Students furious about the government’s handling of exam results have gathered outside of the Department of Education in London to demand Gavin Williamson’s resignation.
The education secretary was forced to make a U-turn last week and give students their teacher-predicted grades, after an algorithm system saw tens of thousands given lower marks than expected.
Many students are still angry after losing university places that were handed to other candidates in the days after the algorithm-based results were announced.
Campaigners say there is evidence to suggest the algorithm method disproportionately affected schools in poorer areas.
Protesters chanted “Get Gav gone” and “We are the future”, and carried signs reading “Sack Tory exam cheats” and “Fair grades for all”.
Glen Morgan-Shaw, one of the organisers, said in a speech: “Education is dangerous, when we are educated we can see when the government has f***** up.
“We are going to call them out on their racism, we are going to call them out on their classism and we are going to call them out on the fact they are doing everything to protect themselves when they should be protecting the people.”
Morgan-Shaw, 18, saw his predicted Btec marks revised downwards by two grades, although still managed to get his place at university to study music.
He told the PA news agency: “I was one of the lucky ones but I know so many people who were screwed over.”
Naomi James-Mitchell, 18, said her A-level grades had been reduced from her predicted AABC to BCDD, meaning she lost her place to study chemical engineering at her first choice university.
Following the U-turn, she was offered a place at Aberdeen, but said many people she knew had been left struggling for a place.
“Even with the U-turn the government has shown they don’t care about students,” she said.
The protesters are now calling for leave to appeal against centre-assessed grades (CAG), which is their teachers’ judgment of the most likely grade a student would have achieved if exams had gone ahead.
James-Mitchell said many students believe CAGs are inherently biased because of teachers’ perceptions of the people they teach.
She added: “Teachers see me as black before they see me as a good student, and they see me as a woman before they see me as a science student.”
Announcing the government’s U-turn over grades, Williamson said he was “sorry for the distress this has caused young people and their parents” and that he hoped the move would “provide the certainty and reassurance they deserve.”
However, the decision to revert to teachers’ grades has caused its own problems, with many universities. now oversubscribed for courses beginning in the autumn.
On Thursday, the government announced it had agreed to lift the cap on the number of places on medicine, dentistry, veterinary science and teaching courses following the U-turn on A-level grades.
It came after HuffPost UK spoke to a number of aspiring doctors who were left without a place at medical school following the exam results fiasco.
A number of universities had already said they would have to give students places on courses in 2021 just to honour all their offers to study.
Durham University has promised a bursary and guarantee of accommodation for everyone who defers until 2021 due to “capacity issues”, the BBC reported.
But the government has yet to address how this could affect students finishing their A-levels next year, with a number of places on 2021 university courses already taken up by students who have agreed to defer the start of their studies.