Kelvin Hopkins
Main Page: Kelvin Hopkins (Independent - Luton North)Department Debates - View all Kelvin Hopkins's debates with the Department for Education
(12 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Elizabeth Truss
My hon. Friend has made a good point. The Secretary of State has already said that his ambition is for virtually all students to study maths until the age of 18, and we will introduce a funding condition for students who have not achieved a GCSE in maths so that they can reach that level of aptitude. We will also look at mid-level qualifications for students who have maths GCSEs but do not want to take a full A-level in maths, so that there is an alternative path for them to take.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
14. What assessment he has made of the 2012 GCSE English results; and if he will make a statement.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
16. What assessment he has made of the 2012 GCSE English results; and if he will make a statement.
The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)
On 18 October, provisional national and local authority level GCSE results for 2012 were published. The percentage of pupils achieving grades A* to C in English had fallen by three percentage points to 66.2%. The independent regulator, Ofqual, continues its investigation into the awarding of English GCSEs this year, and is now looking into why some schools achieved the results that they had expected while others did not. The final report will be published shortly.
Kelvin Hopkins
My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) and I recently met teachers and head teachers in Luton to discuss the problems involved in the GCSE results. It is clear that some pupils were not permitted to take the sixth-form courses that they had chosen, as a consequence of their results, and that some schools that made strenuous efforts to improve their English results have actually been knocked back. Is that not a disgrace, and should not apologies be made?
Michael Gove
I share the concern felt by the hon. Gentlemen. We must wait to see the Ofqual report before we can be more certain about what went wrong this year, but it is clear that there were a variety of factors consequent on the design of the examination, and that we need to take steps to remedy them.