If a single grade can change a student’s lifetime earnings, then we can’t afford a grading system that behaves like a lottery. Recent analysis shows that moving just one grade band at A‑level can translate into thousands of pounds more – or less – in annual income over a career.

Edgar Morin died in Paris on 29 May 2026 at the age of 104, bringing to a close one of the most wide-ranging intellectual lives of the last century. Across that long life he returned, again and again, to one central idea: reality is not made of isolated parts that can be fully understood by breaking them down, but of interwoven systems in which order, disorder, uncertainty, part and whole are inseparable.

As educational ministries and professional bodies globally modernise their frameworks, learning objectives have fundamentally shifted. Traditional education models assessed knowledge recall through closed, easily quantifiable test formats.