Boris Johnson Backs Down on England Exam Grades After Furore
- Children will now be graded based on teachers’ assessments
- Prime minister has full confidence in education secretary
This article is for subscribers only.
U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was forced into a dramatic U-turn over this year’s pandemic-affected exam results after his government agreed to grade English children based on their teachers’ assessments in the face of parent and student outrage.
“When it became apparent there were unfairnesses within the system, it was the right thing to act,” Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said. The cabinet minister, who faced calls to resign over the fiasco, apologized for the “distress” caused by an algorithm-based system that downgraded thousands of results.