On Thursday, hundreds of young people in Norwich will get their GCSE results. With other MPs. Clive Lewis, Labour MP for Norwich South, is demanding the government take action to prevent another A-levels type exams grades fiasco. He is calling for teacher predicted grades for GCSE students to be honoured.

Clive Lewis said:

“The government’s chaotic handling of A-level results has already had a life-changing negative impact on thousands of young students. And disadvantaged students from low-income families, disabled students, and BAME students have been hit hardest. We simply cannot wait for history to repeat itself with an even larger number of young people waiting for their GCSE results.”

Clive Lewis has co-signed the following letter to ministers:

“On Thursday more than 100,000 16-year olds will get results that could change their lives. Between them they will receive over 4.6 million results, each one the difference between success and failure.

Last week there was a national shame in the A-Level results process. It has cost many of our constituents places at university, on further education courses and apprenticeships and thrown them into panic and despair. No reasonable person could look at the news last week, our post bags or the individual stories of disappointment and misery and think that was the best we could have managed as a country.

So, we are writing to you to implore you not to allow a repeat of what has happened, to use your power to prevent it. We call upon you to honour the predicated grades of all GCSE students so that no one is treated as a statistical outcome and instead you place trust in the teaching profession and their ability to read students they meet almost daily more effectively than a line of computer code.

Where students are unhappy with what they were predicted the routes of sitting the exams next year would still be open. While undoubtedly this policy would give a small number a grade they would have failed to secure, it would ensure we do not see a repeat of thousands of good students penalised for going to schools without a history of excellence. Your own data shows private schools increased the proportion of pupils achieving top grades – A* and A – twice as much as pupils at comprehensives.

Please stand up for an education sector that inspires pupils to better things rather than putting them off learning for life.”

This afternoon government made complete U-turn on their first decision to alter teacher exam grades, which disproportionately affected pupils in state schools.