Stop demonising pupils over Gavin Williamson’s schools shambles – Jayne Dowle

I’m also a school governor at my daughter’s academy and taught journalism and public relations at a Yorkshire university for a decade. I’m a fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and still mentor young people today, preparing them for university or professional media careers.

That said, I’m not one of those expert educationalists wheeled out on the news, so clearly I must bow to better judgement. Or not. I refuse to allow a bunch of privileged middle-class men – for sadly, it is mostly men – to cast aspirations on my children and all the children like them who basically just want to pass their exams.

I find the pontificating attitude of Education Secretary Gavin Williamson, with his illustrious pre-Westminster career as a fireplace salesman, curious at best and dangerous at worst.

Why is he demonising an entire generation of young people by threatening to ensure that there is no grade inflation when their GCSEs and A-Levels are marked by their teachers, then moderated externally this summer?

He clearly didn’t get the memo on the devastating toll that mental health has already taken on under-18s during the last 12 months of stop-start lockdowns and interrupted schooling.

After the debacle of last summer’s exam results and the botch-up over army-supervised mass school testing announced the day before schools broke up for Christmas, I hoped that Mr Williamson might have learned a lesson or two. Clearly not.