The Government has now recognised the inevitable and announced that students – for A levels and GCSEs – will be able to use either their teacher predicted grades or the grades calculated by the algorithm. This will come as a welcome relief to all those students who had been unfairly downgraded and will mean that time and effort no longer has to be taken up with complex appeals.

One consequence is that universities will have to decide what to do about all those students they turned down for a place because they hadn’t got the grades required, but who will now have them?

And we mustn’t forget that there are some BTec students who are still waiting for their results.

The whole process has been really badly handled that has caused intense stress and worry for many students in Leeds and across the country who have been in touch with me. I welcome the changes announced today but there now needs to be an inquiry into what went wrong so something like this never happens again.

Hilary Benn MP