Education Return and Awarding Qualifications in 2021

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con) [V]]

I thank my right hon. Friend for the £1.7 billion for catch-up. It is a remarkable achievement that I hope will make a difference to our children. On exams, the decision to adopt centre-assessed grades for the second year in a row highlights the severity of the damage that school closures have done. Although I accept that it is the least worst option that the Government have come up with, my concern is not so much about having one’s cake and eating it but baking a rock cake of grade inflation into the system.

Will my right hon. Friend confirm what the Government’s plan is to ensure that we will not have a wild west of grading, and that these grades will be meaningful to employers so as not to damage children’s life chances? When and how will we reverse the grade inflation? What is the rationale for not tethering this year’s grades to last year’s, or somewhere between 2019 and 2020? Why do we not embed quality assurance more broadly, rather than relying on random sampling or spot checks?

[Gavin Williamson]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his comments in relation to how we deliver catch-up. I also appreciate some of his thinking and ideas, which, as he can see, have been embedded into some of the policy work that we have been doing on catch-up. He raises an important issue about grade inflation. That is why we have been doing so much work with the exam boards and with Ofqual to ensure that there are proper internal checks as well as proper external checks.

We did not feel that it would be possible to peg to a certain year because, sadly, doing that would probably entail the use of some form of algorithm in order to best deliver it. That is why we have put a much greater emphasis on those internal and external quality assurance checks. We will work with exam boards and schools to ensure that there is consistency, but my right hon. Friend raises the important point that the best form of assessment, as I know he also believes, is examination. We want to move back into a position to bring exams back, as they are ultimately the fairest and most equal way of assessing all young people.