Keir Starmer calls on ‘invisible’ Boris Johnson to take responsibility for A-level chaos

‘We need a return to teacher assessments for A-level results and urgent action to avoid the same injustice for GCSE students’

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has called for a return to teacher assessments for A-Level results “and urgent action to avoid the same injustice for GCSE students.”

“Weeks of chaos, confusion and incompetence,” he tweeted this afternoon, as dozens protested in central London against the downgrading of students pupils based on an algorithm.

“Boris Johnson has been invisible during this crisis. He needs to take personal responsibility, and fix it.”

The leader of the opposition added: “We need a return to teacher assessments for A-Level results and urgent action to avoid the same injustice for GCSE students.”

Hundreds of demonstrators have filled the streets outside the Department for Education, after nearly 40 per cent of A-Level marks were downgraded from teachers’ suggestions by a government algorithm.

Amid fears that GCSEs could be even harder hit, the former education secretary who introduced them, Lord Baker, urged current secretary Gavin Williamson to postpone the looming results, following the “unfair and barely explicable downgrades” of A-Levels.

“I urge the education secretary to instruct Ofqual not to release the GCSEs results this Thursday as their algorithm is flawed. The A-Level results have produced hundreds of thousands of unfair and barely explicable downgrades,” said Lord Baker, who oversaw the launch of GCSEs in the late Eighties.

“They have helped smaller private schools but hit the brighter students in a poorly performing state school. It is not surprising that various parties are considering legal actions.

“The Royal Statistical Society has claimed that Ofqual has breached its ‘obligation to serve the public good’ and its model failed to ‘achieve quality and trustworthiness’.

“Last week A-levels were allowed to increase by 2 per cent, but for GCSEs this week schools have only been allowed a 1 per cent increase. This will result in millions of aggrieved students and many more millions of aggrieved parents and grandparents. If you are in a hole, stop digging.”

A law firm has meanwhile written to Ofqual threatening legal action over the way in which A-Level scandal.

The firm Leigh Day, on behalf of 18-year old student Curtis Parfitt-Ford, have written to the watchdog, claiming the process adopted to award grades this year is unlawful, and called on the government to review and revise the scheme as a matter of absolute priority.

Mr Parfitt-Ford, who studied at a comprehensive school in west London, says he feels angry on behalf of thousands of students affected after 40 per cent of students received A-Level grades that were one or two grades lower than their ‘Centre assessment grades’ (CAGs).

He has created a GoFundMe page to help with the legal fight.