Exams and Accountability in 2021

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

Well, my Lords, we have had to wait quite some time for the Secretary of State to respond to the concerns of pupils, parents, school leaders and trade unions, all of whom have been seeking clarity on how next summer’s exams can be conducted fairly. We welcome many of the measures announced in the Statement, which will mitigate the impact of the pandemic, including those on SATs and the delay in Ofsted resuming its inspections, but we believe that the measures announced on GCSEs and A-levels do not go far enough and leave a number of issues to be resolved.

The first concern is the Government’s apparent belief that a one-size-fits-all approach is appropriate. Why should that be the case? The changes being proposed will apply to all students, so everyone will know about the topics to be covered, everyone will be able to bring in certain aids, everyone will be graded more generously and so on. Significant numbers of pupils have been and will continue to be absent from school due to Covid, causing disruption to their education. The pattern across the country is uneven, and students’ experiences have been different, so how can making changes that apply to everyone specifically help those who have had the most challenging experiences and therefore need more support?

One size fits all will lead to fundamental inequities between students who have suffered different levels of disruption to their learning, and makes it inevitable that some young people will be examined on what they have not been taught rather than what they have been taught. This is an issue that the interim chief regulator of Ofqual has red-flagged, highlighting the gap in learning loss across different regions, describing it as

“one of the most intractable issues”,

with any potential solutions

“fraught with difficulty”.

The Minister may point to this as being within the remit of the expert group, but with someone as experienced as the head of Ofqual saying it is close to being unmanageable, does the Minister believe there is a solution to be found? If there is not, the question of whether the exams can ever be fair for pupils in the hardest-hit Covid areas must be addressed.

I mentioned the expert group, but we have had relatively little information on it. Why has it been established so late? Who will comprise the group and will it include representatives of school leaders and teachers? Most importantly, when is it expected to report? Additionally, will minutes of its meetings be published, as now happens with SAGE? Will its members, like those who comprise the DfE’s Covid-19 recovery advisory group, be required to sign non-disclosure agreements? That would be completely unacceptable at a time when concerned parents and pupils surely deserve transparency on discussions about their future. How will the Secretary of State ensure that the distribution of grades is spread evenly across schools and postcodes this year, so that the most disadvantaged pupils are treated fairly? We still do not know which parts of the syllabus will be in the exam papers and which will not, leaving schools less and less time to adjust their teaching programmes.

A further concern is why it has now been revealed that funding for catch-up tutoring will be spread across two years. Apparently, around £140 million of the £350 million allocated to the national tutoring programme remains unspent. That might not have been the case had the programme not taken so long to begin its work but, given the widely accepted disparity in the amount of education that school pupils have been able to access since the start of the pandemic, surely every available resource should be used to ensure that every pupil is prepared for this year’s exams, rather than rolling over that part of the funding into next year, because for some that will be too late.

The Minister may point to the separate catch-up fund, but that does not justify holding back resources already allocated for spending in this financial year, particularly when it is so critical that they reach those young people most in need. Students should have the opportunity to show what they have achieved in unprecedented circumstances. Despite the delay, these proposals fall short of what is required to facilitate the fair exams that the Secretary of State promised.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I first join the Minister in congratulating Dr Frost but also pay tribute to teachers and school leaders up and down the country who have pulled out all the stops to make sure that schooling for their pupils is happening. We welcome the Statement. Clearly, on this occasion, it has been very thoughtfully worked through and every aspect has been covered, unlike last year’s fiasco.

We feel that, had teacher-managed assessments been used, the Government could have given teachers far greater certainty about how to work, what to teach, how to assess and which subjects to prioritise for the rest of the academic year. It is interesting that research carried out by Exeter University shows huge variances across the country in the amount of schooling and learning that children have been afforded. There are huge regional variations, with more teaching and learning in the south compared to the north. There have also been huge discrepancies between types of schools, according to Exeter University’s research, which is why continuing with exams will be deeply unfair given the opportunities that this academic year gives students in different parts of the country and the different effects on remote education. Having school assessment grades would have given schools far greater certainty about how to work, what to teach and how to assess.

But we are now going to operate in the way that the Government propose, and I welcome many of the proposals in the Statement. I have a number of concerns to raise, which I hope the Minister will deal with in her reply. Like the noble Lord, Lord Watson, I would like the Minister to give more details about the statement:

“We will … commission an expert group to assess any local variations and the impact the virus is having on students’ education.”


What does this mean in practice and how will it work, et cetera?

Secondly, we welcome the decision on school accountability for assessments taken, publication of results and how Ofsted will operate. Perhaps the Minister could expand a little more, because this is an opportunity for Ofsted, in a “non-threatening way”—in inverted commas—to support those schools that were judged inadequate and requiring improvement. Perhaps that could happen during this period.

We have concerns also about those children and students who are home educated. This could happen in two ways. Some have chosen to be home educated, but others have had to home educate and deregister from the school, perhaps because a close member of their family has a life-threatening condition and has to be supported and protected, so the child or student cannot go into school. What support is being given in terms of exams and learning for those children and students?

Finally, when we say that our young people will be sitting exams, but that places additional burdens on schools in terms of organising them. Will additional advice and support be given to schools on how to operate and socially distance students, because it is not an easy thing to do? I do not know whether the Government have considered this, but some of the exams might have to be phased so that all pupils can take them in a very safe environment.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education and Department for International Trade (Baroness Berridge) (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords for generally welcoming what we have been doing. It has taken some time to make such a comprehensive announcement because we have been working closely with sector groups, school leaders, the unions and parents. We have consulted widely and, as was seen last week, the Statement has generally been well received.

In relation to GCSEs and A-levels, Ofqual specifically looked at whether we could adopt any kind of regional, local school approach. This was quickly assessed as being too unfair. Even within areas where there has been a high prevalence of disease, there may be schools that have not isolated any pupils, while in another area of the country that is in tier 1, such as Cornwall, an individual school has isolated a lot of students. They would have had very different responses to any regional approach. Within a school, you may also have a lot of pupils isolating but some groups who have not isolated at all. When you get down to pupil level, some respond well to remote education and others do not. It was not ideological. It was very quickly looked at, assessed and viewed, particularly with regional boundaries. Do you use local authority district areas, county areas or authority metropolitan borough areas there? You could quickly have injustices at those boundaries if a school with a large number self-isolating happened to be, for instance, in Cheshire, and you have tiered Trafford for having higher disease prevalence just over the border.

It was not possible to adopt those kinds of approaches, so the view was that the approach taken with its package of measures, although at individual level, will help most of all those students who all noble Lords are most concerned about: the children who have been out of education and who may have had Covid or had to self-isolate. Within those disadvantaged students, at some point during the process we considered having optionality of questions, for instance. This was quickly viewed as working against disadvantaged pupils, as the research shows.

No option was off the table. These options were looked at when trying to come up with the fairest system, bearing in mind that these students were part-way through their courses and the general view from children, parents, teachers and the sector was that exams should go ahead. They are the fairest means of assessing a pupil’s performance. We believe that the combination of contingencies and the introduction of some of the topic areas mean that children will be examined on what they have been taught. If some topic areas are announced at the end of January and teachers have not reached that part of the curriculum, they would have from then until the start of the exams three weeks later to ensure that it is covered, so we will not be examining children on what they have not been taught.

The external advisory group, which will continue to look at whether there are other ways to reduce and mitigate the differential learning loss—which we do not deny, but do not agree that a regional response is the way to address it—will give the same sort of confidential advice to the Secretary of State to look at any further measures that civil servants give. It is not about lack of transparency, but about pulling together a group of people such as MAT leaders, Ofqual, exam boards, assessment experts, unions and other members, including on special educational needs. It is not about gagging or lack of transparency; it is just the nature of how Ministers need free and frank advice. We and Ofqual will ensure that the generosity of grades, which will be similar to last year’s, though not identical, is spread across the relevant institutions.

Regarding the catch-up tutoring, the phased approach to the national tutoring programme that has been adopted will ensure that more disadvantaged students gain from high quality. It is about not only rolling out quantity but ensuring that the quality of what we provide is excellent. This was decided to be the best way to provide that support. Obviously, catch-up for many pupils will go beyond this summer, so we are utilising the resources as well as we can. There are already 188 academic mentors from Teach First in our schools; there will be 1,000 by the end of February. They are in schools in our most disadvantaged areas, which need that one-on-one person who can physically run small group tutoring. We hope that there will be 15,000 through the national tutoring programme, available to reach about a quarter of a million students, but it is important that we maintain that quality and enable those students to catch up.

As the Minister in charge of our specialist maths sixth forms, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for recognising the achievements of Dr Frost, who got an award for making his maths tuition available during Covid. We are very proud of him and all the other teachers. I agree with the noble Lord that teaching staff, support staff, estate staff and school business leaders have pulled out all the stops to help young people catch up. As he outlined, there are huge variances across regions, but there are huge variances within regions in pupils’ experience and we cannot adopt a regional strategy. However, exams are not deeply unfair; they are the fairest way for students. I reiterate to noble Lords that we tend to forget some of the complaints from previous eras about the subjectivity of assessments, although not deliberately done by teachers. BAME communities have complained over the years, and we have a potential issue over the lack of accurate predicated grades for disadvantaged students. But when you enter an exam, you enter with a number: nobody knows your gender, where you come from or your ethnicity. It is an opportunity for pupils to display what they know and how they can apply it.

On the comments regarding Ofsted, yes, it will introduce its monitoring-type visits in the spring. Obviously, it is the same situation for early years and the independent sector. It is envisaged that this will be more supportive, but it will be a monitoring visit. Given there are disadvantaged students who were already in institutions that Ofsted said were struggling, because they were inadequate and required improvement, we need to know how those institutions are doing, including in responding to the crisis. These will be monitoring visits, but I assure noble Lords that Ofsted retains its powers to go in when there are any safe- guarding concerns or serious concerns around educational achievement.

Many noble Lords, and Members in the other place, have raised the issue of home education. Many parents choose to do that and deliver a high quality of education. They are free to do that in our country. However, we must ensure that suitable education, as I believe the legislation says, is being delivered. Most of the original cohort of extremely clinically vulnerable children are back in school, which is the best place for them. There is a tiny cohort—much smaller now—who are still advised to remain at home. It is envisaged that for their exams, there will be some system of home invigilation under exam conditions. This is already being planned for.

In relation to home-educated students who must then register at an exam centre, it is proposed that the papers in exams for a particular subject are spaced as far apart as they can be within the timetable. An English and maths paper will take place before the half-term to ensure that everyone has that under their belt before that holiday. There should be a gap. If they sit one of those papers and there is evidence that they missed other papers for good reasons, rather than because of choosing not to sit them, they can then go into the normal special consideration process and so get a grade. If you miss all those papers, then a contingency paper in that subject will be sat 10 days after the final paper. Obviously, we envisage that if you are ill at the last one, you would have 10 days to get well and sit that paper.

It is obviously hoped that home-educated students, of whom quite a lot were in the cohort who sat exams in the autumn because we could not give them a centre-assessed grade, will either sit all the papers or, if they cannot do that, sit at least one and get a grade, and, if they miss everything, sit the contingency paper. Ofqual will announce the details, but if a child misses all those exams, there will be a very defined set of teacher assessments. We will have to work closely and continue to engage with the home-educated sector on how we can try to ensure that what happened last year does not happen this year, in that many centres said that they did not know the children well enough to be able, with all professional integrity, to give them a grade, and obviously we had to respect that.

This package of measures has been well thought through but, if noble Lords have anything further to add, I will expect to hear from them, not only now but going forward.