Examination of Witnesses (Questions 268-279)
WEDNESDAY 6 NOVEMBER 2002
MR NEIL
HOPKINS, MR
EDWARD GOULD
AND MR
TONY NEAL
Chairman
268. Can I welcome Neil Hopkins, the Principal
of Peter Symonds College, who in a sense is representing the Association
of Colleges this morning, Edward Gould, who is the Master of Marlborough
College from the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference,
and Tony Neal who is Headmaster of De Aston School who in a sense
is here because of his links with the Secondary Heads Association.
We are very grateful that you could take the time to come to the
Committee. We want to make this a very positive session, we do
not want to trawl over where the blood was left on the carpet
because we believe that the examination system and its credibility
is very important to the education sector in this country. Part
of what we will do today is to clear the air but also to look
forward to how we get things right and learn the lessons from
the recent past. Can I open by not asking you to make an opening
statement in the terms of a broad opening statement but I am going
to start with Neil Hopkins on the left and move across. What do
you think went wrong this summer? Forensically what went wrong?
(Mr Hopkins) If I may, Chairman, I would
just like to put things in perspective slightly to give you some
idea of the scale. As a college we have nearly 2,500 students,
2,300 studying AS and A2, so we make 27,000 entries to the three
main examining boards by the time you count all the units and
modules. We get something like 1,000 to 2,000 applications for
re-marks each year which result in several hundred upgrades. As
a result of the Tomlinson Inquiry we had one subject where we
had 200 module re-marks which resulted in 17 final upgrades. I
have to say that although things went wrong, the vast majority
of the experience this summer was actually right.
269. How many examination boards were you dealing
with?
(Mr Hopkins) We use all the three main examining boards
and also the Welsh board for one subject.
270. So you did not see much of a crisis this
year?
(Mr Hopkins) My experience was that AS and A2 was
introduced very quickly, too quickly frankly, and we worked very,
very hard to make it work. There were some problems with it but
in proportion I do not think the problems were that extreme.
271. Before this summer or as the year went
on—we were coming to the first years of A2s—did you
flag up your concern that it was all happening too fast?
(Mr Hopkins) We are in constant dialogue with the
examining boards. It was a very frustrating period before September
2000 in particular, the preceding year, when we were talking to
exam boards about the fact that the syllabuses and course specifications
were very late at delivering, exam boards blamed QCA and we had
no idea who was to blame, and materials and so on were very late
in coming. There was a constant dialogue between us and the boards.
One of the things about the size of my institution is when you
talk to an examining board they are aware that you have got several
hundred entries they are talking about, so there was this dialogue
going on. In the end AS came through okay but what was frustrating
was there was a degree of complacency over A2 across the whole
country, "we have sorted it because we have got AS sorted
out" and people forgot in some cases that A2 was also a new
exam.
272. Can I move to Edward Gould. When your organisation
got involved it looked as though you were very angry indeed as
an organisation about some of the ways in which the new system
had impacted on your students and your results. Can you give us
your background in terms of how you saw it unfolding in the summer?
(Mr Gould) There was a problem in that the standard
required for A2 was not defined. There was no clarification in
terms of how an AS plus an A2 equalled an A-level. There was confusion
in terms, therefore, of how the new A-level matched the legacy
A-level. If you have an examination—I am trying to keep
it as simple as possible, therefore as brief as possible for all
your sakes—if you have a triangle and you have the word
"standard" written at the top that has got to be defined
in terms of quality of work, on the bottom left of the triangle
you have the word "marks" and on the bottom right you
have the word "grades", people either reach a standard
or they do not reach a standard as defined by quality of work.
Children take examinations and they are given marks which are
converted into grades. If no standard is defined and you do not
like the final grades, bands, in terms of As, Bs, Cs, Ds, Es,
all you can play with are the marks. I would suggest what happened
this year was because the standard was not defined, which in terms
of HMC we flagged up, and I can probably produce some letters
going back to 1998. We found the marks being altered. The three
boards, awarding bodies, did it in different ways after there
had been a meeting between the Chairman of QCA with the three
chief executives of the awarding bodies present at which it was
made clear that grade inflation was not to take place. That information
was given to one of the members of the HMC committee by one of
the people who was present at that meeting. That was further endorsed
by a scrutineer from QCA and various senior examiners. I do not
wish to trawl back over what happened, to quote your earlier remark,
but, to answer your question, there was a failure to set standards.
There was not a pilot of A2, there was no exemplar of material
and there was no way in which it was explained to anyone how AS
and A2 became an A-level.
273. Tony Neal?
(Mr Neal) The issue here is one of standards and the
setting of standards. Having set the AS level standard in relation
to what the pupil ought subsequently to achieve at A level, there
ought to be no need to adjust the A2 standard in any way. The
A2 standard could have and probably should have equated with the
old legacy A-level standard. Certainly one of the benefits of
the whole system should have been that A-level would have become
more accessible to students. By that I do not mean that the standard
would have changed or it would have become easier, but changing
the course structure should have meant that more students would
be enabled to reach that standard. As it unfolded it became clear
that that was going to happen and two things appear to have taken
place. First of all, during the course itself there seemed to
be some attempt to change the A2 standard to move it to a standard
that was higher than the old A-level standard, and we can see
no justification for that, and then there was the subsequent issue
of the changing of grade boundaries to try and adjust the statistical
profile of the outcomes after the event. The main issue does seem
to resolve itself into the definition of the standards.
274. Are you happy with the resolution of the
summer's events in the sense that we are here now, there has been
time for reasonably mature reflection and things have settled
down and we have seen how many papers have had to be looked at
again and how many courses had to be changed? Are you happy with
what happened?
(Mr Neal) Since between arriving here this morning
and coming into this room I have had a phone call from school
saying that we have just had the results of 12 papers come back
to the school and upgraded, I am not entirely sure what the resolution
of this year's events yet is. There is still some mystification.
(Mr Gould) I would argue, if I may, Chairman, that
there are still some unresolved issues, notably with OCR. I have
all the time in the world for the way Mike Tomlinson has conducted
his independent inquiry. Since he was given about 10 days it was
inevitable that he was going to have to set certain parameters
for reporting to the DfES. I think he did it absolutely admirably
and I have nothing but praise for what he did but, still, inside
his two parameters there are a number of unresolved issues. It
does appear that OCR set their own standard with A-level minus
one for AS level and A-level plus one for A2. Nowhere is that
in the code of practice, nowhere is that standard defined, nowhere
has that standard been relayed to schools, teachers or examiners
beforehand. It all came about later and, of course, since the
AS was in the bag for many children, whatever school they were
at, and since some of them had the AS from the previous summer,
some of them had the AS from January, they had very few papers
with which they could alter the marks. Then, bearing in mind what
I have said previously, you do not have the grades and so you
tamper with the marks if you do not have a standard.
275. In your experience was there more of a
problem with one examining board rather than another?
(Mr Gould) Yes. If all we were dealing with was Edexcel
with what has happened, I would not be sitting here. It would
be like a normal year, if I can put it that way. We are happy
with Edexcel by and large. With AQA we have some difficulties
across the GSA, the Girls' Schools Association, and ourselves,
and we have considerable problems still with OCR.
(Mr Hopkins) We have to deal with all the boards.
40% of our work is with OCR and the other 60% is split evenly
between Edexcel and AQA. We have difficulties every year with
all three boards and the quote I gave to my local press, if I
can remind you of it again, was that we are no more dissatisfied
this year than usual. These are ongoing routine remarks and I
have to say that I think the problem is the quality of the marking
and the quality of the examiners, nothing extraordinary this year
in relation to the question of grades in particular.
(Mr Neal) The problem in a sense goes beyond that.
I think the problem relates to uncertainties all round about what
the standards were, uncertainties perhaps on the part of the boards,
although we cannot know that for sure, but certainly uncertainties
amongst teachers as to what the standards were.
Mr Baron
276. Can I come back to try and flush out a
few points that you have raised, and that is that some of the
outstanding issues need to be resolved. I take Neil Hopkins' point
that we must keep this perspective.
(Mr Gould) I agree.
277. We are talking about a relatively small
number of cases but the fact remains that from the perception
point of view there is a bit of a credibility problem at the moment
and this has wider implications. What are the lessons that need
to be learned from this? How can we put this situation right?
We have talked about standards and I would like to hear more about
that, but is it simply a case of standards?
(Mr Gould) No. There are a number of factors involved.
I will not bore you with the complete list which I think you should
have seen by now. To define standards is needed and I happen to
know that Ken Boston is in the throes of doing that and a draft
has been produced and I am quite sure that that is eminently soluble.
I think there needs to be independence to regain the level of
confidence which I think your question was referring to. I think
there needs to be independence at QCA from the Government, though
if you asked me to give you evidence of Government interference
with QCA I have no evidence for that whatsoever, which I have
consistently said when I have been asked. I think that the QCA
should confine itself to setting standards and then acting as
the regulator of what happens with the Awarding Bodies which should
themselves have a level of independence. They should be concerned
with actually setting the various tests and exams through the
ages. There needs to be a better balance between judgments made
on quality of work versus statistics because this year I believe
that statistics ruled, if I can phrase it like that and, because
the standards were not there, therefore statistics took over,
most notably in OCR.
278. How do we get back to ensuring quality
of work versus statistics? Does it not come back also to this
business about independence of the QCA from the Government? Are
we living in a culture of too many targets being set and our being
submerged by statistics?
(Mr Gould) I think there are too many targets. Trying
to reduce a human being to a statistic is in the end a fairly
pointless exercise. Education is certainly about more than that.
I also think there is too much testing, too much assessment. I
think one could look at the different ways of assessing people.
It does not all need to be the external examination. I would estimate
at the moment, although I have not done any figures on it, that
you have probably got less than two-thirds of the two-year A-level
course being spent in learning, ie, teachers teaching. There is
over a third being used in assessment of some form or other, and
that seems to me not particularly helpful.
279. It is not just statistics though, is it?
You have mentioned other issues as well. Do you think that is
one of the key factors, the fact that we seem to be driven by
statistics?
(Mr Gould) Yes, we have been for some time, even with
the old A-levels. Teachers make judgments on course work, which
is a separate issue, so they are used to making these judgments.
One of the things that was highlighted this year, particularly
in the course work issue, was that as teachers made judgments,
these were moderated externally by people who had been trained
by the boards, and the moderators may well say that those marks
are increased, decreased, they are not right. At any rate, the
moderators finish their job and those marks by and large are accepted
by the boards as part of the final awarding process, whereas this
year in a number of subjects those marks got radically altered.
That kind of illustration is going to confuse teachers and reduce
confidence in teachers who have been working jolly hard against
a very tight timetable in terms of the pace at which these new
exams came in and is unhelpful in trying to restore confidence
in the teaching profession, whatever school they are in.
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