Examination Reform

David Ward Excerpts

Wednesday 16th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate, which has been interesting and stimulating up to this point. What are the aims of Government policy in education? There are two: to raise standards for all, and to close the gap between rich and poor. I think those two aims bring the whole House together in support.

Expert advice from the university of Durham and elsewhere is that there has been grade inflation, which means an undermining of confidence in the currency of GCSEs. It has to be said that we saw some occasionally rushed changes driven by the Department under the last Government, which contributed greatly—although we have not yet reached our conclusions on it—to the GCSE English furore last year. The truth is that changing so many elements at the same time contributed to the difficulties we saw with the English GCSE last year.

I agree with many of the criticisms made by Ministers. I believe there are issues surrounding modularity, and I am delighted to hear from the Minister that he is not moving towards an absolute position on every single subject. It is right to be informed by an understanding that modularity has been counter-productive in too many ways, without necessarily getting rid of it where it is the best way of delivering the most effective assessment.

The Government’s move to reduce the number of re-sits is also correct, as is their move to address equivalences. The shadow Secretary rightly raised some issues about one of the few successes that came out of the diploma debacle—specifically, the engineering diploma. As disasters go, the fact that it has been reconstituted at whoever’s behest suggests that it has not been that catastrophic and that sufficient flexibility exists in the system to allow the good elements to be retained.

As I have said before in education debates, we attempt to define what is wrong with the current system, perhaps spending rather too long on that, and we then talk about the nirvana we would like to move towards, doing very little on what is in front of us now—the mechanics of the changes. We do not give them enough protection because we get into a fight with one side defending its period in office and another side pointing out that there are some serious problems and asking whether the other side is going to deny it.

To his great credit, as has been acknowledged, the shadow Secretary of State has said that he could see a few problems but that that was as far as he could go. That does not mean, however, that the Government’s particular recommendations are the right ones. It means that there is a case for change. We then have to make sure that we examine it. As for the controversy over the diploma, I recall the now shadow Chancellor, whom I would describe as gleaming-eyed in his certainty, sitting before us as expert after expert came before the then Children, Schools and Families Committee and said, “Slow down; listen to the evidence; take your time; get this right; there is a real chance for a legacy”—leaving something that, if got right, would last for whoever was in government in the future. The right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) did not listen, and we ended up with much of what was positive about the diploma being lost, with only some of the good salvaged from it. We do not want to make that mistake again. It is important that we carry people with us, not least politically. Otherwise, whatever happens to the Labour party at the next election or the one after that, we will not see the benefits of having a more rigorous system in place.

I ask the Government to consider some slowing down. The Secretary of State told the Select Committee that

“coherence comes at the end of the process.”

Well, I think coherence comes at the beginning of the process. To look at it simply, if we are dealing with assessment, we first need to work out what needs to be taught—the curriculum. That can be looked at in isolation and work can be done on what we think should be taught. Everything else then needs to be looked at coherently. We need to look at the assessment that matches it, and then at the system of accountability that drives behaviour in schools, drives the allocation of teachers to certain types of pupils in all sorts of ways. The Government have acknowledged that, and we need to get it right.

We have had an announcement on new qualifications before we have had the findings of the secondary curriculum review. I think that looks like putting the cart before the horse. It would be helpful to have those findings. I am grateful to the Secretary of State for undertaking to do an accountability review, but qualifications and accountability need to be seen as a coherent whole, working with the curriculum and the syllabus. I worry that we have not quite got that right.

Appropriateness of assessment is an issue. The Government want to set the bar higher. The Secretary of State is a dynamic man, who wants people to aspire and thinks that a lack of aspiration and acceptance of poor performance has gone on too long, and has entrenched poverty. He is right about that. But if we move the metric up, what is it about the measure that will change teacher quality? It can have some effect, but let us face it, is it the key driver of improvement in education quality? I do not think so. If we exclude equivalencies, in 2011 48% of children did not get five good GCSEs including English and maths. If the GCSE currency is so bankrupt, weak and devalued, and yet half of children are failing to achieve that measure, it is not obvious that pushing it up will magically lift performance, unless the accountability is wrong. However, our accountability is driven and focused to an obsessive and damaging extent. It pushes schools to focus desperately on trying to get people over the line, and yet 48% of kids still do not get over it. That is not because they are not focused enough on it; they could not be more focused—they are excessively focused on it.

[Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)]

Is it not possible that moving the metric up could have the perverse outcome of demotivating people?

[Mr Stuart]

My hon. Friend, who serves on the Education Committee, leads me neatly on to structure.

How sufficient was the understanding—I did not have a sufficient understanding—of the nature of how our qualification system works? I come back to tiering. Ministers did not know—they will correct me if I am wrong—the share of young people who were doing tiered exams. Last year, in AQA English—the largest board—45% of children did the tiered exam. One of the Secretary of State’s objections is that by putting them into this thing where, a bit like the old CSE, the top grade they could get was a C, the two-tier system was alive and well within our GCSE system, we just did not know it, and that we must get rid—maybe it came out of coalition politics; maybe it was the leak of the new O-level—of any form of separation or tiering. We must make sure our assessment is appropriate, because otherwise children will sit exams that, unless some genius designed them, put them off learning, rather than encouraging them. [Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Nic Dakin]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Let me pick out just one quote from Deborah Annetts, the chief executive of the Incorporated Society of Musicians:

“It is as if the Olympics never happened. Design—gone, technology—gone, music—gone. This short sighted, wholesale attack on secondary music education will emasculate not only our world class music education system but also our entire creative economy”.

Those may be apocalyptic words, but they reflect the depth and breadth of the views of people who really care. I recognise that all parties involved in the argument care, but I shiver a little when I hear belief after belief, but no evidence. That is a dangerous way of changing and making policy, and it imperils the quality of what goes on both inside and outside our classrooms.

[Mr Ward]

The hon. Gentleman has been dragged away from a crucial point that he was making about formative and summative assessments. A horse race would have different winners 10 yards before the finish line and 10 yards after it. The crucial thing is not just the who or the what that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned, but the when. It is the judgments made at a particular age that divide people into successes or failures.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

A short while ago, the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), challenged the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) to say what he objected to in the motion. I must say that we new MPs are used to seeing rather stronger worded motions than today’s, which makes me wonder whether the Opposition’s heart is really in it. The motion talks in general terms about requiring a rethink, but without specifying or committing to the things that they think are wrong and the things they would do differently.

The Opposition cite a few opponents of the Government’s plans, however, and they are worth reflecting on. Business, they say, is opposed. My experience from the Education Committee was that, if we were looking for a unified voice from business on qualifications and so on, good luck! To the extent that there is a unified voice, however, it is complaining about the things that the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) talked about—employability and workplace skills—but it is talking about the young people coming through the system now, not about some change that might happen in the future.

The Opposition also cite as opponents the champions of vocational qualifications, but that ignores the fact that the Government are also reforming vocational education and training. They have commissioned the Wolf review and are now implementing it. We must recognise, however, that Alison Wolf states, again and again, the value of academic qualifications alongside vocational qualifications. It should not be seen as an either/or. From a social mobility perspective, we know that countries with earlier specialisation tend to be associated with lower levels of social mobility, whereas those in which people specialise later do better in that regard.

On the creative industries and the arts, I had the opportunity recently to have a fascinating discussion with Mr Julian Lloyd Webber. Of course, any lobby or interest group will lobby to have its subject as part of the suite of subjects that has this name—many of us will have benefited from hearing from a lot of religious education teachers, for example. On the arts and creative industries, however, the argument is based on a false premise. Britain is a world leader in these industries—a world leader in the arts—but that was achieved without those subjects being forced on pupils in school, with or without a national curriculum.

When the shadow Secretary of State was at school, when you were at school, Madam Deputy Speaker, when I was at school—when all of us were at school—in most schools, art and music were optional subjects at aged 15 and 16 and they were over and above a set of subjects that pretty much everybody would do. The EBacc suite—[Interruption] I like the word “suite”—is not a compulsory set of subjects.

[Mr Ward]

What the hon. Gentleman says about the education we received many years ago is true, but back then there was not a national league table by which the institution was judged on the basis of whether it had an A-level in art, drama or whatever. That is the fundamental change that has taken place.

[Damian Hinds]

The hon. Gentleman is right to identify that, and it is that focus on the five-plus C-plus—almost regardless of what subjects they are in, with the exception of English and maths, which have held an elevated position—that has caused the problems that now need to be addressed. Even if the Ebacc were made up of a compulsory set of subjects, there would still be ample room in the curriculum for optional subjects, just as there always has been.

I would never claim that everything that happened between 1997 and 2010 in education was bad, but I am afraid that this whole system around qualifications, examinations and league tables is one area where things went badly awry. This was a time of stiffening international competition, yet in this country, we had grade inflation, smashing all domestic records, while slipping down the international league tables. That eroded confidence in the system, and the people that lets down are not the politicians, but the young people themselves.

Although the current shadow Secretary of State rightly acknowledges the existence of grade inflation, that is a relatively new road-to-Damascus conversion for the Labour party. Until relatively recently, it was keen to keep hammering on that all the improvements in children’s outcomes were actually real improvements and that we should celebrate them, rather than criticise them.