How foreseeable was the A-level and GCSE fiasco, really?

Analysis: Gavin Williamson received several warnings that awarding exam grades by algorithm would lead to trouble – but he thought he’d fixed the problems, writes John Rentoul

(Reuters)

Gavin Williamson was warned the A-level results would be a disaster, apparently. Sir Jon Coles, a former education department civil servant, wrote to him in mid-July saying the formula for awarding grades would disadvantage students from poorer families.

But we knew that the education secretary had been warned because we saw it happen. He watched, along with the rest of us, as the cautionary tale of John Swinney, his Scottish counterpart, unfolded the week before.

What matters is not whether Williamson was warned about what would happen to A-level results – and the similar fate that could befall GCSE results – but what he did about it. To be fair to him, he did the right thing. He asked Ofqual, the independent body that supervises exams, what the hell was going on.