Curriculum and Exam Reform

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I thank my hon. Friend for that elegantly and pithily put question. I would also like to take the opportunity to invite the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby to execute his own U-turn. As I say, on Wednesday 26 September he said he believed that we needed single exam boards for each subject. I no longer believe that is appropriate or necessary, but we are still none the wiser as to the Labour party’s position on that issue.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State accepts that we must learn from our mistakes. He referred in his statement to Ofqual saying that there were significant risks in trying to both strengthen qualifications and to end competition in large parts of the exams market. Will he tell us why he did not realise before now that there were significant risks?

[Michael Gove]

I was clear that the programme of reform we put out in September was ambitious, and I wanted to ensure that we could challenge the examinations system—and, indeed, our schools system—to make a series of changes that would embed rigour and stop a drift to dumbing-down. I realised, however, as I mentioned in my statement, that the best was the enemy of the good. The case made by Ofqual, the detail it produced and the warning it gave, as well as the work done by the Select Committee, convinced me that it was better to proceed on the basis of consensus around the very many changes that made sense rather than to push this particular point.