By Gavin Mackintosh-
The Education select committee are pressuring the Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson to be transparent and provide details of key meetings his department held with Ofqual in the run-up to the exams debacle.
Committee chair Robert Halfon had instructed Mr Williamson to provide the information by Monday, following the passing of an earlier deadline, but they are yet to hear from Mr.Williamson. The request over this summer’s grading fiasco which caused uproar in many schools, and amongst teacher, parents, and pupils, is bringing a number of academic bodies together to call for accountability.
Williamson had promised to provide the required correspondence and minutes of meetings his department’s officials had with the exams regulator, despite telling the committee in September he was “very open” to sharing the information.
Whispers among union leaders, academics, and journalists, are that the Education Secretary is refusing to honour his commitment to transparency, and may be hiding something he feels may be damaging to his reputation.
Many A level students were giving grades below that awarded by their teachers, leaving them distraught and distressed, until the government was forced to do a dramatic U turn, and grant teacher’s grades in the end.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders described Mr. Williamson’s silence on the matter as completely unacceptable and adds insult to injury over this summer’s grading fiasco.
“Students, parents, schools and colleges all deserve full transparency by the government over what discussions and decisions took place in order to understand exactly what went wrong.”
During a committee meeting on September 16, Halfon asked for the department to publish “the minutes of all relevant meetings, submissions and emails between the DfE and Ofqual since March 26”.
The committee is investigating what went wrong after the government was forced into a spectacular U-turn over the controversial algorithm grades, which resulted in the eventual issuing to pupils of their teacher grades. Williamson has said some of the advice would have been given in confidence and should remain secret.
After Williamson told the House of Commons in September he will “commit now” to working with the committee to “provide the information that they request wherever it is possible”, the Committee and educators believe the Education Secretary is refusing to be held to account for this summer’s exam fiasco, and be as transparent as is expected of someone in his office.
Schools minister Nick Gibb at the time told MPs: “There are lessons to learn, and we want to be transparent.”
Despite this, Halfon wrote to Williamson on November 10 as the information had not materialised.
He said for the committee to “understand fully what happened here, and to effectively discharge our scrutiny role, we are dependent on accessing the relevant official papers and minutes of meetings relating to this episode”.
A spokesperson for the committee told The Eye Of Media.Com: “It remains important for the committee to be able to understand the basis for the decisions taken on exams earlier in the year.
“As such, discussions and correspondence between the committee and Department for Education on obtaining the information we requested remain ongoing.”