Gavin Williamson has no trust, no credibility and must resign

I listened to the Education Secretary on the Today programme this morning and, probably like many of you, got increasingly angry at each of his vacuous replies and the blatant shirking of his responsibilities following the exam results chaos.

After nearly 40% of students in England saw their teacher-predicted grades downgraded last week, Gavin Williamson repeatedly defended the standardisation – and only U-turned yesterday to say that teacher estimations would be used.

This has caused huge disruption and upset for young people across the country. I cannot believe what he has put students like mine through. Here is my response, as a teacher, to some of Williamson’s claims this morning.

Gavin Williamson: “This is something that firstly none of us wanted to see and none of us expected to see.”

How can you not have expected this? It was an algorithm! And the rules of that algorithm literally built in disadvantage for poorer kids. What’s more, all of this had just happened in Scotland.

Gavin Williamson: “Making sure that no young person is disadvantaged was at the heart of what we were aiming to do and what Ofqual and the exam boards were aiming to do.”

Why did the exact opposite happen? A quarter of children from state schools had their marks downgraded compared to just 10% of private school students.

And your changes have not been thought through. Many kids have already accepted second choices elsewhere and are now locked out of their first choice. Meanwhile, universities flooded with new eligible applicants are now at risk of being totally overcrowded with no promises of extra support or resources – hardly something you want when trying to implement social distancing measures!

Gavin Williamson: “The real focus is on ensuring that all children get back to school in September and ensuring that when we go into the 2021 exam season we are in a position where every child is taking exams. Because the best way of guaranteeing standards is making sure we have a strong and fair and robust exam system.”

You have just failed to endorse the credibility of the teacher grades you decided yesterday that we should accept! That’s why you are switching to talking about credibility next year.

But this is not surprising, given that – only last week – you said that teacher assessments would “devalue” qualifications and make students “lose out twice over”.

Gavin Williamson: “My focus is three-fold: make sure that students get the grades that they deserve, make sure that we get every child back into school for September and making sure that we are delivering on the Prime Minister’s agenda of levelling up.”

Talking about ‘levelling up’ right now is hypocritical and insulting. You are on this radio programme because you have done exactly the opposite. Your government has brought unnecessary suffering to all young people in this cohort and hit the worst-off hardest.

You U-turned on free school meals; you U-turned on primary school openings; and you U-turned on every child’s GCSE and A-Level grades after that. You have no trust, no credibility – and you need to resign.