Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, one of the crucial functions of the Government and their agencies in respect of examinations is to assign a point score to each grade in each examination because that is the mechanism by which examinations are made comparable from the point of view of the general public judging the performance of schools and—although it is not the same authority setting the point score—to some extent for universities judging whether a student has done well enough to enter a course. However, the function of the amendment is to draw attention to the performance tables in all their various forms. Following examinations being reported under different headings, which became very diverse and confusing, whereby you had different columns for IB and vocational exams and a third column for A-level examinations, we now have a consolidated point score. That has made it possible for the performance of schools which teach a broader curriculum to be recorded in a common currency of points, particularly those schools that are introducing GNVQs and, in a constructive way, many city schools that provide a broad range of BTECs and other examinations at GCSE—and to a much larger extent at A-level. If that is to be believable, it is important that the point setting be carried out independently of any organisation with anything to gain from setting the points to their advantage. The majority of the distortions have been caused by government, although I do not blame this Government in particular. Governments tend to introduce new qualifications and want them to be taken up. One of the ways in which they have incentivised schools to take them up is by seeing to it that they are awarded a substantially excessive number of points. At the moment some GNVQs, which are good examinations, are rated in the league tables as being equivalent to four GCSEs, when clearly in terms of the work required to complete them they are worth substantially less. This distorts the whole pattern of education. Schools plunge into these examinations not so much because they are what are required by their pupils, but because it is the way in which the schools can be rated highly in the league tables. That is not the motivation which should lie behind a school’s decision to change in this way. These examinations may well be right for their pupils, but the pupils’ interests should come first, rather than how the school appears in the league tables. For the two to be matched up it is enormously important that the point setting should be independent of government and, obviously, of awarding bodies or anyone else with anything to gain from setting the points one way or the other. I am keen that this function be transferred to Ofqual and I cannot see any reason why it should remain with government. I beg to move.