Gavin as good as you get

Playbook takes its seat as Williamson faces the Commons education committee

Yesterday must have been a long day for Gavin Williamson. Before his 10am appearance in front of the Commons education committee, the under-fire education secretary had already managed to leapfrog the Post Office queues to get a letter delivered to Ofqual and—in what must surely be seen as a momentous achievement for Royal Mail—receive and digest a reply from England’s exams watchdog.

Williamson’s outgoing letter, dated 13 January and sent to Coventry (not metaphorically—that’s just where Ofqual is based), said that a “breadth of evidence should inform teachers’ judgements” on A-level and GCSE results, and that Ofqual should “explore the possibility of providing externally set tasks or papers, in order that teachers can draw on this resource to support their assessments of students”.