Truth just about as strange as Orwellian fiction

When an 18-year-old Jessica Johnson won the Orwell Youth Prize last year for her story about a “Band system” for students, meant to promote on merit but in reality offering opportunities only to the rich and down-marking the poor, she didn’t know that she would be the victim of such a system just a year later.

Thanks to the disastrous grading algorithm deployed in the UK, Johnson’s English A-level result were downgraded from A to B, loosing her place at the University of St Andrews, reports The Guardian.

“I’ve fallen into my story. It’s crazy,” she told the Grundian. “I based it on the educational inequality I already saw. I just exaggerated that inequality and added the algorithm. But I really didn’t think it would come true as quick as it did!”

Commenting on her story last year, she said: “The inequality between schools in the UK, whether it be between the North and the South or state and independent, is what made me want to write my piece. I go to a state school in the North, so it’s something that directly affects me and I felt it was important to give a student’s perspective on the matter.”