Examination Reform

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Wednesday 16th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass), and the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), the Chair of the Education Committee, who has made a thoughtful contribution to the debate.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) has mentioned that at the Education Committee’s session this morning, the former children’s Minister, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), referred to weekly, often cancelled, ministerial meetings, which I think he said were often like soliloquies. I asked him who was doing the soliloquising. He said, “Can you guess?” I asked him whether it was more Hamlet than Lear, or more Lear than Hamlet. He said, “Well, think about that yourself as well.”

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak about English baccalaureate certificates and the education of our current and future generations. As a member of the Education Committee, I have on many occasions expressed my serious concern about the introduction of the English baccalaureate in secondary schools, which occurred initially in 2010 without any consultation with education professionals, and was implemented retrospectively, to the detriment of many improving schools, who were then pushed further down league tables—tables that, I believe, are of questionable use when it comes to adding value to our education system. Can the Secretary of State produce the huge weight of evidence on which he has developed the policy, because I am struggling to find much of it?

As we have heard, the Government propose to replace GCSEs in the EBacc subjects—maths, English, the sciences, a language and history or geography—with English baccalaureate certificates. From what we can gather, that would involve three-hour end-of-course exams and no coursework element. I am troubled by many parts of the proposals, which I will attempt to go through systematically.

First, on the consultation regarding EBCs that ended in December, members of the Education Committee, parents, students, governors, businesses, teachers, head teachers and other education professionals have expressed considerable concern that the proposals have been rushed through and that the consultation parameters were too narrow and did not allow for comprehensive discussion. Many, including me, believe that the proposals surrounding examinations should not have been decided upon, and certainly not introduced, until the forthcoming review of secondary school accountability and the secondary national curriculum had taken place. Another result of the policy will be the introduction of a two-tier education system, in which pupils who do not achieve the EBacc will be given a statement of achievement that will not reflect their true ability or potential to employers and colleges, who will more than likely deem a certificate of achievement to be inferior. I am afraid that that is a sad fact of life. That is largely owing to creative and vocational subjects being disregarded and assessed as in some way second class. I reiterate the comment of my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham: how can we upgrade some subjects without having the impact of downgrading others?

Such an attitude to creative and vocational subjects is disgraceful and worrying, given our country’s history of ingenuity and technological entrepreneurship. I question a policy that places the importance of Hebrew and classical Greek above that of business studies, information and communications technology, or design and technology. Those subjects were taken by one of my parliamentary staff, who is now studying for an MA and who considered them to be invaluable to her personal development. Several other valuable subjects have been removed from the menu.

In restricting subject options, we are also restricting pupil potential. Any system that prevents our young people from flourishing should not be endorsed, and should certainly not be introduced. I wonder whether the Secretary of State will revise his policy if proof materialises from universities and employers that the education system is failing to prepare young people for further learning and work in technical and artistic fields.

Another aspect of the policy that concerns me is the likelihood that, in the case of most subjects, there will be no assessment other than a three-hour end-of-course examination. That, too, highlights the two-tier nature of the policy. Many pupils thrive on an examination system that involves a combination of modular work and examinations. By introducing a qualification based purely on exams, the Government are almost casting aside all the pupils who do not excel at examinations but have a flair for coursework. I believe that that is counter-productive, and that it will be detrimental to a large proportion of young people. It strikes me as an idea that springs from a vision of a golden age of education in the 1950s, and possibly even the 1850s: an idea based on nostalgia for an era that never existed.

In my opinion, too much emphasis is being placed on employability. I believe that we should be asking ourselves what education is for, and concluding that it should be about trying to provide a system which, while preparing young people for work and working life, also produces well-rounded human beings. Employers, moreover, are likely to require a measure of an individual’s capacity to work systematically for a given period, rather than his or her ability to perform in a one-off three-hour afternoon examination. Let us help to prepare our young people to thrive and contribute to our community, rather than trying to retrofit them through a citizenship service. Let us try to do that while we are educating them.

I believe that, if we are to answer the question of what our education system is for, we should begin by revisiting the Tomlinson review of 2004, and using it as a starting point for the fashioning of education policy for the future. I think that that would be greeted warmly by a great many people in the education profession. I also think that the review has been broadly regarded as a missed opportunity from the period between 1997 and 2010 when Labour was in government, although I should add that Labour was faced with a massive education mess to clear up in 1997.

During an Education Select Committee session, the Secretary of State suggested that it would be possible for more children to succeed in a more difficult exam because they would be “taught better”. I found that response almost delusional. I believe that such comments devalue the hard work of our teachers, who work in difficult, emotionally draining environments, and many of whom already give far more than what is expected of them. It is all very well constructing an education system and a menu of examinations that may or may not fulfil the needs and aspirations of thousands of clones modelled in the image of the Secretary of State for Education, but the vast majority of children, I am glad to say, are not like that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds]

Both those things are true, which is possibly the point the hon. Gentleman wanted to make, and I absolutely acknowledge the real improvements. We may have brighter kids, and we certainly have more engaged parents and families, better teaching and teachers, better recognition of special educational needs and different styles of learning and all sorts of things that we would expect to improve over time, and which have. On top of that, however, there has without doubt been grade inflation and gaming of the system on an epic scale, and that is what these reforms seek to address. It is worth listing some of those points further.

[Ian Mearns]

I am grateful to my honourable Friend—I will call him my friend because we are friends—for giving way. When I took over as chair of the education committee in Gateshead in 1993, in the previous year fewer than 30% of youngsters got five good GCSEs. In Gateshead the figure is about 80% now—although it is about 55% including English and maths. We cannot honestly think that the vast majority of that change in 20 years was due to grade inflation.

[Damian Hinds]

I cannot tell the hon. Gentleman—and friend—exactly what proportion is accounted for by what. I celebrate the achievements of the children in his constituency and that area, and of those schools. We should never be reluctant to do that: their achievement is fantastic. Some element of that has been a real improvement; what I am saying is that there is also another element. Indeed, I think that everybody across the political spectrum and throughout almost the entire educational establishment—we are still working on the National Union of Teachers—now acknowledges what is a blindingly obvious fact.

The three areas where the gaming and the inflation take place are in the mechanics of the system, the subject mix and competition between boards—I want to return to the point that the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) raised.