Schools: Exams

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, in addition to the laptops that I outlined, 50,000 4G routers have been given to disadvantaged children. We have worked closely with the mobile phone companies to lift data limits so that children and families can access data on educational sites without limit. I advise noble Lords to look at the “Get help with tech” part of the website. However, in relation to space and the gathering together of people, contacts are what we need to limit at the moment, so those kinds of out-of-school settings are open only for vulnerable children and children of key workers. In relation to graduates, the academic mentors, who are part of the catch-up programme that Teach First has been using, are physical mentors in schools, so I anticipate that some graduates and potentially retired teachers have taken advantage of that.

[Baroness Blower (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the last time I had occasion to ask about exams, it was to ask the Minister why the Government had not followed the lead of other UK jurisdictions in cancelling 16-plus exams, given that it was clear even at that stage that they could not be held fairly in 2021. Today I ask whether her department will take the opportunity to review the appropriateness of exams at 16-plus going forward, particularly given that, however good online teaching is, current year 10 students will have missed at least a term and a half—and probably more—of face-to-face teaching.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, as I have outlined, the Government closed schools as a last resort and cancelled exams as the best independent way of assessing students’ performance. The tectonic plate that shifted with the new variant over the Christmas and after-Christmas period has changed things dramatically from the last time that I stood at the Dispatch Box. However, it remains the case in England, as I have outlined—there are different approaches in different parts of the United Kingdom because of different education systems—that most students in England transition at 16, and that is why an examination at 16 is important.