Secondary Education (GCSEs)

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Tuesday 26th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I have enormous respect for the hon. Lady, who makes a very important point about Birmingham. It is the youngest city in Britain, and its multicultural traditions are part of its strength, but it is important to recognise in Birmingham that, although there are some excellent schools, such as Perry Beeches and Arthur Terry, there are some underperforming schools.

The excellence of a school is not, however, related to the number of children who have English as an additional language; all research shows that such children are just as capable of succeeding as children from any background. What matters is the quality of the school, not the nature of the home background, and what matters for all children in the 21st century is developing the language skills that will enable them to take their place in university or in the modern workplace. That is why it was a disaster when language learning was dropped under the previous Government, and why it is so welcome that the coalition Government have seen it restored.

Some people will ask why, if performance in those core GCSEs that matter so much declined, the headline figures for GCSE performance improved under Labour? What was going on? What was filling that gap? The truth is that we had a growth in so-called equivalent exams, which were called vocational although most employers did not rate them, and which were called equivalent to one or more GCSEs when most employers and colleges did not believe that they were. They have been eloquently criticised by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), by the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) and by Professor Alison Wolf in her universally praised report on vocational qualifications. There was fantastic growth in low-level qualifications under Labour, most of which, she says, had

“little to no labour market value.”

In 2004, students were taking just 15,000 of those qualifications, and then the Minister for Schools changed the rules. The then Minister for Schools is now the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby, and as a result of those changes a certificate in nail technology counted as two GCSEs, a diploma in horse care counted as four GCSEs and, by 2010, where previously 15,000 such qualifications had been pursued, 575,000 were being taken, crowding out real study, driving rigour to the margins and holding back social mobility.

Incentives were created by government which, as Alison Wolf points out,

“deliberately steered institutions and, therefore, their students away from qualifications that might stretch (and reward) young people and towards qualifications that can be passed easily.”

She says also that, of the current cohort of children between the ages of 16 and 19,

“at least 350,000 get little to no benefit”

from such qualifications.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

rose—

[Michael Gove]

Will the hon. Lady defend that wrong turn in Labour policy?

[Gloria De Piero]

I asked the head teacher of a really successful academy in my constituency what he thought about the issue, and he told me:

“We will have to limit success by choosing tiering well before students have hit their potential.”

Does the Secretary of State believe that that fantastic head teacher, who is taking his school from strength to strength, is an enemy of reform?

[Michael Gove]

I absolutely do not. I am sure that that school, like many of the schools in the hon. Lady’s constituency, is doing a fantastic job, and I am grateful that she has been so enthusiastic in embracing the academies reform programme.

As the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby acknowledged, the two-tier system that he talks about is not something that the coalition Government are planning to introduce, but something that the Labour Government presided over and we want to tackle. The problem is that we already have a two-tier GCSE system. As he acknowledged but then skated over, we have two types of GCSE—foundation and higher tier—in English, maths and science. We have a two-tier system of first-class and second-class qualifications. The higher tier allows anyone who takes a paper to get an A, B or C, and so on; the foundation paper is explicitly designed to limit student success. In ordinary circumstances, it is impossible for a student who enters for a foundation-tier paper to achieve a grade higher than C. It is impossible, in other words, for thousands of students to achieve the most basic grade that is respected by employers and will in many colleges allow them to progress to A-levels. The very act of entering a child for a foundation-tier paper at GCSE is a way of saying, “Don’t get above yourself—A-levels are not for you.” Even colleges that set a C grade as an entry requirement often demand a grade C from a higher-tier paper because they treat higher-tier and lower-tier GCSEs as separate qualifications.

A cap on aspiration was Labour’s policy for the 13 years it was in power, and this coalition Government are determined to remove that cap.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

Young people are working harder in our schools than ever before, guided by probably the best ever generation of teachers. Certainly, lessons are planned and progress tracked in a way that it never was when most of us were at school. Young people are also examined more, at considerable cost to our schools—the average cost of exams to maintained secondary schools was £44,000 in 2003 and £96,000 by 2010. Those pupils and teachers are being let down by a system that has allowed the erosion of confidence in their qualifications.

There is massive pressure on schools, as we all know, from the five-plus C-plus measurement in league tables. Although it is true, as many right hon. and hon. Members have said, that there have been real improvements in educational attainment, it is also true that ever since those league table ladders were created, ingenious schools have found ever more ingenious ways of getting up them, aided and abetted by public policy and the exams industry, with things such as double awards, short courses, half GCSEs, new subjects and, of course, the granddaddy of them all, equivalents, which make a 19 percentage point difference in the league tables. If equivalents are included, 75% of children get five or more GCSEs at grade C or above, but that goes down to 56% if those equivalents are taken out.

Like economic growth, improvements in grade have both a real part and an inflationary part. The real growth comes from better teaching, better teachers and more engaged parents, and I think we have see ample evidence of those things.

[Gloria De Piero]

In that case, would the hon. Gentleman listen to a maths teacher from my constituency and the 11th most improved school in the country from 2012, who says:

“The current GCSE system allows every pupil to achieve beyond their potential and is fully recognised by employers regardless of tier”?

[Damian Hinds]

I am always happy to hear from distinguished maths teachers, but I am not quite sure how the hon. Lady’s intervention relates to or contradicts what I just said. I was saying that there have clearly been real improvements, but I do not think there is anyone left, including that distinguished maths teacher, who doubts that on top of those real improvements there has been significant grade inflation, as acknowledged by the shadow Secretary of State.

There are four key elements to the grade inflation. First, there has been the gradual easing of what we used to call the syllabus—now called the specification—on the part of the exam board. Secondly, at the school end, there has been teaching to the test. Thirdly, there have been all sorts of elements in the design of examinations, including modularity or what is now called unitising, early takes, re-sits, the use of calculators and so on. Fourthly—this sounds a bit dull and technical but it is very important—there is the statistical tolerance in the results. Every year, there is rightly a normalisation to say what results, for example, a key stage 4 cohort should get relative to what they achieved at key stage 2, with perhaps a 1% tolerance either way on a finding—but of course the tolerance only ever goes up. That is the most pure form of grade inflation.