Schools and Colleges: Qualification Results and Full Opening

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 1st September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

As part of the advice that was worked up along with the Education Endowment Foundation, one of the key recommendations was looking at how to extend the school day and at provision on weekends, in order to support children who need that little bit of extra help and have had a real impact on their educational attainment. All these measures can have an enormously positive effect. That is why we developed the £1 billion covid catch-up fund, so that schools have the ability to take such action.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

It is truly shocking that either the Government did not ask to see the A-level algorithm applied to real-world results, or they did ask to see it and did not notice that it hit pupils in disadvantaged schools the hardest. To understand what happened, will the Government publish details of the equality impact assessment that I am sure they conducted during the process that led to the original grading approach?

[Gavin Williamson]

One of the key reasons we took the decision to move to moderated grades in March was that many of the studies previously carried out showed that going to purely predicted grades was most likely to disadvantage those from the most disadvantaged communities and those from ethnic minority communities. That is what informed the approach. One of the key elements that I highlighted when I wrote to Ofqual was the need to ensure that those who are disadvantaged were not disadvantaged by any approach that was taken.