A trust CEO has told the Covid inquiry the former education secretary said it was “too late to do anything” after he raised grave concerns over plans to award grades during the first year of Covid based on an algorithm.
Sir Jon Coles, CEO of United Learning and former director of education at the Department for Education, also told the inquiry today he felt as if advice from school leaders was “going into a black hole”.
He criticised government departments for an “extraordinary story of buckpassing”, and wrote to the government in May of 2020 to warn: “I think the department is in danger of losing friends”.
Also giving evidence today was Matthew Coffey, from Ofsted, who said the inspectorate had no advance notice of the first school closures and was not called upon for advice in the early stage of the pandemic, despite “having a huge amount of experience at my disposal”.
Here’s everything you need to know about what the inquiry heard today.
‘It’s too late to do anything’
Coles, who oversaw United Learning’s 87 schools during the pandemic, described the government’s use of an algorithm on past school performance to moderate teacher-awarded grades as a “slow motion car crash”.
“I feel strongly that there wasn’t sufficient thought given to the starting point of, what is the fairest thing we can do for young people? How do we avoid, in this very difficult situation – not of their making – detriment to our young people.
“That wasn’t the starting point. The starting point was, how do we avoid grade inflation?” he explained.
Coles met with various figures at Ofqual and the DfE between March and July 2020, where he consistently raised concerns, he told the inquiry.
During a meeting in July with Gavin Williamson, former education secretary, Coles said Williamson “appeared to recognise what I was saying was correct”.
An internal email from Williamson’s special advisor summarising the meeting said the former minister concluded that “there wasn’t an immediately obvious and logical route that avoids all the problems here – that there likely would be winners and losers, and that what he wants is to have a system that is as fair as possible, arising from a less than perfect situation”.
But Coles said he disagreed with this assessment, and that Williamson said “I think you might be right Jon, but it’s too late to do anything about it”.
Williamson will be questioned by the inquiry at a later date.
‘Extraordinary buck passing’
Coles made further criticism of the DfE’s interaction with a Covid recovery board of trust and school leaders.
He said while the board met frequently to draft advice on potential government policies – including preparations to reopen schools back up in July 2020 – it was “thrown away” due to “presumably some changed scientific advice”.
This led Coles to write to the DfE in May, where he said: “I’ve never heard the leaders of the large trusts so concerned and so negative as they were at the meeting earlier this week. I think the department is in danger of losing friends and needs to take some care of the communication at this.”
He told the inquiry it was “frustrating to be on something called an advisory group and for it to feel as though your advice is going into a black hole, and influencing nothing, and poor decisions are being made”.
Coles said the civil servants, Ofqual leaders and ministers had a “real lack of leadership”.
“There was not a sense of ‘we are going to get this right, for young people, come what may’,” Coles said.
But he said “even in the statements that I’ve read on behalf of the Department, on behalf of politicians, on behalf of the chief regulator – it’s an extraordinary story of buckpassing.”
Ofsted ‘heard about school closures with everyone else’
Appearing at the inquiry this morning, Matthew Coffey, chief operating officer of Ofsted, said the watchdog was not briefed about schools being closed in advance to the rest of the country.
Coffey said although he had “a huge amount of experience at my disposal”, the DfE did not seek advice from Ofsted in the early decision-making stages.
He said schools were not prepared “in any way, shape or form to be able to deal with educating children remotely”, adding remote learning was simply a “sticking plaster” during the pandemic.
It comes after the inquiry heard last week the DfE only had one day to prepare for school closures.
Coffey also said while the DfE looked into deploying laptops for pupils without access the problem was distributing them.
The army were in conversation to deploy the devices “with the full logistical backing that’s at their fingertips”, one of Ofsted’s advisors told Coffey, but the force then “disappeared from the debate”.
Coffey also reflected similar concerns to Baroness Anne Longfield over poor communication of the government’s vulnerable children policy.
Inspectors reported “conflicting messages” from schools, government and public health England which led to families “taking the line of the least resistance, which was not to attend”.
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