Inside Politics: Ministers braced for backlash over exam results ‘mess’

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Tuesday 11 August 2020 08:02 BST

Nicola Sturgeon apologises for handling of Scottish exam results

Four of the biggest pantomimes in the country have been forced to postpone their annual Christmas shows until 2021. Oh yes they have! Boris Johnson might have hoped to put the hissing and booing of the Westminster pantomime behind him for the summer. But there is a grand farce brewing over this year’s A-level results. Outrage over predicative results which saw thousands of Scottish pupils unfairly downgraded turned Nicola Sturgeon from the fairy godmother into the wicked queen. Is the PM about to stumble, stage left, into the exactly the same fiasco?

Inside the bubble

Senior political commentator John Rentoul on what to look out for today:

All eyes will be on Scottish education secretary John Swinney, making a ministerial statement on the exam results mess in Scotland. Ministers south of border will be watching carefully ahead of this week’s A-level results – with a huge number of appeals expected over predicted grades (based on a similar system to the one used in Scotland). Elsewhere, Ucas chief executive Clare Marchant will take part in an online webinar to talk about the potential impact on university applications.

Daily briefing

WIDE OF THE MARKS: The government appears set for howls of outrage when A-level results are announced on Thursday. Education experts have warned any attempt to predict A-level grades is “near-impossible” – prompting fears English students are in for the same fate as their Scottish counterparts (around 125,000 of whom had grades downgraded by a predictive system based partly on schools’ past performance). Nicola Sturgeon admitted her government “did not get it right” and promised a review. Is Boris Johnson destined to do the same? “The system is grossly unfair … it’s a mess,” said Sir Michael Wilshaw, former Ofsted chief, while the National Union of Students said using schools’ previous results was “unjust” and lazy”. Universities minister Michelle Donelan urged universities to be “flexible” by keeping places open for students appealing their results.

LIVIN’ LA VIDA LOCAL: Remember when the PM promised a “world-beating” contact-tracing system? Well, NHS test and trace in England is cutting 6,000 members of staff. Something about the centralised operation clearly isn’t working, since the remaining 12,000 contact tracers will now be asked to work more closely with local public health teams. “We have always been clear that NHS Test and Trace must be local by default,” said the Tory peer in charge, Baroness Dido Harding. Some councils have had better results by setting up their own systems – sending staff out to knock on doors if they can’t be reached by phone. Labour is demanding the government doesn’t give any more money to private contractor Serco (running parts of the centralised system) – arguing the stakes are too high to “tolerate failure”.

PANOPLY PITSTOP: The PM is considering changing asylum laws in a bid to stop migrants crossing the English Channel. Johnson suggested his government would look at “the panoply of laws that an illegal immigrant has at his or her disposal” – claiming current rules makes it “very, very difficult” to return people who arrive from France in small boats. No 10, meanwhile, said the UK wanted to replace the EU’s Dublin regulation – which offers a series of protections to asylum seekers – with something less “rigid”. Meanwhile, it has been revealed that the government was warned nine months ago that its policies were “pushing migrants to take more dangerous routes” across the channel in a report by MPs on the foreign affairs committee. Chris Bryant, a Labour member of the committee, told The Independent the influx “wasn’t only predictable, but we predicted it”.

SACRE BLEU: Immigration minister Chris Philp is holding talks with his counterparts in Paris today amid rising tension over the upsurge in Channel crossings. Doing the media round this morning, junior health minister Edward Argar told Sky News the government is looking for “greater flexibility” from France on returning migrants. What would imposing a 14-day travel quarantine of arrivals do to relations between the countries? France is currently “on the cliff-edge” of being pulled from the UK’s safe travel list, according to the Quash Quarantine campaign. Speaking of precarious holidays, Sturgeon has warned Johnson he must “abide by all the advice” on Scotland’s lockdown rules when the PM takes his family north of the border for a staycation next week.

EAT, DRINK AND BE MERRY: Rishi Sunak seems pretty pleased about how his “eat out to help out” scheme is going. Diners took advantage of the chancellor’s 50 per cent off offer more than 10.5 million times during its first week, according to the Treasury. No 11 estimated the average claim is close to £5 – putting the cost at around £50m so far. Sunak said the figures were “amazing … Britons are eating out to help out in big numbers”. Not such amazing numbers on job losses, however. One in three companies expect to make redundancies by the end of September, a new survey has found. And employment decreased by 220,000 between April and June – the largest amount in over a decade, the latest ONS figures show.

ALL PART OF THE SERVICE: Donald Trump was abruptly bundled out of a press conference by a Secret Service agent after shots were fired outside the White House. The president was heard saying “Oh!” and “What’s happening” as he was ushered out – but later denied being “rattled”. The US Secret Service said one of its agents and another man had been taken to hospital after a shooting incident. Elsewhere, Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin said the Trump administration will not allow Chinese-owned firm TikTok to continue collecting sweeping amounts of data about Americans. And Beijing slapped retaliatory sanctions on 11 Us officials – including senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, both fierce China critics.

On the record

“Despite our best intentions, I do acknowledge we did not get this right and I’m sorry for that.”

Nicola Sturgeon apologies for Scotland’s exam results fiasco.

From the Twitterati

“Desperate refugees turned into a grotesque reality TV show.”

Owen Jones doesn’t like the BBC’s coverage of migrant crossings…

“Farage focuses on the channel migrants so Farage gets attacked. The BBC finally focus on them, so the BBC gets attacked. Closing our eyes and hoping the issue simply goes away will not solve anything. When are we going to learn that.”

…while The Mail on Sunday’s Dan Hodges thinks the issue merits the BBC’s ‘focus’.