DR UK CEO Kamran Mallick said: “It is a huge relief that Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has announced that teacher assessed grades will now stand for those unable to take A-Levels and GCSEs this year due to the pandemic.
“We welcome the decision to allow students to take forward their most favourable outcome into the next steps of their academic or working careers.
“Given students were already worried about the new academic year bringing its own set of challenges – remote learning brings greater accessibility for some disabled students and greater challenges for others – the past week has added unnecessary stress to disabled students’ lives.
“We know that some students’ places at universities have already been reallocated due to the shambles that saw many state educated pupils downgraded from their expected results. This causes further distress for disabled students who have greater accessibility challenges in education as it is.
“It is good that the government has seen sense and backed down. However it should not be forgotten that this circumstance had no need to have arisen at all if the government had listened to experts in the field in the first place.
“As it prepares to release its disability strategy in the coming months, we call on government to continue to listen deeply to real world experts in advance of proposing change.”