WATCH: “Utterly disgraceful” to leave BTEC students waiting, says Labour

Labour’s Kate Green has described it as “utterly disgraceful” that the government has left BTEC students waiting in a position of uncertainty with their results delayed until the end of the week.

In an interview with Sky News this morning, the Shadow Education Secretary slammed the government for leaving thousands of young people without the information they need to “get on with their lives”.

BTEC students are expected to now get their results as late as Friday this week after Pearson, which owns the Business and Technology Education Council, told schools and colleges not to publish results to allow them time to re-grade.

Commenting on the delay, Green said: “This is really outrageous for these young people. If they were waiting for their level three BTECS, these are the BTECs that route them onto perhaps a university course or into further study.”

Pearson announced last Wednesday that it would use internal assessments and marks to set the final awards for each course, making it consistent with the government’s U-turn on A-Level and GCSE results earlier in the week.

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson’s initial U-turn did not mention BTEC results. Labour figures subsequently urged the government to provide urgent clarification on why they were excluded from the policy change.

Green added: “It’s just been utterly unforgivable to put young people under so much stress and pressure and leave them still in a position of great uncertainty. It’s also very difficult for the colleges and universities…

“The whole fiasco – GCSEs, A-Levels, BTECs – has been utterly unforgivable. The responsibility for it sits entirely at the government’s door. We now know that they were warned weeks and weeks ago about problems with their algorithm.”

The confusion over BTEC results follows the public outcry when A-Level results were published earlier this month, with nearly 40% of students in England seeing their grades downgraded from teacher predictions.

After repeatedly rejecting criticism of the government’s standardisation process, Williamson performed what Labour leader Keir Starmer called a “screeching U-turn” to say that teacher estimates would be accepted for final awards.

The Times later reported that Williamson had been warned that the algorithm would lead to unfair and incorrect grades being awarded, but insisted on applying the standardisation to the results anyway.

Commenting on his inaction, Green said last week: “Williamson was warned again and again about the problems with the grading algorithm, and each time, he did nothing.

“This endless pattern of incompetence is no way to run a country. His failure to listen to warnings and to act on them risked thousands of young people being robbed of their futures.”