Prime minister Rishi Sunak has been urged to apologise to A-level students who miss out on their expected grades this week for him “refusing to invest in Covid catch-up programmes”.
The Liberal Democrats have called for an apology as the party released a new analysis estimating that the cohort of students receiving A-level, T-level and Btec results on Thursday lost almost 50 days of learning during the height of the pandemic.
The party’s comments come as experts predict that tens of thousands of school leavers could miss out on the top A-level grades they might have expected last year.
Liberal Democrat education spokesperson Munira Wilson said: “Rishi Sunak should apologise to students who will miss out on their expected grades this week for letting them down by refusing to invest in Covid catch-up programmes.”
This refers to the controversy in 2021 when education recovery commissioner Sir Kevan Collins resigned after the government did not back his plan to fund a £15 billion catch-up package.
Mr Sunak was the chancellor of Boris Johnson’s government at the time.
The Liberal Democrats said that, overall, the cohort of students who are receiving results this week have lost 28 million days of learning during the pandemic.
It has used London School of Economics (LSE) findings that estimated learning losses - resulting from school closures, student absences and how effectively students could learn from home - across the summer term of 2020 through to the spring term of 2021.
From the LSE analysis, Liberal Democrats have estimated that this year’s cohort each missed an average of 48.5 days across the same time period.
The party then multiplied this figure by the 580,272 students in England aged 15 on 31 August 2020 who were recorded as studying at state-funded secondary, special and alternative provision schools and non-maintained special schools.
Ms Wilson added: “Less than half of school leaders will sign up for the government’s National Tutoring Programme (NTP) next year. Most of these are quitting the programme because they say that their school can no longer afford it.”
A report by the National Foundation for Educational Research earlier this year found that among the 70 per cent of senior leaders who said that they were currently or had previously used the NTP, more than half (51 per cent) are likely to have dropped out by the end of the current academic year.
In May, the Department for Education announced that it would fund half of the tutoring costs next year under the NTP.
Ms Wilson added that the cohort of students should be “proud” of the results that “they get in the face of huge, unprecedented challenges”.
This year’s A-level results will be lower than last year and are expected to be similar to those before the pandemic, with some experts warning that this year’s cohort is the “unluckiest” to come out of the pandemic.
Analysis by dataHE reported on Saturday predicts that nearly 60,000 sixth-formers with predicted A-level grades of AAB or higher will not receive those expected grades on results day.
A DfE spokesperson said: “This year we are returning to normal, so it will be most meaningful to compare grades to 2019. If you got a grade B in 2019 you will be just as likely to receive the same grade this year.
“We should be celebrating pupils’ achievements and not undermining their efforts.
“We are continuing to support students catching up from the pandemic with £5 billion available to help pupils recover, including over £1.5 billion for the NTP and 16-19 Tuition Fund, which have supported millions of students in need of extra support.”
