GCSE students narrowly avoided Ofqual’s flawed algorithm – but they won't escape the fallout from a bad EU trade deal

Almost half of 18-24-year-olds think leaving the EU’s single market and customs union in January will be disastrous for employment

Teenage angst is hard enough at the best of times. But over the past week, Britain’s students have been put through the wringer.

The trials and tribulations of Ofqual’s controversial algorithm – used to grade pupils whose exams were cancelled due to coronavirus have been well documented, and are not over.

In the end, it was shown to be discriminatory against students from poorer areas and threatened to widen inequality further. As more and more heartbreaking stories were revealed across the country, the government rightly but belatedly ditched the flawed algorithm and put its trust in the predicted grades arrived at by those who know their students best – their teachers.

Today students across England have received their GCSE results and if they’re lucky, begin their journey on to either further education or employment. Or at least that was the plan until the pandemic hit and the loss of free movement changed everything. While GCSE students should now avoid the results day fiasco endured by those taking A-Levels, there are still big problems on the horizon for our country’s young people.

Like most sensible countries around the world, we are spending this summer and autumn trying to avoid, or at least mitigate, a second wave of coronavirus. A repair job is being mounted to remedy the intense economic damage Covid-19 has caused across the globe, and the late lockdown exacerbated across the UK. But unlike most sensible countries, we will undertake this task while tearing up our relationship with our main trading partner. An uncertain future becomes all the more perilous when the UK formally leaves the single market and customs union on 31 December.

Choosing to plough on with such a tight timetable, despite the option to extend the Brexit transition period, is an act of appalling national self-harm on the part of this government. The economy is already reeling from the impact of lockdown, with this month’s Office for National Statistics figures showing that the UK economy shrank by 20.4 per cent in the second quarter of the year. The UK is in its deepest recession since records began.

The knock-on effect on employment is played out every day with thousands of jobs being slashed in companies as diverse as Airbus and WHSmith; Upper Crust and Harrods. One-point-eight million 16-24 year-olds have been on furlough, leaving the obvious question – what happens to them once the scheme winds up? While the numbers of young people claiming unemployment-related benefits swelled by 122 per cent during lockdown, that is just the tip of the iceberg. The UK economy could not be less open to swathes of new, young entrants looking for jobs.

For all the talk of “unleashing Britain’s potential” at last year’s general election, most young people are – understandably – far from excited about their prospects. Polling released by Best for Britain shows that leaving the EU’s single market and customs union in January ranks as the second biggest concern facing job-seekers over the next year after coronavirus. Forty-eight per cent of 18-24-year-olds think the move will lead to fewer employment opportunities, compared to just 3 per cent who think it will add to their chances.

This sense of impending economic crisis is not restricted to younger generations. Overall, 40 per cent of Brits think leaving the single market and customs union will lead to fewer employment opportunities; four times as many as those who think it will increase the number of opportunities. The number who thought young people would lose employment opportunities was three times the number of Brits who continue to believe it will somehow help them. Even among those who voted Conservative and those who voted Leave, a fifth said they thought the change to the UK’s relationship with the EU was the biggest concern facing job-seekers.

Public opinion is backed up by hard academic evidence. A recent report by the Social Market Foundation found that the North and the Midlands would be worst hit by the double impact of coronavirus and Brexit, with jobs in both regions particularly dependent on industries severely exposed to both supply-side shocks.

The government has now taken to arguing that even if an agreement is reached with the EU, firms must still prepare for a very different world outside the single market and customs union. Their advertising campaign fetishises the risks our country faces, presenting them as vague "opportunities". But behind the upbeat music and slogans lies abject failure to negotiate anything beyond the thinnest gruel.

The 2019 Conservative manifesto, like the political declaration that sits alongside the withdrawal agreement, promised a comprehensive free trade agreement. The evidence this week is that this is far from in prospect. In its absence, much-vaunted trade deals with Japan (estimated to be worth a meagre 0.07 per cent of UK GDP), the US (0.2 per cent of GDP) and members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (no assessment of the benefits has yet been conducted) simply won’t cover the economic activity which the UK is needlessly casting aside.

The process of arriving at today’s GCSE results has been a roller coaster ride for young people. Sadly for them, and those heading from A-Levels to university, the continued failure of the UK’s talks with the EU are set to make a bad situation worse.

Naomi Smith is CEO of the non-partisan campaign group Best for Britain