Exams fiasco; Ofqual as much to blame as Gavin Williamson – Yorkshire Post Letters

In his column, Tom Richmond calls for the Education Secretary’s resignation, saying that ‘a successful company would have a robust recruitment and interview process before settling on the best candidate’ (The Yorkshire Post, August 22).

On Radio 4’s Broadcasting House programme on Sunday morning, the former Head of the Civil Service, now Lord Kerslake, said that ministerial appointments should be based on an MP’s record of ability rather than, as he perceived it, an MP’s record of loyalty to the Prime Minister in such matters as support for Brexit, for example.

I quite often wonder at the appointments made by very successful companies when appointing a chief executive to their board from an executive position in another very different company.

The basis must be, not a comprehensive or even tenuous grasp of how the appointing company makes its soap or shirts, but how the board assess the skills of the appointee in matters of how he or she had previously run a bank or construction company.

Such CEOs will then rely on the information provided to them by the directors and managers about the functions of the business, and will take executive decisions based on that information, advice, and recommendations.

Neither Lord Kerslake nor Tom Richmond apportioned any or their criticism to the civil servants at such as the Ministry and at Ofqual, for the information which was being fed to the Minister for Education and upon which he will have made his decisions.

If he got his decisions wrong, he should resign, never mind be sacked, but if his decisions were based on the provision of poor information, then it is right that Ofqual chief executive Sally Collier has now stepped down.

More power to the elbow of Dominic Cummings as he cuts a swathe through the ranks of time serving civil servants who, I imagine, must have passed many robust recruitment and interview processes as they rose through the ranks.

From: Bruce Russell, Cayton, Scarborough.

THE anxiety, pain and anger caused to so many students by the recent exam results shambles is unforgivable, but at least it has shed light on a previously hidden truth.

Naïve people like myself have always believed that the grades awarded to those sitting exams were as a result of talent, application and good teaching. Now it appears that they are fixed and an individual’s grades are a matter of luck.

We now know that each year the overall results are moderated, adjusted, manipulated, fiddled, call it what you will, in order that each year they are better than the previous year, but not so good that they prevent the following year’s result being even better.

All this, presumably, so that those in charge can demonstrate that things are always improving and so their policies must be right.

Isn’t it time that we stopped using the education system, and more importantly individuals whose futures are at stake, as political footballs and give them the rewards theY have earned?

Just to make it clear, I have no professional connection with teaching.

From: David Algar, Yeadon, Leeds.

HOW often behind the closed doors of Number 10 can the quote from Laurel and Hardy – “well here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into” – be heard.

Like your editorial on Gavin Williamson, Boris Johnson fails to embrace the seven principles eloquently laid out by Lord Nolan for ethical standards for those in public life.

Is it not time for the Prime Minister to do so?

From: ME Wright, Harrogate.

PARDON my ignorance, but isn’t “algorithm” merely an anagram of “logarithm” – ie a soulless collection of numbers?

If so, can anyone explain – in words, not numbers – the rationale of unleashing one of these on the futures of thousands of youngsters?

There’s been a U-turn, but why did it happen in the first place?

Perhaps the answer was adroitly proclaimed in the student’s placard which read “No Etonians were harmed in the making of this algorithm”.

Once again, the perennial unanswered question arises.

To what extent do our elected representatives plus their placemen and women, use the educational facilities which they regard as adequate for more than 90 per cent of us?

To avoid cries of “invasion of privacy” statistics only for now.

We may then ask more searching questions of individual candidates prior to the next election.

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James Mitchinson

Editor