Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I am delighted to respond to this short debate. I believe that we should consider this amendment further, consider how to take forward the aspirations of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and return with something on Report. Having seen some amazing physics teachers in action, I can well imagine how one could add drama to physics but I would be interested to know how one could do it the other way around—maybe a lighting-TECH or something like that. The values put on qualifications in performance measures for schools should reflect both their challenge and their size and how much time it typically takes to study for them. Just as with qualifications standards, I do not believe that Ministers would want to interfere in setting these values, but while there is a suspicion that they might do so now or in the future, we risk undermining the credibility of the school accountability system, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has explained so eloquently. So, just as we need independent judgments on standards, in matters of school accountability, we also need independent judgments on how the size of one qualification stacks up against another. We believe passionately in the role of Ofqual as a fully independent, expert regulator of qualifications and as part of that, in the area of school performance measurement, we need Ofqual to be involved in checking and providing assurance that we have sound, objective judgments about the comparability of qualifications. We are therefore working with interim Ofqual and the QCDA to define such a role for Ofqual in relation to the Government’s achievement and attainment targets and, in future, the school report card. Perhaps I need to understand further the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, about inflexibility. I should be very happy to pursue that discussion before Report. To allow Ofqual to do full justice to this role, we expect that we will need to amend the Bill. I will look at this further and come back to it on Report.