AS-levels and A-levels

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Tuesday 16th April 2013 Westminster Hall

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dobbin, and to raise a matter of great concern in schools, colleges and universities throughout the country. I thank my hon. Friends who have provided so much support for this debate. Some are here today, but others could not make it. I initiated this debate on the proposed changes to AS and A-levels following a letter that I received from the chairman of Hounslow secondary head teachers and signed by all secondary head teachers in my constituency. They are baffled and concerned about the proposed changes announced earlier this year.

I am sure we all want the very best education for the young people of Britain and the highest levels of participation and attainment possible for each child. However, I am greatly concerned that the proposals announced by the Government in January will be a regressive step, with participation and attainment going backwards. Under the proposals, A-levels will be linear and taken over two years, with students sitting exams at the end of the course. AS-levels will apparently remain, but will be redesigned as stand-alone qualifications, with a slightly confused proposal that they could be delivered over one year or two. AS-levels will not contribute to A-level grades.

Head teachers in my constituency of Feltham and Heston at Feltham community college, Lampton school, St Mark’s Catholic school, Rivers academy, Heston community college, Cranford community college and other schools throughout Hounslow have written to me in an unprecedented way with their concerns. They say:

“We are baffled and concerned by the proposal to shift the AS level to a standalone qualification. In its present format, the one year course leading to a more challenging A2 course enables schools to raise standards. A-level students are more seriously motivated in year 12 when they know that they are going to be externally examined at the end of the year. In our view we are going to lose that motivation from students if we have to return to internal exams at the end of year 12.”

My head teachers are not alone. The changes have been opposed by the 24 Russell Group universities and the Association of School and College Leaders, an organisation that represents more than 80% of school heads in public and private schools and which oversees an estimated 90% of A-level entries. ASCL-affiliated organisations include the Girls Schools Association and the Headmasters and Headmistresses Conference. In addition, the National Association of Head Teachers, the Association of Colleges, the Science Council, which is made up of 39 member bodies, and the Labour party have all voiced concerns about the Government’s proposed changes to AS and A-levels.

From my discussions with the education sector, it is clear that concerns about the proposals fall within a range of areas. The first is education. Let us be clear that AS-levels are a success story. According to the Joint Council for Qualifications, the take-up of AS and A-levels has shown an upward trajectory since 2003 with more than 500,000 more AS-level certificates awarded and more than 100,000 more A-level certificates awarded last year.

My schools believe that that stepping-stone approach to building on educational attainment with choice, diversity and flexibility has kept up a love of learning, and for those who may never have expected to do A-levels or to go to university it has opened a door. They have also said to me that, instead of forcing specialisation early, keeping options open and enabling a later choice of A-level subjects has kept many pupils in post-16 education when they might otherwise have opted out.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

I am following the hon. Lady’s argument closely. She referred to the increased uptake of AS and A2-levels since 2003. Will she acknowledge that the average cost to the average secondary school roughly doubled over that same period to close to £100,000 just on exam entries?

[Seema Malhotra]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I will certainly come back to cost, which has been raised as a concern about the changes. There is a suggestion of possible increased costs for schools trying to provide A-levels alongside AS-levels in a way that is not coherent.

I was talking about education reasons. We have seen increased uptake, and anecdotal evidence suggests that a contribution to the increase in A-levels being attained has been made by AS-levels being a stepping stone. Those who choose not to go on to A-levels have an option to leave at the end of the first year with an advanced qualification. It has arguably also increased the uptake of subjects such as maths, which are perceived to be tougher, because of the option to try a subject and see how it develops.

There is a strong argument for social mobility in keeping the current system. Divorcing AS-levels from A-levels is not only a poor education policy, but a poor social policy due to the removal of that stepping stone, which often gives confidence to talented pupils from poorer backgrounds to apply to a more highly selective university, helping to widen participation.

The Headmasters and Headmistresses Conference—the organisation representing leading private schools—has described the proposals as “rushed and incoherent”. The Russell Group of leading research universities said that it was “not convinced” that the change was necessary, and that it would make it harder to identify bright pupils from working-class homes. Even the Conservative Chairman of the Select Committee on Education, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), has questioned the proposals, suggesting that some young people could be left behind.

Leading universities oppose the Government’s plans because they will reduce confidence among young people who get good results in year 12 but may not have the confidence to go on to apply for the top universities after year 13.

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[Nic Dakin]

It is difficult for us to understand how young people are at 16, and how much they are exploring their way in the world. That is a good thing, and one of the things that we should do is to provide a framework that helps them to make the right choices. Sometimes, allowing them a little more choice and flexibility—25% more subjects post-16—enables them to choose differently according to their experience. At 17, they are much more mature than at 16. People mature at different rates, too. I am not surprised by the story about someone taking A-level English as the fourth choice—English in that example could be replaced by any subject—and at the end of the period of post-16 study going on to study it, or a subject that it significantly underpins, at university, or indeed going into employment related to it. That is not unusual in my experience of working day in, day out, for 30-odd years, with 16 to 19-year-olds. It has been a familiar story since 2000.

Before 2000, people did not have that flexibility and choice. The curriculum was far less able to get the best out of young people. The dramatic change brought about by Curriculum 2000 allowed youngsters to continue with a broader programme and delay the final specialisation until the end of year 12. That meant that those advising students could encourage them to take more risks—to stick with physics as well as music alongside their maths and geography, keeping their options open longer, or encouraging them to do a modern foreign language for another year. What students would chose to focus on at the end of year 12 was often different from what they might have focused on at the end of year 11. People who have not worked with 16 to 18-year-olds, as I have for many years, might be surprised at how much young people mature in their first year of post-16 education, and how much their focus can change after they have been informed by another year’s study and another year’s consideration of what they intend to do next.

The current system allows students to choose four subjects at AS-level before specialising in three at A-level or taking all four through to full A-levels. There is a significant jump in difficulty from GCSE to A-level, as my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham has indicated, and the AS has assisted students so that they can choose a broader range of subjects before specialising in year 13. Denying students that choice risks denying them the opportunity to discover a particular aptitude or passion for subject areas in which they previously had less confidence and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston has indicated, it is liable most negatively to affect students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, who are most likely to be less confident.

My understanding of the Government’s current plans—and they are fluid, rather like a young person’s—is that although they will allow the content of the AS to be within the A-level initially, they intend, once the change is embedded, that A-levels and AS-levels will have distinct content, as they did pre-2000. If that is the case, it will be uneconomical for AS-levels to be taught and they will wither on the vine, because it will no longer be possible to co-teach them in the same class as A-levels. That is significant, because the pre-2000 history of AS-levels shows they never really got much traction.

The removal of AS as a stepping-stone qualification will almost certainly reduce the uptake of subjects that are regarded as relatively harder at A-level than at GCSE, and I suspect that there will be an impact on languages and mathematics in particular. Without validation at the stepping stone point, less confident students are likely to be discouraged from embarking on the A-level. With validation, there is less risk to the individual, who can always bank an AS at the end of one year and focus on their other three subjects at A-level.

[Damian Hinds]

The hon. Gentleman is, of course, extremely experienced in and knowledgeable about these matters, but does he know of evidence that suggests that the fourth AS-level tends to be a hard subject rather than one of the subjects that some people would consider to be less hard? Or is it the opposite?

[Nic Dakin]

For a start, when we are dealing with young people, we are dealing with a collection of individual choices. In my experience, as someone who has spent a lot of time advising young people and encouraging them to make choices, if they are focusing on three subjects, languages are often vulnerable to not being tried. What turns out to be someone’s fourth subject—the one they drop down to AS—might not have been their fourth subject when they picked it. We can play around with statistics, but what is important is the impact on the young person at the point of choice, when they decide on their post-16 programme. Being able to do four AS-levels and then either take all four through to full A-levels or to bank one, increases the flexibility of choice, minimises risk and encourages people to take subjects that would be beneficial to them—mathematics, for instance.

[Kevin Brennan]

My hon. Friend knows what he is talking about, and the Association of Colleges backs what he says. In the briefing for this debate the association states that

“the removal of the AS as a stepping-stone may well reduce the take-up of subjects which are regarded as significantly harder at A-level than at GCSE,”

in particular,

“maths and modern languages.”

[Damian Hinds]

My question was about what the evidence was, not the effect.

[Nic Dakin]

The hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) is nothing if not persistent in asking questions that it is right and proper to ask and to answer, but evidence in this area is complex, as I hope I have illustrated.

When the Secretary of State says that he will divorce AS-levels from A-levels, but will retain AS-levels because he is “keen to preserve” breadth, he demonstrates that he is a master of irony. All the evidence of the past—and of the present—is that that will do exactly the opposite. The change will map on to the narrowing of the curriculum being driven forward by the EBacc in key stage 4, and with the focus on facilitating subjects post-16, it will ensure that the UK moves backwards, to pursue a narrow curriculum prescribed by a nanny-state Government who know best. The Minister shakes his head, but in reality the proposal is about the imposition of a centralised curriculum, compared with the move towards the personalisation of the curriculum over the past few years, which takes the individual forward, within a proper framework, in a direction that drives achievement and progression. It is a personalised curriculum that has been building the success fit for competing in the modern world, and that is what we really need.

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[Nic Dakin]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and therein lies the real risk. My fear is that we have a series of changes—and divorcing the AS from the A-level is a significant one—that will increase student failure and make the UK less ready to compete globally. We will rue the day if the Government do not think carefully and consider the evidence that is presented to them. For example, David Igoe, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, wrote to the Secretary of State:

“Our curriculum leaders, and the clear majority of teaching professionals and college and school leaders believe that the AS qualification should be retained in its current form. We also believe AS has the support of a very large number of academics and admission tutors”.

Of 780,000 A-level entries, 439,000 were in sixth-form colleges, so such people know what they are talking about.

The Secretary of State rightly sets great store by the needs of the Russell Group universities. They are great universities, of which we are rightly proud, but they hardly struggle to recruit or compete. That is a good thing, but focusing on their needs to the detriment of everyone else’s might not only be flattering—and embarrassing —to them but might be trying to fix a problem that does not exist. Out of more than 300 institutions listed by UCAS, only 24 are Russell Group universities, and all those institutions and their students matter to UK plc.

[Damian Hinds]

Does the hon. Gentleman recall the meetings that he, I, and others in the Chamber attended, in which we met representatives of some of those universities who did not seem to think that there was a problem that did not exist?

[Nic Dakin]

I do not recall their outlining a problem that does exist, and certainly not one that would be solved by the proposal. My hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston has already mentioned the serious concerns of Cambridge university about the impact of the change.

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[Kevin Brennan]

Apart from the strange explanations that we get from Ministers about trying to free up some time for people to do other things in year 12, the only reason that I have heard is that it relates to the experience of the Ministers in the Department and that they want to go back to the good old days when four out of five of them were in private school doing their A-levels. Perhaps they think, “It was good enough for me; why shouldn’t it be good enough for everyone else?” If that is what they are doing, they are ignoring the evidence.

I challenge the Minister today as someone who says that he is committed to fairness, who is a Liberal Democrat Minister, who has enjoyed the privilege of a fee-paying education and a Cambridge university education and who claims to be committed to social justice. How can he defend this policy in the light of the clear and thoroughly researched evidence that it will result in university entry becoming less fair?

[Damian Hinds]

We must be a little bit careful with this widening participation and access argument. Although it is undeniably true that many more young people have gone to university in the past 10 years, the figures show that the intake of the most selective universities has changed very little by comparison. Of course it is a very good thing that more young people have gone to those universities, but we must not confuse the two things and say that AS-levels have been a force that has made Cambridge university much more open.

[Kevin Brennan]

The hon. Gentleman makes my point for me. Cambridge has been the university that has most used AS-levels to bring about widening access. It can show that it has widened access as a result of them in the past 10 years. If he wants to challenge the admissions tutors on the claim that they have successfully widened access through the use of AS-levels, he is free to do so. They are absolutely clear about it and say that if AS-levels disappear, university entry will become less fair. The Minister must answer that point. So far, Ministers have failed to answer it, or to explain why they are persisting with the policy.

In any case, the Government accept that Cambridge is right, and presumably that the Russell Group, the 1994 Group, Universities UK, the Association of Colleges, the Sixth Form Colleges Association, the National Union of Students, the teachers and head teachers associations and we, God forbid, are right about the usefulness of AS-levels. Nevertheless, the Government will proceed with the damaging and unnecessary divorce of AS-levels from A-levels. Like the EBacc certificates, no one supports the move. The Government quite rightly abandoned their proposals on the EBacc. The Minister might well have had an influence on that decision. Who knows? It happened to coincide with his appointment to the Department. As I said earlier, we will not proceed with the divorce of the AS-level from the A-level, and everyone should be aware of that.