London

Exam debacle: English Education Secretary Gavin Williamson was fighting for his job this week after the government made a mess of college entrance exams. The exams, known as A-levels, couldn’t be held in person because of the pandemic, so the Department for Education asked teachers to base final grades on students’ practice tests and previous work. But the country’s education regulator decided teachers had been too generous, and it used an algorithm to re-weight the grades based on schools’ past results. Tens of thousands of teenagers were told their predicted grades had been lowered, and those lower scores caused many to be denied admission to college. After a huge outcry from parents and accusations of discrimination against low-income students, the government has now agreed to use the teachers’ scores. “I’m incredibly sorry for the fact that this has caused distress,” Williamson said.