Williamson’s seaside jaunt and Minister’s Alpine break just days before exams fiasco
GAVIN WILLIAMSON last night faced fresh pressure over his handling of the A-levels crisis after it emerged he took a seaside holiday in the run-up to the fiasco.
The Mail on Sunday understands the Education Secretary took a break in Scarborough for a week from August 2, returning just days before the A-level results came out on August 13.
An algorithm used by the exams regulator Ofqual resulted in an astonishing 40 per cent of grades being downgraded from teachers’ predictions, meaning thousands of devastated students were turned down by their first-choice universities.
It is also understood that Mr Williamson cancelled a key meeting while he was in North Yorkshire.
Mr Williamson is fighting to keep his place in the Cabinet after initially insisting the algorithm was ‘robust’, and there would be ‘no U-turn, no changes’ – before performing a humiliating U-turn in the face of growing protests from students.
Sir Jon Coles, a former director-general for schools at the Department for Education, added to the pressure by saying he warned Mr Williamson directly in early July that the algorithm could give hundreds of thousands of students inaccurate results. Last night, a spokesman for Mr
Williamson said the trip to Scarborough did not count as a holiday because he was ‘working every day’.
The spokesman said: ‘It was the only chance for him to go to see his mum and dad, who he had not been able to visit during lockdown. It wasn’t a holiday as he was working every day and continuing to hold meetings remotely.
‘ In addition, he cancelled a foreign holiday to ensure that he could be in the country when the results came out.’
The revelation came as protesters gathered outside the Department For Education yesterday, chanting ‘Get Gav Gone’ and ‘We are the future’. Protest organiser Glen Morgan-Shaw said: ‘We are going to call them out on the fact they are doing everything to protect themselves when they should be protecting the people.’
Following the U-turn, the Government has asked universities to prioritise students from disadvantaged backgrounds for admission ‘where possible’. Downing Street sources say they are not going to give into calls for Mr Williamson’s sacking because they ‘back their people’. Mr Williamson played a key role in the campaign to elect Mr Johnson as Tory leader.