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The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dobbin.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) on securing the debate and on putting her case so clearly and in such a measured way. I am also pleased that we have had useful and helpful contributions from a number of other Members, including members of the Education Committee.
A lot of the contributions have pointed out that some of the proposals that we are discussing are controversial, and clearly they are. We are aware of a lot of the feedback that has come in from different organisations. Sometimes when Governments go out to consultation on particular proposals, they realise that they have made mistakes and they change the proposals. As a number of Members have indicated, we did that on the reforms to GCSEs that we had proposed, but I should say to those Members who have at times today suggested that popularity is the benchmark for introducing policies and the ultimate test that there are many other examples of changes in education and in other Government policy areas where proposals were extremely controversial at the time—I am thinking of key stage 2 national tests, the introduction of Ofsted and sponsored academies—and not welcomed by many in the relevant sector when they were introduced that have proven to be generally very successful and which are now welcomed. The consensus changes.
If we wanted an example of what happens when policy is introduced just on the basis of what is popular with the sector, we have Wales to look at. Wales has introduced, over time, many policies that were extremely popular in the sector, but which have proven, in many cases, to do huge damage to the quality of education in Wales. That is now widely and internationally recognised.
Pat Glass
Does the Minister accept that although those controversial reforms that he mentioned, such as the introduction of Ofsted and key stage 2 tests, may have been unpopular with some people working in education, there was nevertheless a body of evidence to support their introduction? Therefore, although they were perhaps controversial, there was huge evidence behind them, and they have subsequently proven the evidence.
Mr Laws
That was not said by many of the opponents of those proposals at the time. Actually, many opponents, including to sponsored academies, continue to maintain today that there is no evidence to show the success of those policies, so I do not agree with the hon. Lady that the issue is as simple as that.
Mr Laws
If I may, I will make a little progress and then give way to the hon. Lady. I want to ensure that I get my speech under way.
As the key qualification for progression to university and as a key end-of-school qualification in and of its own right, A-levels have to be robust and to be rigorous, as was pointed out earlier. They need to compare well with the best qualifications internationally; they need to help our young people to compete with students from other countries for university places in the UK and abroad; they need to give pupils the best possible preparation for further study, teaching the core knowledge and skills that young people need to make the most of an undergraduate course; and they need to be—as the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), the shadow Schools Minister, indicated earlier—strong qualifications in their own right, providing test and challenge at the end of the school or college experience.
Our reforms for 16-to-18 education build on the reforms that we are making to the national curriculum, secondary accountability and GCSEs. Our proposals in those areas, which are out for consultation until 1 May, are to publish an average point score measure and a value-added progress measure covering English and mathematics, three of the EBacc subjects and three additional slots for other subjects that can be academic, arts or vocational qualifications. As the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston will know, the progress measure will be part of the floor standard. Those reforms will place a strong focus on English and maths while ensuring that students have a rounded knowledge of sciences, languages, humanities and the arts. There will also be a stronger emphasis on computer science and programming.
Our reforms of A-levels are designed to build on that strong base. We want to give students a better experience of post-16 study, ensuring they are studying for rigorous qualifications that will provide them with the right skills and knowledge to allow them to progress. Students currently start A-levels in September and then they immediately start preparing for examinations in January. They and their teachers have spent too much time thinking about exams and re-sitting them, encouraging in some cases a “learn and forget” approach. A student taking A-level maths would need to sit six exams: three papers for their AS-level, and three for their A2. The old rules allowed multiple re-sitting of those papers, so a student might sit some papers in January, and if they wanted to improve their grades they could re-sit them in June and again the following year, while sitting and then re-sitting their A2 papers. In 2010, 74% of maths A-level students re-sat at least one paper.
During the past few years, too many students in our schools system have spent too long preparing for and taking tests in years 10, 11, 12 and 13. During the past decade, we have been in danger of creating an “exam factory” in our schools, particularly in the last four years of education, rather than creating places of deep learning where teachers and students are given the time and space to develop deep knowledge of subjects, rather than just preparing constantly for public examinations. That is one of the key reasons why the Government are making the changes that we are debating today.
The focus that there has been on exams in every one of those final four years of school education can lead to young people failing to deliver and develop that deep understanding of their subject, and to their failing to make connections between topics. Re-sits have also led to too much teaching time being sacrificed for assessment preparation. Research—hon. Members have said that they are keen on it—from Durham university and Cambridge Assessment suggests that repeated opportunities for students to re-sit exams have also risked a form of grade inflation. This is why our reforms to A-levels are so important. Ofqual announced the first stage of the reforms last autumn by removing the January exam window, which will reduce the number of re-sits, as the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston said.
Seema Malhotra
The Minister makes some valid points, which I also referred to, about ways in which we might reform, such as reducing re-sits, which may have contributed to grade inflation, but does he not agree that those changes—those improvements—can take place within the current framework and that the de-coupling of AS-levels and A-levels is not required to achieve those improvements?
Mr Laws
Some of those changes clearly could take place without the additional measures that we are taking, but we believe, for the reasons that I am giving, and will continue to give, that they would not by themselves go far enough. That is why we announced earlier this year that from 2015 we would return to linear A-levels, with examinations taking place at the end of the two-year course. Linear A-levels will free up time for teachers to focus on what teachers do best, which is providing high-quality teaching, developing their students’ deep understanding and love of a subject, and ensuring, therefore, that the final two years of education are about not simply public examinations and test preparation, but doing what our education system is designed to do, which is educating young people in these key subjects.
Mr Laws
I would like to make more progress and then give way to the hon. Gentleman.
Some have claimed that the introduction of linear A-levels will have a negative impact on the social mobility agenda. If that was going to be the case, this Government, and certainly my party, would have no truck with these changes. Creating a more socially mobile society and education system is crucial. The point that my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) made extremely well was that, listening to and talking about the criticisms from some in the education system, including from Cambridge university, people would think that we had an ideal system for social mobility today in universities such as Cambridge and Oxford. Actually, the proportion of young people from private schools and selective state schools in those institutions remains, in our view, unacceptably high. That model is not delivering social mobility.
Contrary to the claims I have mentioned, linear A-levels will allow young people to develop greater intellectual maturity through a two-year course. Some students may not have developed the skills that they need to excel in an exam in the first year of their A-level course, particularly those who may have had less support at school and home to develop independent study skills. A two-year course will allow all students progressively to develop the skills they need to be successful at university and to demonstrate their abilities through exams at the end of two years. We will also do more to target high-achieving sixth formers, in terms of the social mobility agenda, to ensure that they are fully aware of the higher education opportunities that should be open to them in all universities, including some of the best in the country. We will ensure that they are supported in exploring those options.
The crucial thing about a strategy for social mobility through the education system is not to think that we can solve the massive injustices in access to our education system through tweaking the admissions process at age 17 or 18. All the international evidence demonstrates that, in an education system with massive gaps between the outcomes for young people from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds, which are already visible at ages five, 11 and 16, as we have had in this country for far too long, reducing those gaps through the measures that we are taking to intervene in weak schools—including policies such as the pupil premium, for example, which will target more money for the education of disadvantaged youngsters—will help us to make a step change in social mobility in this country. Those are far more important than the issues that we have been debating today.
Nic Dakin
I thank the Minister for giving way. I find his contribution somewhat naive and a little complacent. I am pleased that he recognises that teachers are doing what they do best in helping youngsters learn, but that is what they are doing now. They do not need changes to assist them in that job, which they are doing extremely well.
Will the Minister focus on the key issue that has come up consistently in this debate—hon. Members agree with much of what he has already said—which is the significant detrimental effect of AS-levels being divorced from A-levels, which will result if the Government continue ploughing on with that ill-conceived policy?
Mr Laws
I will come to the hon. Gentleman’s point directly. May I first say, somewhat gently, that it is naive and complacent to think that the issue that we are discussing—whether universities rely on AS-level grades, predicted grades or GCSE grades—has any central role to play in challenging the massive inequalities of opportunity in our education system today. It is a tiny issue, compared with the huge gaps that are emerging at ages five, 11 and 16. All the evidence, which hon. Members have been urging the Government to use and pay attention to, demonstrates that our social mobility problems are about the inequalities of outcome at those ages, not what is happening with university admissions.
Mr Laws
I will make more progress before giving way again to the hon. Lady.
Some critics of the linear A-level have cited a link between the introduction of modular A-levels as part of the Curriculum 2000 reforms, which the hon. Member for Cardiff West, the shadow Schools Minister, mentioned earlier, and widening participation in higher education. However, the major increase in HE participation took place in the early 1990s, before the introduction of modular A-levels in 2000. Universities continue to work hard to widen participation and ensure they are opening their doors to students from all backgrounds, and I am confident that they will keep doing so when the new linear A-levels are introduced. Indeed, in many cases they need to do much more to offer those opportunities to young people, particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Government intend to work in partnership with some of the universities, particularly those that have poor rates of access, to try to target those youngsters who should be gaining access to some of our best universities, but are not doing so.
Making the A-level linear does, of course, have implications—the hon. Gentleman raised this point earlier—for the current AS qualification. My ministerial colleagues and officials have been talking to and working with school and college leaders and universities to understand precisely the concerns that he set out so clearly to ensure that we can address them.
As we move to fully linear A-levels with exams at the end of the two-year course, the AS-level will remain as a qualification in its own right. It will continue to be available as a stand-alone qualification to be taught over either one year or two years, but the marks from it will obviously no longer count towards the A-level. Longer term, our ambition is to develop a brand new AS qualification that is at the same level of challenge as a full A-level, but for the time being that is for the future.
From 2015, the AS-level will be decoupled as a stand-alone, linear qualification and will remain at the same level of challenge as existing AS qualifications. That means that schools and colleges can decide whether to teach the AS-level over one year or two years. If schools and colleges decide to teach the AS in any given subject in one year, that would give them the opportunity, which I think the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) was seeking—it is a valid concern—to co-teach the AS and the new A-level together, if that meets the needs of the students and if it is a sensible way for those institutions to ensure that they can deliver education for all young people who want to access both A-levels and the AS.
We want to preserve the AS so that students can study a fourth subject in addition to their full A-levels. We know that universities consider the AS a valuable qualification to provide that breadth, which a number of hon. Members mentioned. We also know that some universities use the AS in their admissions processes, although most place more emphasis on GCSE results and predicted A-level grades, as well as looking at a range of other information, including personal statements, academic references and, in some cases, admissions tests and interviews.
Mr Laws
I will make this one point before giving way.
Most universities do not use AS results as the main basis for making those decisions. Indeed, in some subjects GCSE results can provide a better prediction of degree results across all universities than AS results. Students who have very good GCSE results from schools where the general pattern is for below-average GCSE attainment also have real potential to progress at university.
Kevin Brennan
If the Minister continues with his proposals, AS-levels will be available for universities to use as evidence in only one subject, instead of all the subjects that the young person is studying. Although we could do with more research, he knows that there is powerful research evidence that suggests that AS-level is in fact the best predictor of how young people will do at university. [Interruption.] He can shake his head, but his own university’s research suggests that AS-levels are the best predictor—far better than GCSEs, and far better even than university admissions tests. I have the research here. I thought he had read it, but obviously he has not.
Mr Laws
I repeat the point I have just made: the majority of universities do not use AS-levels as the main basis for making such decisions. Indeed, we know that, in some subjects, GCSE results provide a better prediction of degree results across all universities than AS results.
Seema Malhotra
I thank the Minister for giving way again. He says that most universities do not use AS-level results as the main basis, but that does not mean that most do not use them as a key part of their decision making. Does he not agree that taking away AS-level results at that moment would take away something that is seen as a vital indicator of how well pupils are doing, particularly pupils from state schools or disadvantaged backgrounds?
Mr Laws
No, our judgment is that, if we get education right earlier on, which is the critical stage for delivering the social mobility that the hon. Lady and I want, it should be perfectly possible for universities to make such judgments without a loss from the removal of the AS-level. Some universities may have to adjust how they handle admissions. A-levels, however, are not simply mechanisms to help universities to sort students. The most important priority is to develop A-levels that secure the best possible educational outcomes for young people. Earlier, the shadow Minister said that A-levels are not simply to be structured around the needs of university access. They form a far wider purpose than that.
It will continue to be as important as ever that students from all backgrounds have the information they need to make the right choices about higher education based on teachers’ assessments of their progress, as well as formal examination results. School is the best place to monitor students’ progress and to help them understand the attainment they are working at and aiming for.
A-levels must be high quality, and they must change over time to keep up with world standards. Universities, the bodies that once set up examination boards themselves, are not as core a part of the process of qualification development as they once were. A good way for A-levels to keep up with the challenges of the global marketplace in qualifications is to respond to what universities are looking for. Independent learning and critical thinking are vital skills that A-levels must continue to develop.
We believe that losing touch with universities has meant that A-levels have not always been a suitable preparation for those embarking on degrees in some subjects. Indeed, many private schools offer different courses, such as sixth-term examination papers and the Cambridge pre-U, for those purposes. A-level reform is vital to ensure that all students, whether in the state sector or the private sector, have the best possible skills and knowledge to enable them to compete effectively. That is why the Government are giving universities a greater role in the development of A-levels. Awarding organisations will work with universities to determine the content of the new A-levels, and we are delighted that the Russell Group will be part of that. We also welcome contributions from other universities, as a number of hon. Members have indicated. We expect that the first new A-levels will be developed for teaching to begin in September 2015, with the first exams to be sat in 2017. Each year, Ofqual will also lead a post-qualification review process involving the Russell Group.
We can be confident from the way Ofqual has exercised its functions over the past few years that it will give us the independent and impartial advice that we need to make the right decisions and to develop an A-level system that is fit for purpose—not just for university entry, but for educating young people in the critical years of their lives.