Exam Reform

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Monday 17th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend has just completed an eloquent application for the post of chief examiner at whichever exam board is successful in securing the franchise. I will ensure in future that any article that is penned by both the Deputy Prime Minister and I—or should that be me?—passes through my hon. Friend’s blue pencil before it appears in the Evening Standard. I take his point about sport and music, which both need to be better recognised in modern schools.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

I do not think any hon. Member is arguing against the need for improvements in the GCSE system. However, it must be a mistake to move back to rote learning at the expense of problem-solving and the encouragement of the applied skills that are needed in the workplace and generally in life, which benefit both children and the economy in a competitive world. From what the Secretary of State has said, it seems that we face a system that will be to the benefit of the few who are good at exams but at the expense of the many who excel in other ways.

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his points. He says that no one in the House will oppose improvement to GCSEs, but I am afraid the Opposition Front-Bench team have done precisely that. They have made no constructive proposals of their own; they have merely defended a discredited status quo and sought to create partisan dividing lines.

On the hon. Gentleman’s point about rote learning, I would say that it is encouraged in the current system by the modular approach and the way in which examinations are currently designed—[Interruption.]