Do our political masters actually know how schools work?

This was the question posed by Jules White, a secondary school headteacher and leader of the 'Worth Less?' campaign group, representing hundreds of secondary school headteachers, after the government performed a U turn on its A-level and GCSE grade awarding rules.

The move, although welcomed by students and staff will now create huge problems for universities who have largely allocated their places for 2020, basing their decisions on the results published last Thursday.

Since the fundamental problems with the algorithm approach had been being flagged up since the end of June, it seems remarkable that a public outcry was needed before the Department for Education decided to change its mind. This is not 'following the science' (Ofqual knew that there would be large numbers of anomalies) but slavishly following an ideology (that there should be no grade inflation).

(This was of course always an impossible target. Every year (except 2020) candidates fail to turn up to sit exam papers. It was largely these candidates who were awarded U grades in previous years. In 2020 there was no exam to fail to turn up to, so inevitably there are going to be fewer U grades. With fewer U grades the overall pass percentage is bound to be higher).

If a Facebook post from our MP, Sarah Dines is to be taken literally, she has been "listening, and pushing strongly for more consideration to be given for teacher and centre assessed grades above those that were awarded by the triple lock system". This seems to have confused several things, not least that the triple lock had only one aspect implemented and now even that has been abandoned. How was she proposing that 'more consideration' should be given'? Does she believe that 'teacher' and 'centre assessed grades' are different things?

More alarming perhaps is the comment that she has "been raising individual cases with the Universities Minister Michelle Donelan since last week, and the Minister has been personally very helpful taking details of individual constituent concerns including telephoning university vice-chancellors on constituents behalf". This suggests that our MP's approach to correcting the injustice of Ofqual's algorithm approach to grade awarding (that the government she is part of signed off on), was to lobby for a few individuals, so that just those students could secure their university place. For the few - not the many?

There were some Conservatives who were prepared to put their heads above the parapet and who spoke out before the U-turn became inevitable but I did not notice Sarah Dines among them.