Tory peer 'wouldn't be surprised' if Gavin Williamson sacked over A-Level scandal
17 August 2020, 11:03 | Updated: 17 August 2020, 11:38
Tory Peer 'wouldn't be surprised' if Gavin Williamson sacked over A-Level scandal
A Tory peer has said he "wouldn't be surprised" if Gavin Williamson was sacked as education secretary following the scandal over A-Level results.
Lord Ralph Lucas - a Conservative peer and editor of the Good Schools Guide - said that it would follow tradition if "some blood is let" as a result of the Government's failures over this year's grades.
Speaking to LBC's Tom Swarbrick, he said: "I think it's traditional in politics that some blood is let after things like this.
"The Government has a majority so I guess it doesn't need to do it, but I shouldn't be surprised."
It follows a weekend of protests by students who are angry over the downgrading of results by the exams regulator Ofqual.
A new system for grading was introduced this year because students were not able to take their exams due to Covid-19.
Teachers were asked to award grades for their students, before those were ratified with an algorithm used by Ofqual, which used the past performance of schools to determine any changes to the grade.
Critics claims this meant thousands of high-achieving students in poor performance schools were downgraded unfairly and as a result have missed out on significant opportunities.
One student - Kaya - told LBC that she could not "eat or drink" after her predicted four A* grades were downgraded to AABB - denying her conditional places at both University College London and Cardiff to study medicine.
Lord Lucas also joined calls for teachers to decide GCSE grades without the controversial algorithm - otherwise results should not be released on Thursday.
He said: "Anyone who needs to take a decision based on GCSE results should use teacher-assessed grades because that really isn't many people.
There are very few circumstances under which people need to get particular grades at GCSE - most of them involve moving from one bit of the same school and they can jolly well take the decision on their own internal grades with that."
