Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, I will do my best here. I will speak also to some government amendments which are rather technical, so the last part of my speech might not be very inspiring. I start by setting out the responsibilities for regulated assessment, such as the national curriculum tests and the early years foundation stage profile. The purposes of these assessments, as noble Lords are aware, are set out in legislation in the Education Act 2002 and the Childcare Act 2006—namely to ascertain what pupils and children have achieved in relation to the attainment targets for the relevant stage or the early learning goals. The Bill gives the Secretary of State the power to specify additional purposes. Under the legislation it is for the Secretary of State to decide how those purposes are to be delivered; for example, what subjects should be assessed, when and how? That is a policy decision, delivered through statutory orders. The Secretary of State will in future be required to consult Ofqual before making an order, which I am sure the Committee will think is right. It is crucial, however, that the delivery of assessments is not done directly by Ministers or the department. We cannot have, I am sure the Committee will agree, Ministers being responsible for decisions about such matters as marking or where grade boundaries should be. Normally we would expect Ministers to ask which QCDA will be their delivery agent for assessment, so that the QCDA does the delivery. As an aside, I should report that after the problems with the national curriculum tests, which I thought we might be discussing now, more than 999 out of every 1,000 test results were delivered on time this year, which has to be good news. I take the opportunity to congratulate QCA on such a successful performance. Ofqual’s role is to regulate assessments in the context of this policy and delivery framework. In particular, it will set the regulatory framework to which those designing and delivering assessment arrangements must have regard. It will check and report on whether the assessments that are designed are fit for the purposes set out by the Secretary of State and monitor, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, says, the maintenance of standards. If Ofqual does not like what it sees as it monitors, it can—and I am sure it will—say so to Parliament. Like a referee, Ofqual needs to know the rules of the game that it is enforcing and, like a referee, Ofqual must be free to enforce those rules. However, just as it is not a referee’s job to rewrite the rules, it is not Ofqual’s job to comment on the purposes of the assessments. Those are policy issues for which Ministers are accountable. Interim Ofqual has made very clear its view that Ofqual should not have a policy role. We do not want a situation in which Ofqual could come up with an alternative policy—even though it has no mandate, no power and no accountability for doing so—and comment on that, rather than focus on maintaining standards in the assessments, as the Committee has made clear is important, and which is what its role should be. Let me be clear that the clause does not constrain Ofqual’s independence in any way. Ofqual will be free to regulate as it sees fit. The information it collects to make its judgments, whether those judgments are favourable or not, how it makes known its views, and all other regulatory matters, are entirely for Ofqual to decide. It will be for Ofqual alone, through its regulatory framework, to set out how it expects standards to be maintained, and to monitor and report on those standards, given its assessments and standards objectives. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, asked a question about Ofqual. As I said, Ofqual sets a framework for standards and the QCDA delivers. I apologise for repeating myself. In the light of that explanation, I hope the noble Lord will feel able not to press his amendments. I want to say a few words about the government amendments tabled in my name. I am afraid that they are a bit technical. Schedule 12, the minor and consequential amendments schedule, contains minor changes to the legislation covering the national curriculum and early years assessments to help the system work effectively. One of those changes is to the way in which the so-called supplementary provisions are produced. That is a lengthy document which sets out all the detail of how assessments have to be delivered to ensure that the tests are run fairly and effectively, covering everything down to the national curriculum test papers, how they should be scored, when they can be opened and the test results. The provisions in Schedule 12 allow the Secretary of State to delegate the production of these supplementary provisions if he judges that that is the best way of delivering assessments effectively. We have discovered a technical problem with the provisions. Inadvertently, the wording of the amendments restricted the scope of what these supplementary provisions can cover—I refer to the amendments originally being made to the Bill and not the ones we have tabled now—the result of which was that all the minutiae of the detailed arrangements would have to be put in statutory orders, which, as my note tells me, "is just daft". We need to put this right by moving a few words in the new provisions from the end of the sentence nearer to the beginning. I apologise for having to table these technical amendments and for speaking to them less eloquently than I should. I hope that my comments have been helpful and that the noble Lord feels able to withdraw the amendment.