Ofqual failing to publish notes of GCSE and A level exams

Ofqual failing to publish notes of GCSE and A level exams

The exams regulator Ofqual has backed out of a promise to publish the letters and minutes of its meetings with the British Government officials over the GCSE and A level exams mess over the summer.

Ofqual chair Roger Taylor promised MPs in a select committee that the the regulator would “publish all the communications and minutes” of communication that the Ofqual regulated had with the department of education around cancelling GCSE and A level exams.

Now the GCSE and A level regulator has said the UK Gov. must be first asked to release the correspondence. Because they arranged the meetings and recorded minutes.

OFqual Chair Richard Taylor claimed that a paper on the cancellations of GCSE and A levels was prepared for a briefing with the number 10 unit on August 7 was “written by the DfE, therefore the committee should approach DfE regarding these documents”. While the GCSE and A level exam regulator only “provided contributions to these papers”.

While Ofqual have promised to be transparent around the cancelling of the GCSE and A level exams in the summer of 2020. They are using all the tricks to push the attention away from them.

Boris Johnson still dodged questions about when he was made first aware of the GCSE and A level exam mess.

THere were detailed meetings between Nick Gibb, the schools minister, Sally Collier CEO of Ofqual at the time and Gavin Williamson the Sec. of State for Education. These notes of the meetings are not being made public in-spite of what Ofqual has suggested.

Ofqual said: “Ministerial meetings were arranged by DfE and any minutes would have been recorded by them, therefore the Committee would need to approach DfE regarding these documents.”

Select Committee chair Robert Halfon MP said: “To promote transparency, will you publish all the communications and minutes you have had with the Department?”

Roger Taylor went on: “Yes, I think we can do that. We obviously need to discuss with the department whether there is any form of deliberative privilege that they would wish to execute.

“We certainly do not have anything to hide, but I don’t think it is appropriate for us to simply say we will publish correspondence with them without that discussion.”

Asked again Taylor said: “I will need to talk to the Department. Obviously, the minutes of ministerial meetings are recorded by the Department. So I think I will need to write back to you on that.”

Halfon added: “Okay. But you will have your own minutes and papers that you can publish. Just to confirm, you will publish those for us to see?”

“Yes, we will”, Taylor added.

The GCSE and A Level regulator will publish the board minutes later in the year.

The submission to the select committee states: “We will publish minutes up to March 2020 shortly. We intend to agree all minutes up to the end of August 2020 at our Board meeting on 16 September 2020 and will publish shortly after that meeting.”

The most recent minutes published are for a board meeting in July last year.