Fiasco doesn’t begin to do it justice. Perhaps omnishambles – a word first coined in the BBC political satire The Thick of It – comes a little closer. Or given the PM’s reliance on his trusted henchman Dominic Cummings to read the political runes, should it be Domnishambles?
In reality, the events presided over by hapless Education Secretary Gavin Williamson in recent days would stretch the imagination of our greatest satirists.
On Saturday, Williamson declared there would be ‘no U-turn, no change’ to the grades issued in the 2020 A-level results in England.
For much of the previous 48 hours, Williamson had been missing in action, leaving his deputy Nick Gibb to take the flak as the chaos unfolded.
The government was forced into an embarrassing U-turn yesterday over A-level grades
Education Secretary Gavin Williamson had allowed marks to be awarded by an algorithm, rather than through teachers’ predicted grades
Now, here he was, making clear his belief that preventing grade inflation was more important than crushing the aspirations of tens of thousands of students. The algorithm used to determine their educational prospects and career choices was a ‘fair and robust system for the overwhelming majority…’, he insisted, despite mounting evidence to the contrary.
Yesterday, after a conference call with Boris Johnson, who is in Scotland on a camping holiday, Williamson was ordered to sound a humiliating retreat. It was the ferocity of the criticism pouring forth from Tory MPs that forced Downing Street to order the U-turn. By early yesterday morning, 23 had rounded on the Government.
Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 backbench committee, joined in the fire and fury over a system which led to a disproportionate downgrading of bright students in poorer schools – the very cohort Tory governments traditionally pride themselves on supporting. (And if anyone should have understood the anger and disappointment of such pupils, it is Williamson who attended a state comprehensive in Scarborough and whose wife Joanne is a primary school teacher.)
‘The flawed process for arriving at A-level grades has caused massive concern and needs to be corrected,’ Sir Graham said. Williamson, whose particular talents had ensured a steady rise through the ranks to become the youngest Defence Secretary, aged only 41, in 2017, is now a spent political force.
‘He’s allowed the Opposition to write a narrative of a horrible Tory Government beating down on working class kids. Its unforgivable. This is the biggest screw-up since the election,’ one appalled senior Whitehall source said yesterday.
Students protested against the results outside Downing Street calling for changes
A Daily Mail front page last week depicted Boris Johnson and Gavin Williamson as two dunces. The great irony is that just days earlier Williamson was crowing at the Scottish government’s own U-turn over exam grades which saw First Minister Nicola Sturgeon making a fulsome apology to disappointed pupils and promising that teacher assessment would determine the grades.
Back then, a source close to the Education Secretary bragged: ‘The SNP failed the test, but we have done more revision.’ The truth is he hadn’t done even the most basic homework. In the coming weeks, Williamson will surely pay the price.
He has had some stiff competition given the ministerial incompetence displayed across the board recently.
It wasn’t only the row with Tory MPs that triggered the humiliating about turn. With parents threatening legal action over the flawed marking system, lawyers were consulted and No10 warned there was a distinct possibility the Government would lose a judicial review, throwing an already chaotic exam system into meltdown.
In retrospect, Williamson’s bravado at the weekend was evidence enough that he was not listening to Tory colleagues or Ofqual, the exams regulator. When the regulator warned that the appeals’ system would crash within hours because of the huge number of appeals from pupils who disputed their grades, he ignored it. The system could be ‘beefed up’ to accommodate it, he countered.
They held up placards calling for the government to re-think its approach to the grades
On Saturday evening, Ofqual suddenly withdrew the advice it had posted just hours earlier on the status of mock exams in A-level and GCSE appeals. Williamson was given precious little notice.
On the usual broadcast rounds yesterday morning, No 10 refused to allow any minister into the studios on any subject. Indeed, how could they possibly defend an education policy that was unravelling even faster than Gavin Williamson’s political reputation?
The former fireplace salesman, elected in 2010, had no background in education. He was the surprise choice for the job in the Prime Minister’s reshuffle after his leadership election victory last summer. It was widely seen as a reward for his key role in Johnson’s successful campaign.
Yet just months earlier, he’d been ignominiously dispatched by the then prime minister Theresa May after being blamed for a leak from a National Security Council meeting into plans to allow Chinese firm Huawei to help build the UK’s new 5G network. Williamson has always denied it.
Students hold placards as they march from Codsall Community High School to the constituency office of Gavin Williamson, Conservative MP for South Staffordshire
But the military top brass were relieved to see the back of the man they dubbed ‘Private Pike’ after the dithering drip in the comedy classic Dad’s Army. His skill set has been described as ‘the dark arts’, which made him an effective Chief Whip, famous for his pet tarantula, Cronus, kept in a glass box on his desk.
Williamson once joked about his negotiating technique: ‘I don’t very much believe in the stick but it’s amazing what can be achieved with a sharpened carrot.’
Well some of those subjected to the sharpened carrot must be laughing now at their tormentor’s demise.