Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 160. Through the passage of this Bill, we have been setting up, it is hoped, a second independent regulator which will influence and report on the standard of education in this country. That is Ofqual, which will be able to monitor standards only through the medium of current qualifications. The other one is Ofsted, which was set up quite a few years ago, with many fewer powers than it has now. It was initially set up to inspect the standards of education in schools, but now it deals with young offender institutions, early years’ settings, children’s homes and several other things. Ofsted has also looked into examinations, with its recent report published in August about the 14 to 19 reorganisation and the new diplomas. Here, I believe it impinges slightly on the role which Ofqual might have if that role were to be extended in the way my amendments suggest. In the situation here, where we have two regulators, we need to be clear about the role of each. We in the Liberal Democrats would have no such problem, were we to be in government. Our vision is of a single unified education standards authority whose role is to monitor and report on the whole breadth of education standards in England and compare them over time and with other countries, and which would oversee Ofsted as part of its remit. Without Ofqual having the power to investigate beyond the boundaries of qualifications, we will not really know what success in any particular exam really means. With the system that the Government are setting up, the demarcation between Ofqual and Ofsted is blurred, and we are concerned that no one will have either the power or the duty to let us all know how we are really doing compared to 10 years ago, or to other similar developed countries. Perhaps the Minister will tell me who is supposed to do that under her system. We believe that the role of Ofqual has been designed too narrowly in assessing standards, and that therefore its success in restoring public confidence in qualifications is put at risk. We may continue to have the annual debate about falling standards and dumbing down, which is what the Government are trying to avoid. We on these Benches are committed to Ofqual’s success, which is why we have put so much time and energy into making it more independent and fair in its operations through this Bill, and that is why we would like its powers extended through these amendments. The CFS Select Committee, in its report, Testing and Assessment, clearly agreed with us. It was clear about the potential for a discrepancy between the apparent education standards revealed by regulated qualifications and the underlying measures of educational performance, standards and effectiveness. In paragraph 250, it said: ""Until the Government allows for standardised sample testing for monitoring purposes, the regulator will be left without the tools required to fulfil its primary function"." The committee essentially argued that because examination standards and the nature of examinations had changed so much over time, and because of the difficulty of comparability brought about by test reform, the targets set by the Government and the different assessment standards used at different times, it was impossible to use one or even a number of examinations to form an objective assessment of standards over time—or even at any point in time. In their response to the committee report, the Government said: ""Ofqual’s role is not to monitor education standards as a whole; it is to regulate the qualifications and assessments which are one of the means by which those standards are measured"." Parliament’s voice was ignored yet again. If not Ofqual, then who? When this matter was debated in another place, Ministers contradicted each other as to whether Ofqual could conduct sampling. In the end they came down on the side of Ofqual being able to do so only in pursuit of its current powers as expressed in the Bill. Yet Kathleen Tattersall in her evidence to the Public Bill Committee on 3 March said she did not believe this legislation precluded Ofqual over time pursuing the type of strategy I have outlined. However, the Minister, Jim Knight, said he did not think it appropriate for Ofqual to simply take such powers of its own accord. It is time we sorted this out. Before the Bill leaves your Lordships’ House, I would like the matter clarified. If Ofqual is to have these powers, they should be put on the face of the Bill. Then no one could argue if the chair of Ofqual sought at some future time, when the organisation has bedded in, to provide this valuable service and information which could inform policy in such an important way. Do the Government not want to base their policy on evidence any more? After the way the Cambridge Primary Review and the expert committee on drugs have been treated recently, I suspect not. We on these Benches seek evidence-based policy not policy-based evidence. We have tinkered with this Bill. Thanks to our listening Ministers and the hard work of the Bill team we have improved it a lot, but we were never going to be in a position to revise the whole architecture of the thing, as we on these Benches would have liked, based on the alternative vision I have outlined. At the least, can we please allow Ofqual to do what the public is crying out for—to really tell us what is happening to standards? For it to do so, we need unequivocal clarity about whether it can sample, research, study and report on the underlying standards of education, not just those that are measured by examinations. I beg to move.