Making the grade

Labourlessonsoverexamscrisis

LABOUR’S CALL to defer next year’s A- level and GCSE exams by a month smacks of political opportunism rather than the statecraft, and statesmanship, that many had come to expect from Sir Keir Starmer when he succeeded Jeremy Corbyn as party leader.

For, while The Yorkshire Post continues to maintain that Education Secretary Gavin Williamson’s position is untenable following the exams debacle, the Opposition’s approach risks marginalising those important issues that need to be considered now as a new academic year begins.

After all, teachers and students alike need to know the parameters now for the assessment of work – and how much of the curriculum can be taught when six months of learning has been disrupted. It can’t be left to chance or another arbitrary algorithm. As Robert Halfon, the much respected chair of the Education Select Committee, concedes: “It is 50: 50 that exams go ahead next summer.”

Furthermore, schools and LEAs want to hear far more from the Government about its plans to help the most disadvantaged students to catch- up with their studies – or how the Department for Education intends to pursue the so- called ‘ levelling up’ agenda – when former ministers as respected as Justine Greening and Lord Jim O’Neill have been expressing such disquiet.

Complex issues, they are, nevertheless, far more fundamental to the futures of so many young people than the snappy soundbite Labour appears to have devised to maximise the Government’s embarrassment over Mr Williamson, and its propensity for U- turns, rather than the longer- term interests of pupils.