GCSE and A-level Results: Attainment Gap

Baroness Penn Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, I commend my noble friend for securing this debate about regional inequality. It also raises the question of the value of GCSEs and A-levels. On the regional point, perhaps the most significant issue that I will raise is that of child poverty, which is up in the north-east by seven percentage points since 2010-11, against a background of it having begun to improve at one stage. Teachers never advance poverty as an excuse for lower attainment, but it can be a significant contributing factor. Attempts to narrow the attainment gap in the past decade or more have resulted in an ever-increasing narrowing of the curriculum and an ever-sharper focus on exam results, which has tended to leave many children, but poorer children in particular, with a less exciting and inspiring school experience.

In a recently published Times commission report, Michael Barber makes a proposal that I believe he picked up from the National Union of Teachers during his employment there: all primary schoolchildren should have what he calls a “bucket list”—I prefer an “entitlement” —of theatre trips, museum trips and sporting activities, and for secondary pupils he has an even longer list. Every child could and should access opportunities out of school that parents with the will and the means offer their own children.

Commentators have observed that there is potential everywhere but opportunity is far more restricted. The Times commission report, entitled Bringing out the Best: How to Transform Education and Unleash the Potential of Every Child, provides a trenchant critique of many aspects of our education system as it is at present, but it also offers much by way of practical policy suggestions and an optimistic vision of what education could and should be like.

So to the issue of GCSEs and A-levels: the first chapter of the commission’s report opens with the old saying that education is about the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel, yet in recent years the excessive focus on knowledge and exam results has not helped young people fulfil their potential. Education is of course not just about getting a job; much of what is missing from our curriculum is useful not just for employment but for life. Lucy Kellaway, the former Financial Times columnist, is now a teacher and made a profound contribution to the commission in these terms:

“I can feel that the exam system is disadvantaging my students. I think knowledge is really important but we’ve gone too far down that road now and our worship of exams is almost sinister.”


Many other views of that type are expressed in the commission’s report, but it also turns its attention to early years, noting that successful education systems—in Estonia and Finland, for example—do not see formal education begin until the age of seven but have highly regarded, respected and well-qualified systems of early-years provision from six months or possibly even younger. In England, many working with such young children have few qualifications and are paid the minimum wage—none the less working very hard and, I am sure, doing a good job. Even then, many parents say their childcare costs are higher than their rent or their mortgage, and the DfE’s own data shows that one-quarter of families find it difficult to meet their childcare costs. So poorer children often start at a disadvantage and fall ever further behind.

To return to GCSEs and A-levels, the commission has found that there is no other developed country whose teenagers sit as many high-stakes tests and that the focus on academic attainment has unbalanced the system. The report notes, too, the high financial cost of the system—as much as £6 million a year, cited in Parliament in 2008.

A further critique of the exam system comes from Dame Alison Peacock, chief executive of the Chartered College of Teaching, and Dame Mary Beard, who describes GCSEs as past their sell-by date. I might say that even the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking—who I do not think is in his seat—who introduced GCSEs, has called for them to be scrapped. Sarah Fletcher, the high mistress of St Paul’s Girls’ School, whom I have had the pleasure to meet, reported that 94% of teachers surveyed by the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference thought that much reform was needed. As for A-levels, the commission concluded that a baccalaureate- style exam is more relevant now than ever. That was of course the view expressed many years ago by Mike Tomlinson in advice to Tony Blair, a view that Mike Tomlinson still holds, but alas it was not then taken up by the then Prime Minister.

The new Government now have an opportunity to address the cost of living crisis in the north-east and all regions where people are struggling, but they also have the opportunity to reflect on the Times commission and to discuss a transformative and radical change to our education system and our curriculum to ensure that we really can unleash the potential of every child.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I am afraid we are out of time.