Exam Reform

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Monday 17th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I take my hon. Friend’s point. When I was re-reading Mike Tomlinson’s report into what went wrong with A-levels under the last Labour Government, I noted that he made the point that it is very difficult for the public to understand how exam boards convert raw marks into particular scores and then particular grades. It is an opaque process that impedes understanding. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) made the point that greater granular detail about attainment can help us all understand how marks are awarded. The simplicity that my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) wants is not always available to us, but we should aspire to it.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

Employers in places such as Birmingham tell me that new industries, particularly social media and the computer programming and gaming industry, often look for aptitude in such skills as programming and coding. They say that none of the current examination systems reflects that sort of aptitude. Will the Secretary of State’s reforms to the examination system take those areas into account, accommodate new skills and provide a test for them?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady is right. In January, in response to the Livingstone-Hope review, I announced that we would disapply the current ICT curriculum, which did not provide the sorts of skills that the hon. Lady mentions, and that we would develop new computer science specifications. That announcement was widely welcomed, and I have been working since then with Ian Livingstone, Microsoft and others to ensure that we can provide people with the coding skills with which they were not provided in the curriculum that we inherited.