Minister must “carry the can” for the “terrible farce” of this year’s A-level results, a former head of Ofsted has said.

Sir Michael Wilshaw, who was chief inspector between 2012 and 2016, said education secretary Gavin Williamson was “losing the dressing room”, as headteachers’ confidence in his leadership plummets in the wake of A-level results day.

The chaos surrounding A-level results deepened over the weekend as Ofqual dramatically withdrew its criteria for students hoping to challenge their grades using their results in mock exams, just hours after it was first published.

In a brief statement, Ofqual said the policy was “being reviewed” by its board and that further information would be released “in due course”.

Sir Michael told BBC Radio 4‘s Today programme that the situation regarding A-level results had been “a terrible farce”.

Asked if it goes to the “political head” - to Gavin Williamson and Boris Johnson - to take responsibility, Sir Michael said: “There has to be political responsibility, like all things at the end of the day, and somebody has to carry the can, the politicians, the political leaders have to carry the can.

“And the great danger for Gavin Williamson at the moment is that he is losing confidence, he is losing the confidence of headteachers around the country who have seen this happen.

“He hasn’t exactly covered himself in glory over the pandemic period with all sorts of changes of direction - saying that primary schools would be open when they obviously couldn’t be under the social distancing rules, saying every poor child would receive a laptop and obviously that didn’t happen, the school meals voucher system wasn’t working.

“And so he’s losing the dressing room, if you like. Headteachers have got to feel confident that they are being well led by the Department for Education who are holding this agency, Ofqual, to account.”

Sir Michael said the government should now accept teacher-predicted grades to end confusion over A-level results.

“Well, I think it is inevitable, absolutely inevitable,” he said.

“Of course we’re all worried about standardisation, of course we’re all worried that there shouldn’t be rampant grade inflation, but, look, our poor children, the great majority of children have suffered hugely over the last six months, particularly poor youngsters, and if we err on the side of generosity now, no one will blame the government for that and no one will blame Ofqual for that.

“This is an exceptional year. So we should follow the Northern Ireland example and the Scottish example and say that we will accept the estimated grades.”