Responding to the letter
setting out the Education Select Committee’s findings over what
went wrong with the awarding of GCSE and A-level grades this
summer, Geoff Barton, General Secretary of the Association of
School and College Leaders, said:
“The Education Select Committee’s fire is directed chiefly at
Ofqual, but it appears to have struggled to pin down the role of
the Department for Education in the grading debacle that took
place this summer.
“It is completely unacceptable that the government has apparently
thus far failed to supply relevant papers and the minutes of
meetings requested by the committee.
“We seem to be no nearer understanding what steps ministers took
to ask the right questions at the right times to assure
themselves on behalf of the public that the system for awarding
grades would work and wouldn’t fall apart in the way that it did.
“We called for the government to commission an independent review
of the grading fiasco immediately after it had happened to
establish exactly what went wrong and to learn the lessons for
next year’s exams.
“However, the government has refused to take this action despite
the clear and overwhelming public interest in doing so.
“This is a completely unsatisfactory situation for students,
parents, schools, and colleges. They all deserve proper answers.
“They also urgently require clarity over exactly what the
government and Ofqual’s plans are for next summer’s exams.”
