With the Government U-turn on exam results revising many grades, universities are now finding it difficult to accommodate 135,000 potential students with a legal requirement for an offer. Professor Mark Fellowes, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Reading, told the BBC that there had been no contact from the Department of Education on how institutions are supposed to take all these students. However, Conservative MP Sir John Redwood didn’t agree with the assessment, as he explained on Newsnight.
Professor Fellowes had said in a filmed report: “To my knowledge there’s been no direct contact whatsoever with universities.
“There may well have been conversations, but I’m certainly not privy to any of those. It’s less than ideal.”
Speaking to Kirsty Wark live, Sir John told her: “Indeed there must be discussions between the student applicants and the universities.
“I think the Government will also be talking to the universities to see where there’s a shortage of capacity if they can help.”
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He added: “I didn’t recognise the comment in your introductory film that ministers haven’t been in touch with the university sector.
“I was on an online meeting call with other MPs and ministers from the Education Department yesterday.
“We were told that there has been contact as you would expect and there would be more contact of an urgent kind in the next two or three days as the Government does try to assist the university sector to deal with the sudden change.
“It is a great pity that we’re in this situation. Government ministers didn’t want inflation, but now they’ve come up with the second best answer.”
According to the BBC, the Department of Education has not provided any so far.
The UK Government was pressured into a U-turn after nearly 40 percent of A-level grades were awarded lower than predictions using an algorithm.
A-level and GCSE students in England have now be given grades estimated by their teachers.
Mr Williamson has apologised for “the disruption that every child had to suffer” during the pandemic.
However, he is not facing calls to resign.
