Students March On Whitehall Demanding Gavin Williamson Be Sacked Over A-Level Fiasco
Students are marching on Whitehall chanting “sack Gavin Williamson” and “teachers not Tories” in response to the shambolic handling of A-level results day.
Around 100 demonstrators had gathered outside Downing Street on Friday lunchtime, heading towards the Department for Education building.
Student Harry Mayes, from Stoke Newington in north London, missed out on a place at both his firm and insurance university places after receiving A, B and C in his A-levels.
The 18-year-old, who had been hoping to study neuroscience at the University of Bristol and had grades of A*, A and B submitted by his teachers, called the system a “complete injustice”.
“I’m a free school meals student and it seems like people like me have been lowered the most,” he told the PA news agency.
Nearly 40% of UK grades were lowered by a “biased” algorithm, prompting fury from students across the country.
One hundred thousand pupils across England awoke on Thursday to find their A-level results had been downgraded from the marks their teachers awarded them.
Entire classes at some schools were marked down by at least one grade.
Nearly four in every 10 (39.1%) grades awarded on Thursday were lower than teachers’ predictions: 35.6% were adjusted down by one grade, while 3.3% were brought down by two and 0.2% by three grades.
In total, an estimated 280,000 A-level entries were affected by the process.
Social media was awash with individual stories of students finding themselves in dire circumstances.
So my brilliant kid, who spent 5 years in and out of hospital and is disabled, had her teachers’ grades marked down and has lost her place at university. She got straight As at GCSE, mostly teaching herself in hospital. She called the uni. They said they’re full. I give up.
— Amanda Lees (@amandalees) August 13, 2020
