Petitions Committee Chair calls on Government to urgently respond to petitions relating to A-level and GCSE grades
20 August 2020
Chair of the Petitions Committee, Catherine McKinnell MP, has written to the Secretary of State for Education Gavin Williamson MP, to request urgent responses to two petitions on student grading that have received over 180,000 signatures.
Since A-level students received their results on 13 August, Parliament's e-petitions website has seen two petitions relating to exam grading reach the threshold for a Government response. A petition to review the decision to use previous data to calculate exam grades has so far received over 148,000 signatures, and a petition calling for the Government to reverse all exam grades back to teacher's own predictions has received over 33,000 signatures.
In a letter to the Secretary of State for Education, Committee Chair Catherine McKinnell MP urged the Government to expedite responses to these petitions, setting out the actions they are taking in response to the concerns expressed by petitioners.
On the day GCSE students receive their results, the correspondence acknowledges that the Government's announcement that grades will now be awarded on the basis of predictions by teachers will be welcomed by many, but there are still questions that need to be answered with the deadline for University offer conditions to be met fast approaching.
In light of the significant support these petitions have seen in such a short space of time, the letter calls on the Government to give students, their parents, universities and potential employers the confidence that their results are robust and fair.