School gate: Ken Boston, feeling depressed about education and political machinations

Ministers “sexed up” evidence against a former examinations chief who was seen as a “troublesome priest”, a committee of MPs was told yesterday.

Ken Boston, who resigned as head of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), said that he had been misrepresented by ministers to an official inquiry and to the Commons. They gave false evidence about holding key meetings with him last summer and about supposedly pressing him for updates on the marking fiasco of key stage tests, he claimed.

He admitted full responsibility and fell on his sword over the problems, which delayed the results of tests for millions of 11 and 14-year-olds.

But Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, and Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, had contributed to a “fiction” and gave flawed evidence to Lord Sutherland of Houndwood’s inquiry into what went wrong, he said. Dr Boston told the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee that this was used to portray him as “complacent, disengaged and constantly beleaguered with questions I was unable to answer”.

He added: “This is far from the truth. It was not corrected by ministers or government officials at draft report stage and it has been used by ministers to my serious disadvantage. At the end of a 45-year career in education, I don’t want to be portrayed by ministers as complacent and disengaged when it’s untrue and unfair and based on absolutely false evidence.”

Dr Boston said that the inquiry, ordered by Mr Balls, was unable to find the Schools Secretary responsible because he had made its terms of reference too narrow. The report did not cover ministerial failings, and concluded that the blame lay largely with the QCA and with ETS, the American-owned company that oversaw the tests.

Dr Boston offered to quit last December but, rather than accept his resignation, the QCA board suspended him. His resignation was finally accepted at the end of March.

Mr Knight gave evidence to the inquiry about a supposed meeting that he had with Dr Boston at which he claimed that the QCA head had referred all his questions to another official. The Schools Minister has now admitted that no such meeting took place. He contacted Lord Sutherland in February to correct the misunderstanding but Dr Boston was not informed of this until early yesterday.

Dr Boston told the committee: “It’s disgraceful — I was misrepresented by ministers in public and this is the first time I’ve been told. The Sutherland report is wrong. It reported that I advised ministers to extend the date of the test results. I did not.

“Evidence against me is being sexed up in the report by Lord Sutherland on the basis on false evidence given by ministers.”

Dr Boston implied that there had been a plot to oust him, dating back to March last year, when he was told that the QCA was being scrapped and replaced. He said that David Bell, the Permanent Secretary at the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), had sought his resignation before Lord Sutherland started writing his report.

“By the time ministers gave their evidence, the skids were under me,” he said. “I think I was seen as a troublesome priest. The failure of the tests was perhaps a catalyst.”

David Laws, the Liberal Democrat education spokesman, said that his remarks “reveal the way ministers are distancing themselves from problems which they have created while seeking to micromanage the education system”.

A DCSF spokesman said: “Lord Sutherland has made clear that the genuine mistake that the Schools Minister made in his evidence to the inquiry did not materially affect any of the key findings. Ministers wrote to the select committee and to him to point out the mistake this year.”

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