'Rude and dismissive' Tory says 'no one asks about A-levels in 10 years' time'

17 August 2023 , 13:13

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Education Secretary Gillian Keegan has been criticised for her remark (Image: Getty Images)

A brazen top Tory was branded "rude and dismissive" after claiming people "won't ask you anything about your A-level grades in 10 years' time" as top grades plummeted.

Education Secretary Gillian Keegan made the remark as ministers were attacked for "abruptly" returning to pre-pandemic marking in England. Unions said the move "risks damaging the future of students" after a 10% drop in A* or A grades compared to last year.

Labour Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said: "I think the comments from the Secretary of State are incredibly rude and dismissive. This is a nerve-racking day for young people who've worked incredibly hard. The last thing that they need is the Secretary of State offering comments like that, and it really does add insult to injury coming from a Government that completely failed to put in place the kind of support that our young people needed coming out of the pandemic, after all of the disruption they'd experienced."

Labour's Bridget Phillipson hit out after the comment this morning (Daily Mirror/Andy Stenning)

Ms Keegan later doubled down on the remark, made during a Sky News interview, saying: "It is true, it is just real." She added: "It's an important step to get to your next destination, but when you're a couple of destinations further on there'll be other things that they look at."

Exam boards in Wales and Northern Ireland delayed going back to pre-pandemic marking systems until 2024. This year 25.4% of grades awarded were either an A* or A, down from 36.4% last year. The overall pass rate fell by just over 1% to 97.3%.

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National Education Union joint general secretary Mary Bousted said: “The decision to return abruptly to pre-pandemic grading risks damaging the future of students from disadvantaged backgrounds, whose lives and learning have already been hit hard by the pandemic.

"The exam system itself is badly in need of reform. The ways in which students and their schools and colleges are judged does not do them justice."

Patrick Roach, general secretary of teachers' union the NASUWT, said: “We warned against a shift to a virtually ‘business as usual’ approach to this year’s exams by ministers, which rested on the erroneous assumption that the disruptive impact of the pandemic on pupils’ learning had largely subsided. A return to pre-pandemic arrangements may have been easier to justify had the Government’s strategy of education recovery not been so inadequate and unambitious."

He said measures to help kids catch up after repeated lockdowns were "plagued with flaws", with schools left to "pick up the pieces". “The predictable outcome is that the most disadvantaged students have been particularly let down by this Government which has yet again shown its disregard for the life chances of those most in need of its support," he said.

Ms Keegan hit back at allegations of unfairness, saying it is the "right time" to return to a normal grading system. Challenged over whether it was right to compare this year's results with those of 2019, Ms Keegan said: "Well it is fair because what we have made sure is that there were some additional things put into position.

"So they did get some additional aide-memoires for certain subjects and there are some additional things that have been put into place with grade boundaries, so they are not identical. But the idea is that we get an identical result... so there are very sophisticated new systems and they do know what they are doing, and we have very senior examiners making sure they calibrate that (to) 2019."

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Dave Burke