Schools and Colleges: Qualification Results and Full Opening

Lord Caine Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, forgive me; the noble Lord, Lord Storey, also asked about the attainment gap. At the moment the department is seeking as quickly as possible an assessment of what education has been lost and the effect on the attainment gap. We appreciate the EEF’s work, and there have been other reports. There is a procurement out at the moment so that we can assess not all pupils, obviously, but get a better base as to what has actually happened, allowing the next few weeks for things to settle down in schools. Teachers will be assessing that at the moment.

Independent schools are very keen to engage. I personally have been engaging with them through the Independent Schools Council and the Boarding Schools’ Association. They offered some summer clubs over the school holidays, but in my next meeting with them I will take to them how we can structure more their desire to help.

[Lord Caine (Con)]

My Lords, given that examinations are by their very nature socially distanced and that most schools broke just before the exam period, some of us wonder whether the wholesale cancellation of all exams was absolutely necessary. On postponing next year, the Schools Minister yesterday highlighted the need to consult the devolved Administrations. What formal structures are being considered to ensure that in future there is a properly co-ordinated approach to these matters across the whole of our United Kingdom?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, on the cancellation of exams, I think we need to cast our minds back. At the time exams were due to start, no secondary school pupils had been back in the building and the confidence was not there among parents. I hate to think of the trauma we could have caused by children going straight from lockdown into an invigilated situation. It just was not possible, and the department was commended on a decisive decision at that moment that exams were cancelled. So, with the best will in the world, that was the right decision and we stand by it.

On communication with the four nations, only yesterday officials were in a four-nations meeting. There is regular dialogue at both ministerial and official level with the four nations. For instance, the direction letters sent by the Secretary of State to Ofqual were copied to each of his three counterparts in the nations. We are working closely. It is unfortunate for all young people that none of the four nations managed to deliver the standardisation that we had intended to deliver and believed was best for children.