Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

The Opposition support the establishment of an independent regulator of qualifications and examinations. It was, after all, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) who, when he was shadow Education Secretary—as the position was then known, before the word "Education" was eliminated from the name of the Department—said:""It is not acceptable that the QCA, the guardian of our exams, is not independent of the Government."" By government, we mean the government machine. That is, all those elements of government charged with the responsibility of providing education, training teachers, determining the direction of education policy and the style of pedagogy; all those who determine whether or not, for example, primary education should be child centred; those who determine whether classes should be mixed ability or set by ability; the independent panels of advisers who advised the Government to remove translation from English into French from the secondary modern foreign languages curriculum; or those who advised that the primary curriculum should no longer teach the multiplication or addition of fractions. The exam regulator needs to be independent of all those groups and of anyone who has a vested interest in demonstrating that educational standards have improved. Ofqual particularly needs to be independent of civil servants in the education world, both departmental and at local authority level. As Sir Michael Barber points out in his book "Instruction to Deliver":""While the civil service was not party political, it was heavily influenced by the various lobby groups who competed for influence in the Department which thus tended to see issues from the producer angle...Moreover, the lack of ambition which characterised the education service as a whole inevitably affected the Department too."" It is keeping Ofqual independent from that lack of ambition that is so crucial, as well as keeping it independent of the producer angle. That lack of ambition was exemplified by almost the very first act of the newly created Ofqual. In October last year, in response to reports that one of the exam boards, Edexcel, was awarding C grades in its new science GCSE to pupils achieving just 20 per cent., Ofqual was asked to adjudicate after the three exam boards failed to reach an agreement over grade boundaries. Instead of making the three boards rise to the standard of the most demanding, which was AQA, it ordered AQA to lower its grade boundaries to those of the other two—levelling down rather than levelling up. The director general of AQA, Dr. Mike Cresswell, said that he did so under protest and wrote:""AQA is extremely reluctant to adopt a standard for GCSE Science which is less comparable with the past than it needs to be."" Ofqual spectacularly failed, therefore, in its first test. That all goes to the root of the contradictions that lie at the heart of this policy. On the one hand, the Government are saying that standards have been rigorously maintained over the years and between different exams. On the other hand, they say that an independent regulator needs to be created to boost public confidence. In a letter of September 2007, in which the DCSF set out the new model of regulation of qualifications, the Department states:""Over the last ten years, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority…has shown robust independence in its work as a regulator and has developed a system for assuring standards which is recognised internationally for its quality and reliability…The hard work of the QCA, and its fellow regulators, means that we can be confident that standards have been maintained."" If things are so good and rosy, why do we need reform? The document goes on to say:""Yet once again, this summer, we had a public debate about standards in qualifications and tests—even as the QCA provided reassurance that standards had been maintained"." In other words, how dare the public have a debate about standards when the QCA has "provided reassurance". The reforms are not about ensuring that standards are maintained, but about finding a better way to try to convince the public that standards are being maintained. Kathleen Tattersall, the new chairman and chief regulator at Ofqual, said in her evidence to the Public Bill Committee:""Ofqual has been set up…to ensure that there is a better…understanding of the issues and to assure public confidence."" What Ofqual should be concerned about is maintaining standards—something that its predecessor regulator, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, singularly failed to do. That is why, in amendment 61, we proposed adding a specific requirement to maintain standards to Ofqual's list of objectives.