Education Return and Awarding Qualifications in 2021

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Monday 1st March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, we are encouraging secondary schools to aim the summer school programme at incoming year 7s, because that is the transitional year. We have given them £200 million in funding to do this. Using existing staff, who might want to come in and be paid, is an option, as is using supply teachers, volunteers or other people. This is up to the schools. We are encouraging them to run these programmes and we are providing them with the resources to staff them as they choose.

[Lord Lansley (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I should declare an interest, in that I have one child taking A-levels and one taking GCSEs this year. So far as they are concerned, I trust their teachers; I think they will be rigorous and accurate. But, generally speaking, there is a sense of uncertainty associated with the exam boards’ quality assurance process. I heard what my noble friend said about that, but the scale of the interventions by the exam boards has to be just right. Too little and they have no impact, too much and effectively the exam boards will override the judgments made by teachers and head teachers. Can my noble friend give us any more information about the scale of the quality assurance activity by exam boards?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, how many times the exam boards decide to intervene will be up to them, in terms of how many random and how many risk-assessed interventions. But I can assure the noble Lord that this is an assessment based on evidence. The exam boards will be training teachers in how to do this; they will be giving exemplar materials—for instance, “This is an example of a grade A essay in history”; and they will be given grade descriptors. We are hoping that all of these, along with the declaration that the head teacher will have to sign, will provide the assurance—but it will be for the exam boards, overseen of course by Ofqual, to do the external quality assurance.