As you all know, because of the Coronavirus outbreak in the UK, students across the country haven’t been able to sit their exams. Therefore so far, over 40% of students have been downgraded on their results, meaning they aren’t able to get into university, or fulfil their dream job.

The government has decided that students are able to appeal their results but they will have to pay.

EDEXCEL-£120

AQA-£25

OCR-£9.50

WJEC-TBC

This is unacceptable, why should students have to pay to appeal for exam results when they didn’t even sit the exam? The government needs to scrap appeal costs and change the grading system for both GCSE and A-level students so they get the results they worked hard for, and deserve. It’s unacceptable that the exams board and The Government have come to decisions so late on how we will be graded.

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson - has said students from *working class* backgrounds will NOT be marked up, out of fear that “pupils will be over-promoted into jobs that are beyond their competence" ... something Williamson knows all too much about, being completely out of his depth as a government Minister.

Some schools are reporting more than half their students results as downgraded. When this happened in Scotland last week, the Scottish government overturned the decision, after backlash from students, who argued that it wasn’t fair that they were being downgraded based on socio-economic factors. Williamson has forewarned there will be no such clemency for working class English students, who will remain downgraded.

ASCL union rep Geoff Barton says they have received “heartbreaking feedback from school leaders about grades being pulled down in a way that they feel to be utterly unfair and unfathomable”.

And before you start thinking this might not be a class issue, ***There will be no downgrading of exam results at Eton or Harrow***

Why should working class kids be treated as second class citizens in England, while the children of government Ministers, judges and journalists - regardless of their competency - keep their high marks?
Is he not concerned that rich kids will be “over-promoted into jobs that are beyond their competence”?

Getting two B’s and a C when all other marks have been straight A’s is an unjustifiable outrage.

At the beginning of lockdown, the Prime Minister said students would not be punished for exams being cancelled. Yet more lies.