Examination Reform

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Wednesday 16th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg]

I reaffirm that we welcome the Wolf report in full. We are in favour of English and maths to 18. As the right hon. Gentleman acknowledged, the Government did not come forward with proposals for that. When and if they do so, we will give them our support. The Wolf report is very important. It is not obsolete; it is an important piece of work that needs to be fully implemented. We will support full implementation, but we need then to move to build on that. The technical baccalaureate is a proposal to achieve that. English baccalaureate certificates that will not be in crucial creative, technical and practical subjects risk undermining the progress that the Wolf report has given us. If he says that we are going to have a new—I think he has used the term “golden standard”—qualification called the English baccalaureate certificate that will apply only to certain subjects and will be given a high status in the accountability framework, that is bound to lead to an acceleration of the trend that I have already described, where fewer schools are doing design technology, fewer schools are doing art and fewer schools are doing drama. That is surely something that all sides of the House can be very concerned about.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Recently, I met Airbus and Rolls Royce, who said that they are having to recruit graduate engineers from abroad, because we are not producing enough of them in this country. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government’s changes will make that situation far worse than it already is?

[Stephen Twigg]

My hon. Friend makes the point powerfully, and it is absolutely the right point to make. It is not simply Opposition Members who are making it—it was the central argument of the CBI’s excellent report on education before Christmas, when it called for a pause in the Government’s proposed EBCs. That is why, in our motion, we urge the Government to rethink. We have reflected on what we are hearing from business, as my hon. Friend rightly reminds us, and from the world of education that they are not the reforms that take our education system, our economy, or our broader society in the right direction.

The Government’s plan for EBCs is very much in tune with the Secretary of State’s wider programme for education: a narrowing of the curriculum, backward looking in terms of assessment, and a policy for the few, not the many. Last year, the Secretary of State presided over the fiasco in GCSE English marking. Now, on his plans for changes to exams at 16, week after week we see increasing opposition, whether from business, entrepreneurs, teachers or parents. In contrast, I want to see a true baccalaureate approach to assessment and qualification reform. Labour Members are working to build a consensus in the worlds of business and education on reforms that will work and will last; reforms that will strengthen, not undermine, our standing in the world. On that basis, I commend this motion to the House.