Schools and Colleges: Qualification Results and Full Opening

Lord Wood of Anfield Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure I am not alone in saying that education has enabled me to go way beyond my circumstances. It is vitally important that we know the impact that policies have on different communities. Ofqual published an equality impact assessment when it launched its consultation on the 2020 exams and it will publish a similar document in relation to the examinations next year.

[Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to take the Minister back, I am afraid, to the process leading up to the announcement of A-level results, because the process that she described is really quite extraordinary. It is not that there was no consultation between the Minister and Ofqual, it is that there was consistent regular dialogue, with questions asked and answers given, and yet the fiasco that we now know about still unfolded. It does not say much for the competence of the Minister that, despite intense scrutiny, conversation and demands for answers, we still ended up with the scale of the discriminatory fiasco that emerged. I ask again: how can it possibly be justified that the accountability and responsibility principles applying to the Permanent Secretary and the Ofqual head do not also apply to a Minister who was so embroiled in the process for weeks and months in the run-up?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, as I have outlined, during that process, reassurances were given that the limitations of this system could be dealt with through an appeals process. Noble Lords will have seen the incremental changes in that appeals process. I have outlined the introduction of mocks after the Scottish results. When the balance changed, the most just of the two systems became the use of only teacher assessments. That is when the decision in relation to using only teacher assessments was taken, but that decision was for Ofqual, in agreement with the Secretary of State.