Awarding of Qualifications: Role of Ministers

Ben Bradley Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)]

The pandemic has raised a huge number of challenging and unprecedented problems that the Government have had to grapple with. They have had to create countless schemes and programmes to support us and to keep us safe, and are now having to find ways to unravel it all while the playing field continually changes around them. These have been necessary responses to questions that the pandemic has asked of them, and they have had to do it in record time.

With schools, there is no easy answer. Nothing will ever be able to cover, even in the short term, for the amazing job that teachers across Mansfield and Worksop do, week in, week out. With schools being closed, we knew that children’s learning would suffer. We knew that ever-tightening restrictions were going to make it impossible to hold exams. We can look back now and say that maybe it could have been different, but at the time the widely accepted truth was that we must close the schools and plan for an alternative system of assessment.

The Ofqual formula was an imperfect solution to an impossible problem. In hindsight, it was not right that those from lower-income areas had their grades disproportionately affected. It was not right, clearly, for a child to get a U for an exam they were never allowed to sit. That was hugely problematic. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Perhaps it could have been done differently. But the Government employ experts in the form of Ofqual to manage these processes, and at the time those at Ofqual were offering reassurances to Ministers that it would be okay. They have since apologised for getting it wrong. They too are only human, and every other nation of our United Kingdom had come to the same conclusion.

What this says to me on a broader level is to do with the problematic nature of these structures of government run by a kind of quangocracy that we have had for many decades now, which blurs the lines of accountability and decision making. I hope that the Government will address that over the course of this Parliament.

I was glad that Ofqual agreed for teacher-assessed grades to be awarded to pupils who were unable to sit exams. That was the correct way to proceed given where we have ended up. It is still not perfect—it throws up questions about grade inflation and impacts on universities in future years—but we have eventually got to the right place.

I know at first hand from my own experience how long and hard Ministers and officials in the DFE have worked to try to rectify the problems. I know how many phone calls my hon. Friend the Minister for Universities, for example, has made to universities to try to get them to go back and make more offers to students and to support them. I know how much time Ministers have offered me to raise concerns, ideas and issues, and I am very grateful to them for that. Nothing is perfect in a pandemic, and I know that what has gone on has been incredibly frustrating, but I have seen how committed the Department has been to trying to make it work. We should all be grateful for that. The key thing now is that lessons must be learned from these challenges. Let us look at the relationship between FE and HE, at the admissions process and at the Government’s decision-making structures and ensure that we do these things better in future. We also need to draw a line and move forward, in the best interests of our children and young people, which I know the Secretary of State is committed to doing.