Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240-259)
MONDAY 28 OCTOBER 2002
KEN BOSTON,
BEVERLEY EVANS
AND KEITH
WELLER
Paul Holmes
240. A few months ago, this Committee did an
inquiry into ILAs, another inquiry came out on Friday, into ILAs,
and one of the findings of that was that it was a good scheme
that was ruined by being rushed in too quickly, to meet political
targets, really. And you said, a little while ago, that the introduction
of Curriculum 2000 was rushed in, far, far too quickly, when there
should have been five years of development and piloting; and you
also said that there should be a clearer, blue-water barrier between
the exam bodies and the Government and the QCA, it should be there.
So do you see the QCA, from now on, standing up and taking a very
public role, and saying, perhaps, to the new, ambitious Secretary
of State for Education, "No, you shouldn't be doing that"?
(Dr Boston) I would not put it that way. I would put
it as the QCA properly carrying out the role for which it was
established, and that role, from time to time, will involve saying
to Government, "This is not a possibility; if you proceed
to go down that track, or on that time-line, you're going to run
into trouble." It seems to me that that is what the nature
of a regulator is, and that, unless a regulator is prepared to
do that, credibility and authority will never be established;
you cannot legislate for credibility and authority, you have actually
to demonstrate it by performance, by the quality of what you do,
and that is where the QCA must position itself, in the public
arena.
241. That is good to hear. Would you say, as
a newcomer, again, looking back at what has happened here, that
it was really an abject failure by the QCA not to have put in
place very clear guidelines on what the A2 standards were and
should be?
(Dr Boston) No, I cannot say that. The QCA did everything
it could to make a clear statement about how the A2 standard and
the AS standard related, and, indeed, I understand it has been
on our website since 2000; we did everything we could to write
rich, meaningful statements about grades in all the subjects,
which examiners and teachers could understand. What we did not
do was deliver on exemplars. You do not really know what a Grade
B is at A2 level until you have looked at a thousand scripts,
from young people across the country, how did they handle that
question on Nazi Germany, what was the depth of the analysis,
the depth of the synthesis of argument, how did they deal with
the synoptic issues, you do not know that until you have got that
material in front of you. Now that was not a fault of the QCA
or of the awarding bodies, that was a fault of the time-line;
we launched into the first A2 examinations in summer without that
pilot material behind us, and we should have had two years of
it. We were okay with AS, because that has been sat three times,
but we were not able to deliver on the A2; even though the A2
had been sat during the trial process, the grading had not been
sorted out, and so the exemplars simply could not be used.
242. But, given that the QCA had the situation
as it was, not as you might have wanted it to be, the thing was
introduced, the exams were being set. Now the Tomlinson inquiry
says, in paragraph 16, that, quite clearly, there was no common
understanding on how much greater the demands of A2 should be,
compared with AS. So, given that we were in the middle of this
process, should not the QCA have done more to try to establish
that common understanding?
(Dr Boston) The QCA should have done more, but it
is not in the sense of being able to write down, in specific detail,
other than the generic statement, what the standard is in History
at A, at B, at C, using real substance. That has to come from
the exemplar material. But the fact that we even have a discussion
now about AS and A2, and whether there are standards or level
of demand and how they relate to each other, indicates that the
QCA, along with other agencies, has not delivered adequately in
implanting that understanding in the minds of the profession and
the community.
Chairman
243. We have a system in this country, as there
is also in Australia, of accountability; you know, when things
go wrong, people we represent tend to want people to say, "Well,
who was responsible for these problems?" and to home in on
who it was and to exact some sort of retribution. Who were the
guilty people, who should now carry the can, using terribly blunt
language, who should carry the can for what happened over these
last two months?
(Dr Boston) Mike Tomlinson has produced a report which
has looked at those issues, and I really do not want to add anything
to what he has said, because he has looked at a wider range of
evidence than I have, I have simply looked at what has happened
in the QCA.
244. He has not looked at the political accountability
of who now carries the can, who pays the price. Now the battlefield
is littered with corpses, we have got a new Secretary of State,
we have a new Chairman of the QCA; have the right people disappeared
from the scene?
(Dr Boston) I would not want to comment one way or
the other in relation to individuals.
245. So you will not be making any personnel
changes in the QCA?
(Dr Boston) I did not say that. I have not discussed
the structure of the QCA. The QCA is an organisation which, as
I have said publicly, now has to reinvent itself, it has to establish
very clearly what its priorities are, it has to be very clear
about what its strategy is, it needs to align its structure to
deliver that strategy. There will be changes in the QCA, but I
do not believe that the problem which has emerged here is a problem
which can be driven home to particular individuals, either in
the QCA or elsewhere, and say they were guilty. It is a compound
of a series of things that should not have happened, rushed time-lines
and other things, which, with the benefit of hindsight, coming
in as a new person, I can see, and others are seeing at the same
time. I am not so sure, if I had been here, whether I would have
seen all of those problems emerging, but, the fact is, they happened.
Mr Turner
246. You have made it pretty clear, tell me
if I am wrong, that you do not think that an AS level is worth
half an A level. Is it, therefore, not entirely wrong for UCAS
to treat an AS level as worth half an A level?
(Dr Boston) What I am saying is that that is the wrong
question to ask, if we are going to make progress with this. The
issue is, we are dealing with A levels as they have been for 50
years; the change is, we are arriving at it now from two papers,
one of them is a hard paper, one of them is an easy paper, relatively.
But that is language which every student who takes the course
understands, there are two papers, and you add together the scores
on the two of them, one you take a year before the other, and
you get a result.
247. But the universities, or, at least, the
university admissions system, is treating an AS level as if it
is not an easy paper, as if it is half an A level; surely, that
is wrong?
(Dr Boston) Mr Chairman, I am not wishing to comment
on that issue, because I have been rather preoccupied with things
other than UCAS and university entrance, and I have not thought
that fully through; but, clearly, it is part of the work that
we have to do in implementing Tomlinson, because, clearly, this
is a major purpose to which the result is put.
248. Can I ask you another question, which relates
to what Sir William Stubbs wrote in the Sunday Times. Do
you recall being told what you were told by a senior official
in the Education Department, about them approaching chief executives
of boards with a view to what might happen in certain circumstances;
would you like to recount that, if you do?
(Dr Boston) Yes, I do, I do recall that. Mr Chairman,
I was made aware, by a senior official of the Department, that
discussions were occurring between members of the Department and
the awarding bodies on what would happen if Tomlinson sought to
recommend regrading, and that was accepted by the Secretary of
State. I was concerned about that, as the regulator, and concerned
because, earlier that same day, we had been examined by Mr Tomlinson,
and we had made it clear, in response to questioning from him,
that we ourselves were having no contact with the awarding bodies
while his work was in progress. Now I contacted a more senior
official at the Department to express concern at that, as the
regulator. I have no objection at all to the Secretary of State
sorting out the various scenarios, as it were, that might emerge
from an inquiry and seeking advice on what to do with each one
of them, but, the reality is, the conversation should not have
been with the awarding bodies, by the Department, but with the
regulator. Because the regulator is thoroughly aware, because
of its role as a scrutineer and day-to-day regulator, issues of
the capacity of the awarding bodies to deliver, and would be able
to advise Government on whether or not regrading was possible;
indeed, we were, in fact, doing that, as a result of another request.
My concern was not that the work was being done, but that it was
being done directly with the awarding bodies rather than the regulator.
Chairman: We are going to suspend the
session for 15 minutes.
The Committee suspended from 7.02 pm to 7.15
pm for a division in the House
Chairman
249. Thank you very much for being patient.
I am sorry to delay everyone's dinner. There is now legislative
power that you have, Dr Boston, in terms of actually intervening,
as I understand the new legislation, in an examining board you
are unhappy with, discontented with. Can you see the QCA using
that power?
(Dr Boston) Yes. There are three amendments to the
Act; the most substantial one is a new section, 26(a), which does
give us the power to intervene, to direct, and we do see ourselves
using that power, not necessarily always only to correct what
might be some mistake or aberration but to manage the system a
little better. I referred earlier to, one of the problems in dealing
with the examinations is the large number of late entries that
can occur, in fact, there are sometimes young people who turn
up on the day of the examination, and papers are photocopied and
given to them. Edexcel had, over all qualifications, over half
a million late entries at the last examination; now, if we got
something like that scale with the A levels, even in proportion
to it, it just simply becomes unmanageable, the number of markers
that you require goes up enormously. Now, if we are to model the
system and manage it correctly, one of the things we are looking
at is using that new power to determine that there be no late
entrance, or no late entrance after a particular date, except
for young people who might be in particular categories, awaiting
re-marks, or something like that. Now we have not committed to
that, but that is an example of the sorts of things the new powers
could be used for.
250. Would not a lot of people be a bit worried,
in a sense that some people would have thought that, if you were
going to assess most recent problems, it is the QCA that have
got the problem rather than the examining boards, and you have
now the power to go in and interfere with the running of exam
boards; some people might see that as a nightmare scenario?
(Dr Boston) They might. I think the community would
see the fundamental test any regulator has to face, or pass, or,
indeed, a Government has to pass, is, well, it is the equivalent
of making the trains run on time, make sure the examination system
works; and we have seen in this last month an examination system
that has been under extraordinary pressure. The priority now,
I think, is to make sure that never happens again, and we do that
both by addressing the Tomlinson recommendations and, on the other
hand, addressing the issue of logistics.
251. Do you anticipate any new legislation that
will affect QCA in the new session of Parliament?
(Dr Boston) I have no expectation of that, at the
moment. It will depend very much, I think, on what Mr Tomlinson
finds as he addresses his second term of reference, and it might
be that legislation flows from that, possibly in relation to the
role of the QCA itself.
Chairman: In terms of the Queen's Speech,
I think he would have to hurry up with that. Andrew, you were
in the process of finishing your questions, I think. I think you
were in full flow.
Mr Turner
252. Yes, I was, and I apologise for returning
late. I had only one other question at that time, and that was,
did you perceive the response of the Permanent Secretary to your
inquiries to be appropriate?
(Dr Boston) I think the answer is, no. Mind you, I
came to that conclusion on the basis of experience in another
country, where there are ways in which these matters are handled,
and I was coming from that background; but, because of my concern
about the matter, I did telephone Mike Tomlinson and report it,
because of the discussion, or the examination that he had given
us earlier in the day, when the issue of contact was raised. I
had no thought that it compromised the integrity of this inquiry,
and he quite properly came out the next day and made a statement
on precisely that point, and that was fine. Nor, as I said earlier,
did I have any reason to think that the Secretary of State acted
inappropriately; of course, she was sensible, to look at all possible
things that could come out of the inquiry and know how she was
going to deal with them. It is just the wrong bodies were consulted.
Chairman
253. So there was a clear division on that subject
between you and your Chairman?
(Dr Boston) My Chairman. I do not understand the assertion,
Mr Chairman.
254. I am just seeking what your views were
on the actions of the Secretary of State, and the Chairman's?
(Dr Boston) The then Chairman, Sir William Stubbs?
255. The then Chairman; you must have discussed
it, surely?
(Dr Boston) I did discuss it with Sir William Stubbs,
indeed, before calling Mike Tomlinson.
256. So his protest about the Secretary of State
was something that you were in accord with him on?
(Dr Boston) No, I was not in accord with any protest
against the Secretary of State. I was concerned that the legitimate
request of the Secretary of State had been dealt with by approaching
the awarding bodies to ask them whether they could handle a regrading,
which was still being considered by an independent inquiry in
progress. My concern was that the QCA, as the regulator, had not
been the body that was consulted. I had no criticism at all of
the Secretary of State.
257. How different was that from Sir William's
point of view there?
(Dr Boston) I cannot speak for Sir William, Mr Chairman.
258. What about Beverley Evans, you must have
been heavily involved in this, and you are seconded from the Department,
you must have been involved; did Sir William consult you before
he made his allegations about the inappropriate behaviour of the
Secretary of State?
(Ms Evans) I was present when the discussions were
taking place between Ken Boston and Sir William Stubbs.
259. And there was a disagreement between those
two?
(Ms Evans) No. I think, my recollection of Sir William
Stubbs's view, as we were discussing it, was that it was inappropriate
of the Secretary of State to have discussed, or to have asked
two officials to discuss, those matters with the awarding bodies,
rather than discuss them with ourselves.
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