Educational Assessments

John Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for School Standards (Mr Robin Walker)]

I genuinely congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) on securing this debate and on the enthusiasm with which she has put her case. She has written extensively about examinations and assessment and she is a passionate advocate for children and young people.

There is a great deal on which we can agree, such as understanding the importance of young people’s mental health, the importance of skills as well as academic rigour in the system, and the importance of balancing opportunities across vocational and academic routes. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that we do not want schools to be teaching to the test and that we want pupils to be engaged in activities as well as learning from which they can benefit.

I fear that we are fated to disagree, however, on exams and assessment reform. We stood on a manifesto that promised to ensure that

“every pupil gets the qualifications they need for a prosperous future, while learning in an environment where they will be…fulfilled.”

It is vital to me that qualifications align with our broader vision for education. The Government are clear that young people should be able to access a broad and balanced academically focused curriculum up until the age of 16. We believe that pupils should be introduced to the best that has been thought and said to familiarise them with the essential knowledge that they need to be educated citizens and to ensure that as many children as possible can lay claim to a rich intellectual inheritance.

Key to that, of course, is ensuring that they have the numeracy and literacy skills to access that broad and balanced curriculum by the time they finish primary school. GCSEs provide the basis for an academically focused curriculum from 14 to 16 and it is our ambition that, by 2025, 90% of pupils will sit a core set of academic GCSEs known as the EBacc.

We have taken steps to ensure that pupils have the opportunity to study high-quality vocational and technical qualifications alongside that core from 14 to 16. We have improved the quality of non-GCSE qualifications at key stage 4 by introducing a new approvals process for technical awards. Only those that meet our stretching requirements and are reviewed by Ofqual will be recognised in key stage 4 performance tables alongside academic qualifications.

With that broad grounding, all students, regardless of background, are prepared to fulfil their aspirations post 16. Pupils can specialise by choosing from a range of high-quality academic and technical qualifications and routes that then become open to them. As my hon. Friend rightly pointed out, the academic route is not the only path to success, which is why it is important that a range of assessment types and pathways is available, drawn from our rigorous and evidence-informed blend of qualifications, to ensure that all students can achieve their full potential.

Alongside A-levels, we have introduced T-levels. Our 10 new T-levels are being taught, including digital, construction, education and childcare, and healthcare science. More than 20 will be available from 2023 and they give students a clear path from their studies to their chosen career. We are also streamlining and improving the quality of post-16 qualifications at level 3 and below.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

The Minister is both diligent and thoughtful about these matters. The key thing is that many people’s tastes and talents take them down a practical route, yet we are still labouring under the illusion that the only way to gain accomplishment comes through academic prowess. The simple fact of the matter is that, as he suggested, we need to recognise that fewer people should be studying those degrees that confer neither intellectual rigour nor economic value. People should be studying practical, vocational, technical subjects for their own benefit and fulfilment and for the national interest.

[Mr Walker]

I do not disagree at all with my right hon. Friend, and he will see that some of the work our right hon. Friend the Minister for Higher and Further Education is doing with the university sector is about recognising precisely that, but I do not think that is an argument for removing GCSEs at the age of 16; it is an argument for ensuring that those vocational routes are available.

As we all know, the past two summers have seen unprecedented disruption to the familiar routine of exams and assessments. Teachers and school and college leaders across the country have coped amazingly well with the pandemic and with its associated disruption to exams—and I want to take this opportunity to again thank them from the Dispatch Box for their herculean efforts—but we know that exams are the best and fairest way of judging students’ performance.

Exams provide a shared understanding of what students know and can do—an even playing field with everyone being assessed on the same thing at the same time, independently. We know that exams and the preparation leading up to them can be motivating and lead to improved learning. Beyond that, exams provide students with an objective and accurate gauge of their progress and understanding of subject matter, which can inform their choices about where to go on to next. Exams are the most objective measure, which is why non-examined assessment and coursework is used only where knowledge, skills and understanding cannot be tested validly by an exam. Examples of this would include coursework in GCSE and A-level art and design. For all those reasons we are committed to exams continuing to play a crucial role in our education system, and we are firmly committed to their reintroduction this summer as we emerge from the effects of the pandemic.

Over the course of the last 10 years our reforms to secondary and further education qualifications have created a gold-standard exam system that is respected around the world. Our qualifications exports in 2018 were worth £3.3 billion to the UK economy; this points to a model of success of which we should rightly be proud.

My predecessors in the Department reformed and strengthened GCSEs from 2013 to address concerns from higher and further education institutions and employers that the previous qualification did not adequately prepare young people for the demands of the workplace and higher studies—points my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley made. Our reformed GCSEs rigorously assess knowledge acquired by pupils in key stage 4 and are in line with expected standards in countries with the highest-performing education systems.

Our reforms strengthened GCSEs in a number of ways. Qualifications became linear, with exams sat at the end of a two-year course so that less time is spent preparing for modules and resits and more time is spent on teaching and learning. My hon. Friend raised the point about teaching for tests. I have frequently discussed that with Ofsted, which takes it very seriously; its new inspection framework encourages schools to keep a focus on the breadth of curriculum, particularly at key stage 3 and earlier, and discourages teaching to the test.

Ofqual was formally established as the new independent regulator in 2010, with a statutory responsibility to maintain standards. It put in place robust arrangements to maintain standards, which led to year-on-year stability in grades over a long period. Ofqual also introduced a new grading scale, from 9 to 1, with 9 the highest and 1 the lowest grade, in place of A* to G, to signal that the standard of qualifications had changed and to allow greater differentiation of performance at the top end. In 2017 Ofqual also introduced a national reference test to capture improvements in attainment in English and maths so that these could be reflected in grading.

GCSEs serve a critical function as a measure of attainment and a vehicle for progression, and they do so because they are recognised and trusted. They have strong public recognition, with support from 75% of those surveyed as part of Ofqual’s most recent public perceptions and confidence study. That trust stems from a long history in this country of assessment at age 16, which has existed since at least 1918 when the school certificate was introduced, through to the introduction of O-levels in 1951, CSEs in 1965 and GCSEs in 1988.