utilise which allows them to create a profile and market themselves to thousands of parents around the country, and with the online tuition market booming due to COVID, the reach is now global too. It is here though where I would offer some words of caution to parents and explain why the perception of tutors “stifling independent thinking” does have some merit.

When we first began as an agency, back in 2012, our recruitment process consisted of reviewing a prospective tutor’s CV, looking through their teaching experiences, conducting a telephone interview, and attaining two good references. The assumption, naive as it may seem in hindsight, was that if a tutor had teaching experience – either privately or at a school – they must be great. It did not take long for us to realise how very wrong we were. Ever since then, it has been company policy to always conduct a teaching assessment of prospective tutors, irrespective of how little or how much experience they had when applying to us. Why do I flag this up? Because simply having an impressive academic background and experience in the education sector is by no means a guarantee that the individual in question will be a good tutor – many of those who we have turned away are on various tuition websites and, I have no doubt, getting plenty of parent attention and demand. Many parents are easily lured by impressive academic credentials, such as having a PhD, but if my experiences have taught me anything, it is to never assume that someone is going to be great or awful based on that alone.

I am struck by the number of prospective Maths tutors who enter into a monologue the moment we ask them to commence their teaching assessment. At times, those who have excelled academically can lack the soft skills needed to be a brilliant tutor. In that sense, I agree with Mrs. Bingham that, tuition in that form, most certainly stifles independent thought. Similarly, employing a tutor to help with homework is something we actively discourage because students should attempt questions and assignments independently. After all, the tutor will not be sitting beside them when they sit their exams.

Does this mean that I feel that tuition is exclusively a last-resort option? No.

Private tuition, when done properly, can completely transform a student’s academic confidence and spill over to how they feel about themselves on a day-to-day basis outside of academia. One of our core principles is that a tutor has the power to realign academic expectations and a segment of our tutor training seminars focus on this.

Whilst I don’t wish to bore you with the specifics, allow me to pick out just one brief example to explain how, subconsciously, this process can happen over time. Over the past 10 years, I have taught in excess of 600 students for A-Level Economics, either privately or in groups. Every single time I teach a topic known as elasticities, once I have gone through the basics with the students and got them to do a few simple questions, I will, every single time, say the following: “in my opinion, the hardest mathematical question they have ever asked in your syllabus is January 2009, question 4”. Now, I would not show them that specific question…not yet. Instead, I will put together a question similar to it based around their interests. Throughout the process, whilst I would guide them, I would ensure that they answer each mini-question, write every step out, and think through that step. For those students who struggle with maths, I would provide a second question and slowly back off to see if they can do it without my help. Once I knew that the student had fully understood the concept, I would then show them the infamous January 2009 question 4 and completely back off. I did so with the complete confidence and knowledge that they would get it right. When they did and I excitedly told them that they had just answered the most difficult question that has been asked (it is a tough question by the way!) there is credibility behind that statement and what has been achieved is a significant boost in their confidence.

I have seen far too many instances of students who felt intimidated by the classroom environment or had been told by teachers (and often their parents) that the limit of their ability was a certain grade. A superb tutor does not lie to them and give them false hope, but rather, has the ability to re-shape that expectation and impact how that student behaves both in-class and outside of class. If you repeatedly get told that you are a C grade student, you will eventually play that role. The one factor that unifies those students who excel academically is that they, in 99% of cases, behave and apply themselves like an A* student. A brilliant tutor has the ability to reconfigure the psyche of the child and to get them to look at themselves through a new lens – it is no guarantee of success, but I completely live by the motto that it is better to aim high and miss than to aim low and hit.

Exceptional tutors are those who involve a student throughout their lesson, ask probing questions that stimulate their thought process, and help develop skills. This is not to say that teachers at school do not do this or cannot. However, in the same way that schools such as Mrs. Bingham’s take prospective teachers through assessments and have rigorous quality control, so do top tuition agencies. In that regard, I agree with her that a lot of the private tuition that currently takes place is stifling to independent thought, but I would caution against painting all tutors with the same brush.

The Coronavirus has been a shock to the system for people and business across the board. We are in the midst of a public health emergency, daily freedoms have been significantly curtailed, and a bubble of uncertainty has engulfed everything in sight. We previously explored how the spread of the virus has affected – and might continue to affect – the global economy. But how could it affect the Legal Services Industry specifically?

Client concerns

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s London managing partner, Claire Wills recently said that major areas of concern for their clients include the urgent need to establish how best to ration scarce goods; managing unanticipated costs or declining revenues; and navigating challenges around business continuity.

• Contractual Matters and Supply Chain

Many businesses are becoming unable to perform their contractual obligations and are looking for ways out. One way is by relying on ‘force majeure’ clauses. These clauses allow parties to limit their liability for not performing their contractual obligations if there are unforeseen and unavoidable events that interrupt them from being able to do so. These clauses often include natural disasters and civil unrest, but the exact wording can vary greatly. It is possible that a global pandemic may constitute a force majeure event but this depends on the construction of individual clauses.

Companies also need to prove that such external circumstances are causally linked to them being unable to carry out their duties and that they would have otherwise been able to perform their obligations. A company may also need to comply with other conditions before relying on a force majeure clause – for example, implementing any back up or business continuity measures.

Most major law firms operate within an international setting, which adds an extra layer of complexity given that different jurisdictions interpret legal principles differently. For example, force majeure events automatically apply to commercial contracts governed by Chinese law – particularly interesting given that many force majeure notices are currently being issued by Chinese suppliers.

• Regulatory Enforcement

James Bremen, London partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, speaking to Law.com International, said that, in the context of forced lock downs, “regulatory issues require very significant, immediate, advice” because businesses want to know exactly what they can and cannot do. According the another major law firm, specific areas which can give rise to regulatory issues include:

• Financial Services – (including operational resilience and market reporting);
• Insurance – (including the extent of cover and exceptional circumstances);
• Real Estate – (on the applications of rent holidays or break periods);
• Data Privacy and Cybersecurity – (including conditions for processing personal data in exceptional circumstances).
• Employment Rights

Employment lawyers are also being looked to for guidance. Many employers will want to understand the effect of the pandemic on their employment contracts – such as the position in relation to sick leave, statutory sick pay, tax, discrimination, communication or to deal with issues around quarantined employees who cannot physically enter the workspace.

Law firms as a Business

Something that students – and even junior lawyers – often forget is that, like all professional services entities, law firms are businesses, and they can be affected at a business level in similar ways to their clients.

• Business Liquidity

Some accounting firms have previously warned that law firms do not hold sufficiently large amounts of cash reserves within their businesses to allow them to weather major external shocks. It has also been reported that the period of ‘lock-up’ – meaning the time taken between a law firm issuing an invoice to a client, and the time it is paid – can average 121 days (and that’s when things are going smoothly). In a downturn, clients may become even more sluggish in making payments as they focus on paying suppliers of more urgent services, such as I.T. Firms may therefore have to reduce how much cash leaves the business in other ways. For example, several magic and silver circle firms have recently announced that they will be freezing partner and associate salaries.

• Remote Working

Lawyers across the country are now working from home. In some cases, firms already have a sophisticated I.T infrastructure in place, which has allowed them to easily shift their employees to a remote working arrangement. Even then, larger firms may struggle to accommodate international transactions, which will require seamless interactions across a remote global workforce.  Firms which have been unable to set up a viable agile working system will inevitably be more badly affected.

• Gearing

As is often the case in times of major shocks to the economy, ‘full service’ firms which offer a range of services, are often best shielded from outward impacts because they operate in counter-cyclical practice areas, as well as traditional ones.

Although the Coronavirus pandemic is different to a typical economic downturn, some firms are already shifting expertise to more in-demand areas. Law.com recently reported that CMS is relocating lawyers from across the firm to its restructuring and insolvency practice in anticipation of greater demand there. Further afield, The American Lawyer even reported last month that for some practices, coronavirus uncertainty was ‘bringing a spike in demand’, in particular in the areas of employment, cybersecurity, health care, and insurance.

Students

All universities and professional training institutions in the U.K have had to cancel person to person sessions. Work experience schemes have also been interrupted and, in some cases, cancelled altogether. This can understandably lead to a lot of anxiety. However, law firms have been at pains to reassure students and allay these anxieties as far as possible, and there is no reason students should feel overly concerned about how current circumstances could affect their long term goals.

Expert Tuition Legal Training provides 1-to-1 guidance at all stages of your vacation scheme or training contract applications. All of our tutors are either former practising lawyers or current offer holders – including with U.S, magic, and silver circle firms. 

To find further resources about the impacts of Coronavirus, or other topics relating to securing your training contract, please see our other blogs here.

Find out more on our website or contact us on LinkedIn for further info.

The Coronavirus has been spreading globally for less than 100 days, and yet in that time it has had an indelible effect on the lives of hundreds of millions of people. This once in a generation pandemic is, first and foremost, a public health emergency but its longer lasting effects – in particular its economic impact – may linger for years to come. What are these economic effects likely to be?

‘Unprecedented and Unknowable’

In a recent article, The Harvard Business Review said that in an attempt to supress the spread of the Coronavirus (‘SARS-CoV2’), governments have been turning to tried and tested methods such as social distancing which, while effective, have ‘severed the flow of goods and people [and] stalled economies’. ‘Multiple dimensions of the crisis’, it asserted, were ‘unprecedented and unknowable’.

For this reason, looking to the examples of the past won’t offer any certainty about how current trends will play out.

A Global Tailspin

Just a few weeks into the mandatory national lockdowns, the cracks are already starting to appear:

• The effect on global stock markets has been clear, with the BBC recently reporting that the Dow Jones and the FTSE had seen some of their steepest falls since 1987.

• In the U.K, several businesses have gone into administration, including Debenhams, rent-to-own company BrightHouse, and restaurant chain, Carluccio’s.

• The Guardian reported that ‘shopping centre owner Intu is unlikely to last until the end of the year in its current form, despite boasting nine of the UK’s top 20 malls, including Manchester’s Trafford Centre and Lakeside in Essex’.

• With wide ranging travel restrictions in place, several airlines also are teetering on the edge.

• In France, the Finance Minister, Bruno Le Maire, said that he was willing to nationalise large companies to protect them from bankruptcy.

• Global manufacturing powerhouses have also slowed to a halt. For example, the BBC reported that Chinese industrial production fell by 13.5% in the first two months of 2020. This will inevitably affect supply chains elsewhere.

• Several countries, have offered emergency stimulus packages to keep their respective national economies afloat. In the U.K this has taken the form of loans, grants to businesses, and support for employees. However many banks have been accused – as they were in the wake of the last financial crisis in 2008 – of offering emergency loans on overly stringent borrowing obligations, including seeking personal guarantees, which can often put company directors at great risk.

• In the U.S, prior to the crisis, the average number of people applying for unemployment benefits each week was 350,000. In the third week of March, the figure was closer to 3.3 million – almost five times the previous record set in 1982. The following week, the number was 6.6 million. Forbes described the trend as ‘literally off the charts’:

An Academic Interpretation – Examples from the last recession

So what are the long term, structural, outcomes of all of this likely to be? The Harvard Business Review states that it isn’t enough to refer to a recession. The term ‘recession’ simply describes two consecutive quarters of negative growth. More important, is the ‘shape of a shock’.

To illustrate this, it considers how the financial crash of 2008 affected different countries and how differently the long term effect was felt in different nations:

• Canada’s ‘V shaped’ experience shows that suffered only a mild shock and was able to recover quickly.
• The U.S’s ‘U shaped’ experience was much more costly and longstanding.
• Greece’s ‘L shaped’ experience demonstrates a catastrophic shock followed by a prolonged recovery period.

This shape is largely determined by the availability of capital or credit in the supply side of an economic system. If capital is not available, businesses shut down, unemployment rises, skills and momentum are lost and the economic shock precipitates far and wide into the structure of the economy. The more prolonged an economic freeze, the more the economy becomes starved of capital and liquidity, and the greater the chance of long term damage.

Economic Forecasting

It’s no surprise that future economic forecasts are cautious. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), has forecast growth of 2.4% in 2020, compared to 2.9% in 2019, but it has warned that a ‘longer lasting and more intensive’ outbreak could pull that figure down to 1.5%.

Major Management Consultancy, McKinsey & Company suggested in its COVID-19 Executive Briefing Note that if the pandemic continued to spread as we now think it might – i.e. that:
• new infections would continue to grow exponentially in the Americas and Europe until mid-April;
• the peak in Asia would occur before this;
• the spread in Africa and Oceania would be comparatively slower;
• infection numbers would slow due to imposed social distancing measures;
• public optimism returned by mid-May;
• the virus proved to be seasonal; and
• any resurgence in the Autumn was met with better preparedness,

then the economic impact might play out as follows:

“Large-scale quarantines, travel restrictions, and social-distancing measures drive a sharp fall in consumer and business spending until the end of Q2, producing a recession.
Although the outbreak comes under control in most parts of the world by late in Q2, the self-reinforcing dynamics of a recession kick in and prolong the slump until the end of Q3. Consumers stay home, businesses lose revenue and lay off workers, and unemployment levels rise sharply. Business investment contracts, and corporate bankruptcies soar, putting significant pressure on the banking and financial system.
Monetary policy is further eased in Q1 but has limited impact, given the prevailing low interest rates. Modest fiscal responses prove insufficient to overcome economic damage in Q2 and Q3. It takes until Q4 for European and US economies to see a genuine recovery. Global GDP in 2020 falls slightly.”

Should the pandemic be more protracted, McKinsey stressed the economic outlook could be far worse.

Training contracts and vacation schemes in the legal profession are more competitive than ever to obtain. Even after going through the arduous process of completing an application form, you are, numerically speaking, more likely than not to end up in the pile not invited back for interview. Notwithstanding this, there are some general pointers you can follow to give your self the best chance of success. Some of these are listed below:

1. Don’t lie

Every year, candidates make the mistake of telling law firms what they think those firms want to hear, even if that means stretching the truth. It is true that firms want to see a broad range of experience but don’t be tempted to fabricate these. HR teams in law firms are well trained to spot inconsistencies and dishonest answers. And beyond this, it’s not a great start into a profession where your integrity is paramount. Don’t worry if you don’t think your experience is at the level needed. Contrary to popular belief, law firms understand that it can be difficult to get work experience at a large law firm or to go travelling for months on end. However, if you are serious about being a lawyer, then you should be able to demonstrate in your application what you have done to arrive at that conclusion. Have you attempted to speak to lawyers at law fairs? Have you tried to attend an open day or get work experience in a local practice? Are you interested in the practice areas in which the firm works? This will also allow you to be honest with yourself as to whether you really do want to pursue a career in the type of firm you are applying to.

2. Do your research.

Good research is critical and, due to the wealth of content available online, easier to carry out than in the past. However, because of this, firms also have a greater expectation than they previously did of how well informed you are. It is not enough to simply carry out a google search and jot down some points from the firm’s home page. Your understanding of the firm, its practices and clients should be laced into the substance of your application. Your answers should talk about why you are a good candidate, but they should also refer back to the firm so that you can demonstrate that your experiences and aspirations are aligned to those of the firm.

3. Don’t be careless.

People appreciate that it is hard to complete multiple applications to a high standard without the odd mistake, but, as far as humanly possibe, you should attempt to avoid these. The legal profession is largely about working in the details (which clients will often over look) and being clear and accurate in your communications. Having an application which contains mistakes will not instill confidence in the reader.

4. Do back up your statements.

You can fill your application with several statements talking about your eye for detail or how good a team player you are, but they will mean nothing unless you back them up with evidence. This can be from any aspect of your life but it should be specific and demonstrate clearly the quality you are discussing. For example, you could talk about your experiences of working with others in a student committee or organisation during a particularly difficult period or situation.