AS-levels and A-levels

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 16th April 2013 Westminster Hall

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

Thank you for calling me to speak, Mr Dobbin. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship and to take part in this important debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) on securing it.

As a member of the Education Committee, I have seen the Government’s ill-thought-through and dogmatic reforms hit the brick wall of reality too many times to count, so I am not surprised that we are here again debating a set of proposed reforms that have managed to unite Cambridge university, the CBI and the teaching unions in opposition to them. I do not know whether that is a first, but it is certainly important.

Just a few weeks ago, the Secretary of State for Education had the good sense to ditch his ill-thought-out proposals to replace GCSEs, after realising that, apart from himself and a few Conservatives who were loyal to him, no one in the world of teaching supported what he was trying to impose on our beleaguered education system. I was pleased that the Education Committee, which is chaired by the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), a Conservative, could collate the evidence and demonstrate to the Secretary of State that he needed to back off.

As an aside, let me say that it would be remiss of me not to place on record my hope that the Committee’s Chairman makes a quick recovery from his skiing injuries and can soon continue his work of scrutinising the Department for Education. I am sure he is watching our proceedings on the internet as I speak, and he will know that our good wishes go to him.

There are several problems with the Government’s proposals. First, the changes will undermine the value and status of the A-level as a qualification, and it is not just me and other Opposition Members saying that. According to Cambridge university, the changes will

“jeopardise over a decade of progress towards fairer access”

to higher education—quite an indictment for any Secretary of State. Brian Lightman of the Association of School and College Leaders has been quoted as saying that his organisation is

“not convinced by the case for wholesale reform of this exam, which is a very successful qualification”.

It gets worse for the Secretary of State, with the Headmasters and Headmistresses Conference calling the proposals “rushed and incoherent”.

It is worth re-emphasising some of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston. My single biggest concern about the reforms relates to the loss of a system in which students can take four or even five subjects, decide which they wish to take to the higher level and ditch the others, while banking the learning they have already done. If that opportunity is taken away, we will deprive the student of choice and bind young people to decisions that they may feel were wrong. That will leave them with the option of completing work that is no longer of any use to them or, in some cases, dropping out and walking away from further education. Surely, no one wants young people to waste their precious time and the resources the state has invested in them.

I do not see how creating a two-tier system for those aged 16 to 19 helps to bring about rigour, which is supposedly the Education Secretary’s guiding mission. The director of admissions at Cambridge university is on record as saying:

“We are worried...if AS-level disappears, we will lose many of the gains in terms of fair admissions and widening participation that we have made in the last decade… We are convinced that a large part of this success derives from the confidence engendered in students from non-traditional backgrounds when they achieve high examination grades at the end of year 12”.

Those who benefit from the existing system—particularly those from non-traditional backgrounds—tend to be from the lower end of the income scale. It is those students who will be disadvantaged by these reforms—students from deprived areas such as my constituency. I would be interested to hear what assessment has been made of the potential impact of the reforms on widening participation in higher education and whether the Minister is concerned that a two-tier A-level system will limit aspiration for young people in deprived areas.

There is also concern about which organisations will have a role in developing A-levels, with the 1994 Group of universities already feeling excluded. In a briefing note, its director of research says his group wants clarity about the role of the Russell Group in overseeing A-levels in key subjects. He says:

“Many of the leading Universities in these subjects—including some of our members—are not members of the Russell Group, and we believe that in linking excellence with one self-selecting group of Universities, DfE Ministers are perpetuating a false and damaging misperception of the sector.”

I hope the Minister will provide that clarity and confirm that development will be inclusive, rather than exclusive.

Even if these latest ideas were the right ones, there are also concerns about timing. Will the Minister tell us what assessment has been made of the impact of bringing in these reforms side by side with the many other so-called radical reforms that the Secretary of State is imposing on our schools? Glenys Stacey, the head of Ofqual has criticised the plans on the grounds that the Government’s proposed timetable is “challenging”—I think she was trying to be kind in her use of word, and I suspect she may have considered more robust language. However, she did say that introducing changes to A-levels at the same time as changes to GCSEs will

“place a considerable burden on schools”,

and my hon. Friend talked about the need for resources to help schools deal with some of that burden.

Glenys Stacey said the timetable proposed

“means that qualifications need to be in schools and colleges by autumn next year.”

I am not sure whether schools, with all the other reforms being foisted on them by the Government, are in a position to implement a second set of difficult changes in that short time scale.

We have seen before the dangers of the Education Secretary going too far and too fast with his reforms, and I would again urge caution about trying to reinvent the educational wheel. Do the Government intend to turn their back on fair admissions and widening participation? Do they want people from communities such as mine to get the same opportunities for higher education, or do they really want to revert to higher education for those from public schools and the most affluent communities, where young people get a much better start in life than they do in inner city wards such as those in my constituency? I am sure that that is not true, but the Secretary of State must realise that just as he got things badly wrong with his planned reform of GCSEs. He has gone down the wrong road with A-levels. He has failed to listen to what the professional world is saying to him, and it is time for another of his spectacular U-turns before he is caused even more embarrassment.