Plaid leader warns of legal challenge and no confidence vote over exam results

Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price has warned the Welsh Government they could face a legal challenge over this summer’s exam results.

Speaking at a rally outside the Senedd building today Mr Price revealed the party is in talks regarding a Judicial Review and added that the Welsh Government’s performance over A-level results meant it had lost the confidence of students, parents and teachers and hinted at vote of no confidence in the government could be tabled.

“We are currently exploring the possibility of issuing legal proceedings against Qualifications Wales and the Welsh Government in parallel with the legal action being brought by the Good Law Project in England,” Mr Price said.

“If you are prepared to go public and use you experience as a test case then please email me with your details. We can win and must win this fight.”

“If the Welsh Government continues to say it has no confidence in teachers, then teachers will have no confidence in it. And neither will we. If a motion of no confidence was good enough for the Labour Party in Scotland, then maybe it’s right for us in Wales too,” he added.

The rally attended by over 500 people, was organised by school students to protest the process used to grade exams this year, with learners awarded grades based on teachers’ estimates which were then put through a standardisation process.

A-level results published last Thursday revealed that just over 40% of Welsh A-level students had their results downgraded from teachers’ recommendations and there are fears that even more GCSE students could see their grades go down when results are published on Thursday.

Mr Price welcomed the news that the Senedd Education Committee begin a review of the exams process on Tuesday and called for the government to make changes to the system before Thursday’s results are released:

“The Welsh Government needs to commit to reinstating the Centre Assessed Grades for all those students that have been downgraded. It also needs to commit to using Centre Assessed Grades as a basis for the GCSE announcements this week. If this does not happen then we must not let up on the pressure,” he said.

A petition calling for students in Wales to receive teacher predicted exam grades has already been signed by 22,000 people.