Gavin Williamson is drawing a line. After a week of unrelenting criticism from schools, Labour, the unions, Tory MPs and even Michael Gove’s wife, the journalist Sarah Vine, he is adamant that the A-level grading system is here to stay. “This is it,” the education secretary says. “No U-turn, no change.”
The government’s decision to use a computer algorithm created by Ofqual, the exam regulator, this week led to 40 per cent of results being downgraded from teachers’ predictions. Videos of distraught teenagers went viral on social media and there have been claims that the modelling system was systematically biased against disadvantaged pupils.
“I think we should cut the kids some slack,” Vine told LBC yesterday. “They’ve had a terrible year. If I had
