Education secretary Gavin Williamson has said teachers’ “hard work” in producing grades for their students this year has “earned the trust and admiration of the whole country”.
In a letter thanking teachers ahead of A-level results day tomorrow, Williamson said teachers have given students “their passports to the future”.
It follows Dr Mary Bousted, National Education Union joint general secretary, saying that “any attempt” to blame teachers for grades “will be met with fire and fury”.
Earlier this year, in an exclusive interview with FE Week, Williamson pledged to back teachers “all the way” in their efforts to award teacher access grades and said he would share responsibility of there is a backlash on results days.
Let me just say this. Any attempt by a government minister, or Ofqual, or anyone else, to blame teachers next week’s GCSE and A level grades will be met with fire and fury. Teachers are the heroes here.
— Dr Mary Bousted (@MaryBoustedNEU) August 6, 2021
In his letter, Williamson says: “Right at the start of the pandemic I said that people would now have a far greater appreciation of what teachers do and this will only have increased as the months passed.
“Your hard work will have earned the trust and admiration of the whole country. In fact, I think that, as a nation, we have perhaps never valued education as much as we do now.
“In the next few weeks students across the country will be taking up apprenticeships, preparing for university, moving on to A levels and other further qualifications or starting their first job. They can take those next steps because of everything you’ve done to support them.”
Williamson said teacher assessed grades process has taken a “significant amount of work” but teachers “took it on and worked, as you always do, for the greatest benefit for your pupils”.
He added: “For all these ground-breaking achievements I want to say a heartfelt thank you on behalf of the Prime Minister, my department and the ministerial team.”
Perhaps then, if Williamson is reinventing himself as the teachers’ champion, he will publicly condemn his colleague Andrew Bridgen, who claims that the disparity in achievement between state and private school pupils is because teachers in the former have “sat on their hands” during the pandemic.