Examination Reform

Nicholas Dakin Excerpts

Wednesday 16th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson). I am pleased that he focused on young people themselves. We need a bit of “back to basics” on this subject. We must ask fundamental questions about what we are doing. What are these assessments at 16 for, and who are they for? If we ask about the what and the who, everything else will flow sensibly from that.

We need to bear in mind that we are speaking in a context that is changing. We are not only facing the challenges of the 21st century, not the 19th or the 18th century, but we are at a point where there has been cross-party consensus on raising the participation age first to 17 and then to 18. GCSEs were brought in as a “leaving the system and going into employment” exam, and then that framework was changed so that people leave not at 16 but at 17 or 18. That raises serious questions about what these exams should be like and who they are for.

Assessment is a fundamental part of the educative process. Across this House, there is a joint, consistent commitment to the value of assessment. Formative assessment, which goes on day in, day out in every classroom—it will be going on at this moment in myriad different contexts—determines how learning is driven forward for each individual or clusters of individuals to get the best out of them. That is going on all the time, and it is far more complex than summative assessment. We spend nearly all our time getting excited about summative assessment and the nature of the exams or assessments that take place at 16, 17 or 18, or indeed at other times, but we must get the formative assessment right to make sure that it drives better teaching and better learning.

Members from all parties have made some excellent contributions. I would pick out in particular my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), who spoke from experience. Often, in debates such as these, some Members speak from experience and their views resonate because they have sense and power behind them, but others speak as a result of their beliefs. That is not to say that those beliefs are not valid—they often are—but belief as against experience is an interesting dilemma and battle of ideas.

[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He often says that our policy needs to be evidence-based. Could he give some examples of the exact evidence in addition to that from the teaching profession?

[Nic Dakin]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Let me pick out just one quote from Deborah Annetts, the chief executive of the Incorporated Society of Musicians:

“It is as if the Olympics never happened. Design—gone, technology—gone, music—gone. This short sighted, wholesale attack on secondary music education will emasculate not only our world class music education system but also our entire creative economy”.

Those may be apocalyptic words, but they reflect the depth and breadth of the views of people who really care. I recognise that all parties involved in the argument care, but I shiver a little when I hear belief after belief, but no evidence. That is a dangerous way of changing and making policy, and it imperils the quality of what goes on both inside and outside our classrooms.

[Mr Ward]

The hon. Gentleman has been dragged away from a crucial point that he was making about formative and summative assessments. A horse race would have different winners 10 yards before the finish line and 10 yards after it. The crucial thing is not just the who or the what that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned, but the when. It is the judgments made at a particular age that divide people into successes or failures.

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[Nic Dakin]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. He reminds us of the central question that I asked at the beginning of my contribution, namely: what and who is this assessment for? Summative assessment is extremely costly. It costs a huge amount in energy to prepare for it and in time spent on it. The whole of the summer term of the final year—year 11—is more or less taken up by summative assessment. We have to ask ourselves whether that time is best spent on summative assessment—and for whom—or whether it would be better spent if it were used more creatively to drive forward other things that we want our young people to have at age 16.

Why have such a wide range of exams at 16 if they exist only for the accountability of institutions? That is the issue. As the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb) has said, there is a problem when those assessments at 16 are used for the purpose of the accountability of institutions. It distorts behaviour if those assessments are taking place for the benefit of the institutions rather than the individual. Qualifications are framed by the curriculum, and the choices that an individual makes in any system—hon. Members have given examples from the past and present of the paths that young people have decided to follow—are influenced by the interests of institutions, not those of individuals.

I fear that we are moving away from the strength of personalised learning, which was beginning to blossom. It was not perfect and issues needed to be dealt with, but there was a consensus behind it that was driving greater achievement, greater progression and greater performance in the post-education world. We are in danger of moving back to another age of greater failure. The hon. Member for Brigg and Goole drew attention to the dangers of lowering aspiration and increasing failure, and to the risks inherent in following that route.

I want to draw attention to the work that I have been doing on behalf of the noble Lord Haskins by chairing the skills commission on the Humber local enterprise partnership. It is a business-led skills commission, but I am its chair, which is slightly bizarre. We have been taking evidence from industry. It was more than a year before the Secretary of State met the CBI, but he met News International many times during that period, which is a reflection of his priorities and who he deems more important on this issue among business and the media.

I have been listening to the views of people in the real world of commerce and business. The reason they are often excited about some of the Secretary of State’s other ideas, such as university technical colleges, studio schools—[Interruption.] Let us give everybody the blessing of coming up with those ideas. The reason they are excited about those experiments is that they give industry the opportunity to help frame the curriculum. They say that that frees up the time. What they are really bothered about—this message comes back strongly across the piece—is not so much academic excellence, but softer employability skills. They take the academic excellence as read. What they say is missing when young people come through the workplace door is their readiness for work. To be frank, the direction of travel of English baccalaureate subjects puts at risk the time available to prepare pupils for employability skills and so on.

It is all very well for the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton to say that it should be in the school’s ethos that such things are taught, but he has not done as many timetables as I have. Doing a timetable is a complex business. It is what delivers time to young people—it is a rationing mechanism. Once time has been set aside for something to happen, the time is reduced for other things to happen. What is happening at the moment is a natural and obvious restriction of the curriculum. That does not mean that a breadth of curriculum subjects is not available in different places, but it does mean that individual student choice is being greatly reduced.

I bear witness to the sensible and intelligent contribution of the Chair of the Education Committee, who, as always, spoke with not only a great focus on improving the quality of education, but a great realism. He reminded us of the quality of the brand of GCSEs and of their performance. We may want them to perform better, but he reminded us that they are a brand that deliver and perform quite well, that we could work with and develop them better, and that what people involved in the consultation are saying is, “Let’s get on with it and let’s make it better together, but without tearing up the past or the present.”

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[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

In following the hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) I should like to consider what he said about the profound effect of the EBacc. We can all agree that it has indeed had a profound effect on creative subjects such as art, design, drama and music, which are clearly being sidelined despite the incredible value that our creative sector brings to the UK economy. Some 15% of schools have dropped one or more arts subjects since the EBacc was introduced, and the latest figures, from summer 2012, show a serious decline in the number of entrants for design and technology: down 5.1%, for art and design, down 2.4%, for music, down 3.6%, and for drama down 6.3%. I therefore agree with the hon. Gentleman that the introduction of the EBacc has had a profound effect.

I want to pick up on the theme pursued by other Members who talked about preparation for work and for life, and ask the Secretary of State some questions that I hope he is considering. What are qualifications for? What is education for at age 16 and beyond? What are we trying to achieve with our qualifications? What is in it for young people and for the country? In a globally competitive world in which we struggle to keep up with countries that, until recently, were regarded as developing, we have different needs for our future work force. In a world with technology on a scale that many of us never imagined when we were at school, the needs of young people are completely different from those considered when GCSEs were created.

In September, the Secretary of State said in his statement that

“nations that were slow developers 20 years ago are outstripping us economically, and now that ways of learning have been so dramatically transformed in all our lifetimes, it is right that we reform our examination system. We know that the old model—the ’80s model—is no longer right for now…We know that employers and academics have become less confident in the worth of GCSE passes because they fear that students lack the skills for the modern workplace and the knowledge for advanced study.”—[Official Report, 17 September 2012; Vol. 550, c. 653.]

No one in this Chamber would disagree with a word of what the Secretary of State said in that statement, but the question is what we need now from qualifications, schools, education, and for and from our young people. How do we compete in a world where we are rapidly being overtaken by China, India, Brazil and countless other countries?

Employers tell me that they want young people who can solve problems and who have strong communication skills and an ability to get on with others, but good sets of GCSE passes—or other written exam passes—do not necessarily correspond to those three skills. Businesses need staff who will help them to thrive, and we also need people who will start and grow their own businesses. We need excellence in the services that support our creative industries and our high-tech manufacturing that will produce the jobs and growth that will enable this country to thrive and our people to enjoy prosperity.

There is no question but that we need academic qualifications. High standards in English and maths are the cornerstone of success for this country, but so too are qualifications in engineering and the arts. The young people I speak to want to study vocational subjects—engineering, design and technology, music, art, catering and hairdressing. Those subjects are crucial for young people who want to pursue their chosen career and a country that wants its economy to succeed. In short, success in school and beyond results from the combination of academic and vocational study, and our qualification system needs to reflect that mix.

[Nic Dakin]

My hon. Friend is spelling things out very clearly. Does he think that the CBI put its finger on the pulse of the issue when it said that there is a risk of making the mistakes of the past by trying to micro-manage what is going on, instead of allowing other things to happen?

[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend has vast experience as the former principal of a sixth-form college and he knows exactly what he is talking about. Yes, the CBI made it clear in its report that high-stakes testing at 16 must not be a barrier to achievement at 18. It said:

“There is a risk that the mistakes of the past—both teaching to the test by schools and micro-management of the school system through the means of exams and league tables—may be repeated in the EBC. For this reason, we favour pausing to ask a more fundamental question about the role of examinations before 18, namely what their purpose is.”

I hope that the Secretary of State—while he is sending something out on Twitter or texting one his staff—will perhaps find the answer to that question so that when he sums up the debate he can tell me and, more importantly, the CBI.

The Secretary of State’s proposals indicate a preference for an end-of-year exam, with no assessment or coursework, in a number of subjects, but in the real world how useful is the ability to succeed in a three-hour written exam? I would question whether it is of much use at all. In many jobs, the ability to perform tasks is essential, and, yes, success in work is closely linked to an ability to perform under pressure, often under time pressure. However, in the long run it is the quality of the product or service that an organisation delivers that is critical to success. The role of the individual in contributing to that success does not appear, as far as I can see, to be in any way linked to the ability to pass an exam.

The ability to solve problems, to think on one’s feet, and to communicate effectively face to face, on the phone, by e-mail, in a letter or in a report are all essential skills in the world of work and outside it. They all depend on good English, yet there will be no spoken communication element in the EBC, no testing of real world skills linked to the use of IT in English and no testing of key communication skills such as customer service, which is a vital skill in today’s world. I am not saying that GCSEs were perfect, but surely we are moving further away from a qualification and examination system that measures those real world skills, not closer to it.

[Nic Dakin]

Does my hon. Friend think that the reasons he has set out explain why Lord Baker, who has much experience in this matter, describes the proposals as “a huge mistake” and fears that they will not survive a change of Government?

[Bill Esterson]

Yes, and of course Lord Baker was one of the architects of the GCSE system. He recognised the need for change, so he is in a strong position on this matter. He has credibility and a track record, and the Government should certainly listen closely to what he has to say.

Standards in English and maths are crucial. We can all agree on that and we all do, but the question is how those standards are measured. I do not believe that we measure them effectively, either for young people or for the economy, purely through the use of a linear exam system.

In my business career I worked with many young people in telephone call centres, among other places. Call centre managers often bemoaned the lack of basic literacy of the younger recruits. Often those with GCSEs in English of grade C or better were unable to write properly and struggled when talking to customers on the phone. There is clearly a problem, but the solution we found was to help young trainees with practical skills. They included literacy skills, because they had not picked them up at school. The key was to make training practical—to make it relevant to their jobs and to their lives outside of work. Because the training took place at work, it was in context and they understood for that reason. The students were motivated to learn and to do well at work. How do we replicate that within the education system before students go to work? I do not see how it can be done in the artificial environment of a linear exam process.

To make learning practical and real is a simple concept, and we should be able to do it in school. In short, we should be able to design a system where young people learn what they need for life, in a way that motivates them and helps businesses to flourish. However, to make sure young people are ready for life, they need to learn skills that they can use and which are of use to employers.