David Laws
Main Page: David Laws (Liberal Democrat - Yeovil)Department Debates - View all David Laws's debates with the Department for Education
(11 years, 11 months ago)
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The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)
We warmly welcome today’s debate on what is an incredibly important topic. It has already been surprisingly interesting because of some of the shadow Secretary of State’s comments on his party’s developing policy. I praise him for the candour with which he has approached the debate.
I thought I heard the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the qualifications framework and examination system that we inherited from the previous Government were seriously flawed and ripe for reform. I think I heard him acknowledge that there were problems with the system of modularisation. I think I heard him welcome the radical and dramatic reforms—many of which seek to deal with problems that emerged under the last Government—pioneered by Alison Wolf as a consequence of her report. I thought I even heard him acknowledge, under cross-questioning by my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), that the last Government were wrong to deny state schools the ability to use IGCSE qualifications, which are now used widely in the system.
Partly as a consequence of the hon. Gentleman’s candour, therefore, and partly because of the forensic cross-questioning he received from those on the Government Benches, we have made a lot of progress in establishing that the existing examination and qualification system is deeply flawed and that we are right to be pioneering change.
Stephen Twigg
May I tempt the right hon. Gentleman to match my candour? I mentioned the engineering diploma, which was one of the qualifications downgraded by the Secretary of State. The industry responded and the Chancellor of the Exchequer had to reassemble a version of the engineering diploma. Does the right hon. Gentleman acknowledge, with matching candour, that the way in which that was handled was a disaster for that crucial area of industry?
Chris Skidmore
Given that we are having these confessional moments, will the right hon. Gentleman also welcome the fact that the shadow Secretary of State has endorsed in full the Wolf report, which stated that under the last Government more than 400,000 teenagers were taking vocational qualifications that were essentially a waste of time?
Kevin Brennan
I am sure the Minister is grateful to his right hon. Friend. Does the Minister recognise these words?
“There has been a breathtaking rise in performance in education since 1997. Inner London was a basket case pre-97; ninety per cent of students were failing to get decent grades at 16 back then. The improvement’s been astonishing, dramatic, unbelievable.”
They were his words in February 2010.
Mr Laws
I will make a little progress before I take other interventions.
In spite of the rather political exchanges we have heard from the Opposition Front-Bench team, I want to say that, as Lord Adonis has recently written, education should not be a political football. We are talking today—this is why the shadow Secretary of State was right to table the motion—about designing a new qualifications system for millions of young people in this country. They and their parents expect us to take the right decisions for the right reasons. That is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I both want to hear from Members from all parties today. The coalition Government have strong views on this issue, but we always listen to those who have sensible and constructive contributions to make.
I should also confirm that, with your permission, Mr Speaker, and as the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) mentioned a second ago, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will be replying to the debate rather than opening it for the Government. That enables me, with your permission, Mr Speaker, to be absent for a short period to fulfil an existing commitment, for which I apologise to the House.
Before I turn in detail to the points raised by the shadow Secretary of State, I would like to step back and consider briefly what the Government are seeking to deliver. Our ambition, quite simply, is to raise standards for all young people. We believe that the majority of young people are capable of leaving education with a wide range of good qualifications at good grades. We are also determined to close the wholly unacceptable gap between outcomes for the most disadvantaged pupils and the rest, which is why we have introduced the pupil premium and many other reforms. Of course, however, improving results and closing the gap are ambitions shared across the House, and I have never been shy in acknowledging some of the progress made under the last Labour Government, including in places such as inner London, where we have important lessons to learn.
If we are to realise this ambition for the schools system, however, we also need to ensure that our education system is delivering in at least three key areas. First, we need to know that the improvements in exam results are real and do not simply reflect grade inflation and falling standards. Secondly, we need to ensure that young people are choosing subjects because of their quality and relevance, not simply in order to meet league table and accountability targets, as I fear was the case for a period under the last Government. Finally, but crucially, we need to ensure that the content and stretch of qualifications are appropriate for the highly competitive environment—the shadow Secretary of State talked about this—that we will face in this century. We should be setting standards of stretch and rigour in our qualifications, not just to ensure the credibility of domestic standards over time, but to guarantee that the educational aspirations and outcomes for English children match the very best in the world.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
Jonathan Ive, the designer behind the iPhone, has said of the EBacc:
“It will fail to provide students with the skills that UK employers need and its impact on the UK’s economy will be catastrophic.”
He said that the EBacc
“will starve our world leading creative sector of its future pioneers.”
What does the Minister say to that?
Mr Laws
I do not agree with that suggestion; otherwise I would not support the reforms. Indeed, I believe that they will have exactly the opposite effect in delivering higher standards and the ambitions I have just set out.
To be blunt, most people consider that, in the three areas I have just set out—as key ambitions for our qualifications and examination system—the last Labour Government failed to deliver. They failed to maintain standards, and confidence in standards, over time, as I think the shadow Secretary of State acknowledged; they failed to ensure that children were always choosing qualifications for the right reasons, and I would be surprised if the hon. Gentleman did not acknowledge that serious criticism; and in their commendable ambition that all should succeed, they failed to ensure that the rigour and stretch of our qualifications kept pace with the best in the world. Therefore, the qualification reforms that we are debating today have two objectives: first, we want to restore confidence in standards, and secondly we want to ensure that the quality of our qualifications matches the best in the world.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
I want to ask the Minister about the best way of preparing young people for life and the world of work. Does he honestly think that a three-hour exam at the end of two years does anything other than test a theoretical knowledge, and that the ability to demonstrate a good theoretical knowledge does not translate into skills for life or work? He must accept that and there must be some balance between the theoretical knowledge demonstrated in an exam and other demonstrations of ability, as far as employers and life skills are concerned.
Mr Laws
Of course, there are some subjects for which practical skills have to be able to be assessed properly, but in fairness the hon. Gentleman should also acknowledge the serious concerns about coursework and the credibility of assessment. It is sensible to address those concerns in our reforms, and I believe that for many subjects it is possible to do that without compromising high-quality accountability in the qualifications system.
Stephen Twigg
I gave three examples in my speech of areas of practical coursework—in geography, science and English. Does the Minister disagree with me about any of those?
Mr Laws
I am not going to pre-empt the outcome of the consultation. I am happy to look at the areas the hon. Gentleman suggests, although so far I am not personally persuaded that I have heard clinching arguments for some of the subjects. Far more obviously we potentially need a different system of assessment in subjects such as art and music, but I am not sure that he has so far made a convincing case for some of the areas he has mentioned.
Mr Laws
I want to make a little progress, then I will take some other interventions, but I am conscious of the fact that a large number of people want to speak.
Our reforms combine rigour with a commitment to fairness and social mobility. They will raise the bar, but they will not shut the door on any young people. The shadow Secretary of State asked whether we would have a system in which a defined proportion of students would be able to get particular grades. I can assure him that we are absolutely not going down that route. We launched a consultation on 17 September setting out our proposals for reform. That consultation closed on 10 December. The Secretary of State and I and other Ministers are now taking the time to consider all the responses carefully before we make final decisions.
Before I turn to some of the more detailed points, let me say a little more about the case for change. GCSEs were a bold and radical development in education policy. They introduced the idea that all children, whatever their background or ability, could sit a single exam in all academic subjects and receive a grade recognising their progress. GCSEs replaced a system that was fundamentally unfair, in that it divided children into winners and losers at an early age and helped only a minority of students to prepare for further study and decent jobs. The crucial principle of universality is one that we as a coalition Government are determined to retain. Contrary to what the shadow Secretary of State said, our reforms look forwards. They do not look backwards. There will be no return to the divisive, two-tier system of the past. The reforms also look outwards, to learn from the best-performing systems in the world today—systems that deliver rigorous qualifications, accessible to all children. However, 25 years on, the GCSE is now ready for change. Students and teachers are working harder than ever, but not all are achieving qualifications that properly reflect their ability and support them to progress successfully.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
By and large, many of the reforms that have been proposed would have my support and that of my party. The Minister talks about consultation, but given that there are exam boards in those parts of the United Kingdom where education has been devolved and where students will be applying to universities in England, for example, and given the need, therefore, for comparability of results in the different countries that make up the United Kingdom, what consultation has he had—or does he plan to have—with Ministers responsible for education and exam boards in parts of the United Kingdom other than England?
Mr Laws
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his broad support for some of the proposals we are debating today. I believe in devolution in the United Kingdom, as does he. Where individual Administrations and Governments decide that they want to go down a different route, it is right that it should be open to them to do so. Indeed, I believe we can learn in the United Kingdom about different solutions that people choose and then work out over time which are seen to succeed. However, I will talk to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State about the point the hon. Gentleman makes. If there is anything we can do to assist with some of his concerns, I am certainly willing to contemplate that.
Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman has explained the need for change at GCSE and provided an analysis—an accurate one for the most part—of the legacy from the Labour party. Can he explain why abolition of one suite of GCSEs is the right response, rather than simply introducing the measures and changes he has itemised for GCSEs as they stand?
Mr Laws
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his points and the work that the Select Committee on Education has done on this and associated areas. I believe that in some of the core subjects where we are making these changes there is value in signalling the extent to which they will be improved and varied from the existing GCSE qualifications. There is some merit in underlining—through a change in how we describe these qualifications—how fundamental the changes could be. That will also be relevant for people when they assess the suite of qualifications and their future value in the labour market.
Mr Stuart
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; he is being most generous. He is right about signalling. Is there not a risk from the Government’s saying officially that GCSEs as a brand are broken and irrecoverable of sending the signal that the remaining GCSEs—most subjects—for which children will spend an awful lot of time studying are also broken? Surely he must either have plans to abolish GCSEs altogether or recognise that such signalling has risks as well as benefits?
Mr Laws
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and that is exactly why we say in paragraph 4.7 of the consultation paper that to
“ensure the benefits of this more rigorous approach to the English Baccalaureate subjects are felt across the whole curriculum, we will ask Ofqual to consider how these new higher standards can be used as a template for judging and accrediting a new suite of qualifications, beyond these subjects at 16, to replace GCSEs”.
I promise him—I will come to this later—that we have no intention of allowing the status of the other subjects, which are not at present in the core English baccalaureate certificate, to be downgraded. We place huge value on those subjects, and I will set out later how we will take the matter forward.
Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)
Is not the most important signal that we must send on behalf of young people to tell future employers that they have been rigorously tested in a way that will make them suitable for work? That is the way we will take our economy forward in future too.
Mr Laws
My hon. Friend is exactly right. Whatever policy solutions different employer groups favour, there is an absolute consensus that the problems we are setting out to address are real ones in the system which all the employer groups want us to address.
As I have said, I believe there has been a real improvement in education over the last two decades, but it is now widely accepted in all parts of the House that there has also been grade inflation. Until summer 2012, GCSE pass rates had increased every year since they were first introduced, but when we compare that achievement with our performance in international tests—where there is no incentive for achievement to be inflated—we see a different story. Between 2006 and 2009, the proportion of students achieving a C grade or higher in English and mathematics at GCSE increased by 8%, but England’s ranking in the OECD’s highly respected programme for international student assessment—or PISA—league tables stagnated over the same period. Universities and colleges complain of the need to provide remedial classes for apparently well qualified new students. That is why the shadow Secretary of State for Education has said:
“Sensible, thought-through and evidence-based measures to increase rigour and tackle grade inflation will have the…support of the Opposition”.—[Official Report, 26 June 2012; Vol. 547, c. 175.]
Significant evidence of grade inflation is available in a range of academic reports, and I am pleased that that is now common ground among many of us.
The coalition Government have already acted to address some of the problems that emerged under the last Labour Government, including those that have caused the recent problems in marking GCSE qualifications—problems that have their origin under the previous Government and not, in fairness, under this Government or this Secretary of State. We have started to address the weaknesses of the current GCSEs, which privilege bite-size learning over deep understanding. Ofqual, the independent exams regulator, has already acted to make the GCSE more rigorous—for example, by tackling the re-sit culture and restoring marks for spelling, punctuation and grammar. We have introduced the English baccalaureate, which has powerfully incentivised more pupils to study key academic subjects. We did not hear from the shadow Secretary of State about the enormous increase in uptake in areas such as modern languages since the English baccalaureate was introduced, which I would have thought most Members would welcome.
However, we need to go further. We believe in the professionalism of teachers and those who set exams. They want to do what is best for students—rigorous teaching and rigorous assessment—but the system they are currently working in is flawed. The combination of competition between exam boards and a high-stakes accountability mechanism in the form of league tables has led to a race to the bottom by exam boards. We must address that. In our consultation, we proposed introducing single exam boards for each subject, with franchises given to the winning exam board after a competitive process. In a letter to the Secretary of State on 26 September last year, the shadow Secretary of State made it clear that he supported that proposal. Others have raised delivery issues and risks in relation to the proposal, and we will look carefully at all those points. We will also shortly be publishing a consultation on how we will reform the accountability system for schools.
Stephen Twigg
The Minister referred to “others” expressing their concern. I assume that among them was Ofqual, which wrote to the Secretary of State in November to express its concern about the timetable for change. Will the Government consider adopting a different timetable so that, if changes are to be introduced, they can be implemented with care?
Mr Laws
All those issues are, of course, part of our consideration following the consultation. We have already made the decision, at the time that we made the announcement on the EBCs, to move back the start date so that they will not start being taught until September 2015. We will ensure that the timetable for delivery is achievable.
As part of the accountability consultation, we will consider floor standards and incentives to take high-value qualifications. We will also consider appropriate incentives for schools to teach all their students well, rather than focusing only on students near the C/D borderline.
Let me now turn to some of the specific issues that have been raised during the consultation. The Secretary of State and I are determined that these new, more rigorous qualifications will meet the needs of the vast majority of students who are currently served by the GCSE. The reforms and improvements to education that we are making will enable more students to operate at a higher level—that is exactly their point—and, as exams become more rigorous, we will equip students to clear that higher bar. So there is absolutely no reason to believe that there will be a substantial change in the proportion of students achieving a good pass. Indeed, our clear aim is that, over time, a higher proportion of children will secure a good pass.
The consultation has shown that there is an understandable concern that we should continue to give strong support to many subjects that are not part of the EBC core subjects of English, maths, science, history, geography and languages. The Chairman of the Select Committee has raised that point today. I want to make it absolutely clear to all Members that the Department for Education remains fully committed to ensuring that pupils receive a well-rounded education, with high-quality music, art and design, drama and dance all playing an important part.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
The Minister has referred to the uptake of foreign language studies on a number of occasions. The reality is that most schools have been ditching the subjects that children might have wanted to study, simply to comply with the Ebacc requirements. Where is he going to find room in the school timetable, after the Ebacc subjects have been accommodated, for the teaching of all those subjects that he has just mentioned?
Mr Laws
First, we have made a deliberate decision to keep up to 30% of the school timetable available for the teaching of non-EBC subjects. Secondly, I think my hon. Friend is being rather generous about the reasons for the massive decline in the study of subjects such as modern languages. That happened because schools and others had an incentive to encourage students to go for the qualifications that were easier to pass, even if they were not right for their education and future progression. That is exactly why we are addressing those issues in our reforms.
Mr Laws
I am going to have to make some progress, I am afraid.
Parents want to see their children secure a strong grasp of the core academic subjects, but they also want them to have a fully rounded education, with opportunities in the other areas that I have mentioned. We are determined to ensure that those opportunities will be available. We are committed to ensuring that pupils will be able to take good-quality qualifications in all subjects at the end of key stage 4 that are fair, rigorous and rewarding. Indeed, we said in our consultation that we would ask Ofqual to consider how the higher standards that we are proposing for core EBCs could be used as a template for judging and accrediting a new suite of qualifications at age 16 to replace current GCSEs. We acknowledge that there are subjects for which 100% reliance on formal written examinations is not the best form of assessment, and we will be working with Ofqual, the Arts Council and others to review qualifications outside the core EBacc subjects. We will make an announcement, including on a proposed timetable for reform, in due course.
Mr Graham Stuart
May I probe my right hon. Friend a little further on the subject of tiering? The GCSE was tiered in certain subjects, and I understand that, with the introduction of the EBCs, that will be abolished. Will he tell us what share of children took tiered GCSEs last year? What are the positive and negative implications of the loss of the tiering that was found to be necessary to provide an appropriate assessment of a child’s level of attainment?
Mr Laws
My hon. Friend is quite right to raise that issue. We are looking at it closely as part of the consultation. I think he would acknowledge that the principle behind our reform is absolutely right. We will look at individual subjects to ensure that the reform is deliverable and that it has the intended consequences.
Stephen Twigg
May I reinforce the point made by the Chair of the Select Committee? Ofqual’s letter to the Secretary of State in November states:
“Our first concern is that the aims for EBCs may exceed what is realistically achievable through a single assessment…Our advice is that there are no precedents that show that a single assessment could successfully fulfil all of these purposes.”
What is the Minister’s response to that?
Mr Laws
These are the issues that we are taking account of as part of the consultation. As I have said, we will reflect carefully on all the responses and make our announcement shortly.
Turning to vocational qualifications, I also want to make it clear that this Government fully support high-quality vocational study. We believe that all students benefit from having a strong academic core of qualifications, particularly up to age 16, but good quality vocational education will remain an option, both pre-16 and post-16. We have already committed to improving the quality of vocational education so that those 14 to 16-year-olds who are better suited to vocational qualifications can be confident that those qualifications will be comparable with the best academic qualifications in terms of content, assessment and opportunities to progress. In the past, too many vocational qualifications simply did not measure up.
Mr Laws
I must make progress, I am afraid.
This coalition Government have rightly sought to address the major challenges about the future of our qualifications system. Securing the right qualifications and examination system for young people in this country is one of the most important tasks for our Department, so it is absolutely right that we should take time carefully to consider all the contributions and views before we make our final decisions. What is clear is that the current system cannot continue as it is. I welcome the support of the shadow Secretary of State for that view, and I am only sorry that more Labour Members do not recognise the necessity for some of the detailed proposals that we are making.
We have a shared aspiration in this House for much better performance by all our young people, and that is welcome, but if we are truly to serve the interests of all young people, including the most disadvantaged, we have to be prepared as a country to face the other challenges. We must have an examination system that commands public confidence and in which changes in results truly reflect changes in real standards and performance. We must have a qualifications system that supports students to make the right subject choices that will lead to progression and success. We must have a qualifications system that matches the best of any country in the world, and that challenges and prepares our young people to reach world-class standards. Those are challenges that some others might wish to duck, but this coalition Government are united in their determination to take the right decisions for this country, and for its young people in particular.