Boris Johnson has been accused of throwing civil service leaders under the bus after he sacked a senior official at the Department for Education and blamed the A-levels exams fiasco on a “mutant algorithm”.
The prime minister acknowledged the stress caused by the situation – which eventually resulted in a U-turn with A-level and GCSE grades in England awarded based on teachers’ assessments rather than the algorithm.
The Department for Education announced its permanent secretary was to step down at the end of next week after Mr Johnson “concluded that there is a need for fresh official leadership”.
The announcement that Jonathan Slater will be replaced comes a day after Sally Collier resigned from her role as head of exams regulator Ofqual.
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