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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 197-x House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE Education and Skills Committee
National Skills Strategy: 14-19 Education
Monday 26 April 2004 PROFESSOR DAVID RAFFE
Evidence heard in Public Questions 902 - 973
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Education and Skills Committee on Monday 26 April 2004 Members present Mr Barry Sheerman, in the Chair Mr David Chaytor Valerie Davey Jeff Ennis Mr Nick Gibb Paul Holmes Helen Jones Mr Kerry Pollard Jonathan Shaw ________________ Witness: Professor David Raffe, Director of Centre for Educational Sociology and Co‑Director of Institute for the Study of Education and Society, University of Edinburgh, examined. Q902 Chairman: We are delighted that we have with us today Professor David Raffe, who is Professor of Sociology of Education, University of Edinburgh. Can I say, Professor Raffe, we are very pleased that you could accept our invitation, and welcome. Our Specialist Adviser has told us that probably you are the very best person to get before our Committee, in this deliberation on 14-19. Yes, you may well look to your left and blame him. As you know, we are very interested in 14-19 in the Skills Inquiry and how that relates to other Government policies, the policy on development of skills and much else. Also we are interested because recently we have been to both Germany and Denmark to look at the European experience, so we are beginning to find our way around this subject. We will get started by asking you if there is anything you want to say to us, to start us off, or do you want to go straight into questions? Professor Raffe: I certainly have not prepared a brief or a statement. Q903 Chairman: Then tell us what you think. Where are we heading on 14-19? You are part of the committee, we have had the interim report, what is the direction in which you think we should be heading in this regard? Professor Raffe: If you mean do I endorse the direction that the report has stated, obviously I do. Q904 Chairman: No; overall. What we are picking up is that the 14-19 inquiry, under Mike Tomlinson, is going to lead this country into an innovative direction for the delivery of its skills. Listening to ministers and questioning them last Wednesday, we thought perhaps they did not grasp altogether the radical nature of that change, when it comes? Professor Raffe: I was hesitating, I think, because, and I do not want to denigrate the committee's work, we are still at the motherhood and apple pie stage. I think what we have stated so far has been a list of aspirations. The hard work still lies ahead and that is converting those aspirations into policies which actually would work and realise them. Bearing in mind that what I have to say is at the aspirational level then where we are heading, I hope, is most fundamentally towards the kind of system which is not premised, as I think the present system still is, too much on the assumption that its main role is to select people for higher education, or at least for, as it were, progressively more selective stages of education as you go up the ladder. I think that is sort of the underlying dynamic of the system at the moment. I hope that we are moving towards a system which is genuinely inclusive, and that means also, I think, more purist, or more equal, if that is not a contradiction in terms. Then that we give more equal weight, or higher standing, at least, to different types of knowledge and different types of learning and also to different locations of learning. Quite clearly, in the long term, even if it takes a while, Modern Apprenticeships and other forms of work-based learning ought to be included within the 14-19 framework. Q905 Chairman: It is not at the moment? Professor Raffe: No, it is not at the moment. I think, at the moment, Modern Apprenticeships lie largely outside the existing system and they are connected through qualifications. They are connected to NVQs but NVQs themselves tend to be largely outside the mainstream 14-19 offer. Q906 Chairman: It seems to some members of this Committee that really it is not joined up. There are some Government initiatives where you can move from a regular secondary school across to the FE sector for perhaps two days a week and one day of work experience with a company. There are some very interesting initiatives we picked up in that area. Also there are the Modern Apprenticeships and also there is a range of qualifications in the vocational world which, in a rather circuitous way, could lead you into higher education. Is there a lack of joined-upness, if I can mutilate the English language in that way? Professor Raffe: I think primarily it is the lack of joined-upness. I think one of the difficult things that still we have to work out concerns particularly that middle group, as the map is conventionally drawn, in other words, the full-time vocational pathways. I guess they are somewhere between the academic and the work-based. My guess is probably that is the most critical part of the whole design process we have to go through, because really they do join up with all the other parts of the system. To answer your question, yes, I do think the underlying problem at the moment is that, although the system has the potential to be flexible, it has the potential to be quite responsive, there are restraints within it, nevertheless, sometimes it fails precisely because the structures are there, it does not join up. Q907 Chairman: When we were in Denmark and Germany, some of us got the impression that they are very interesting systems which they have for vocational education but they looked as though they were very fit for purpose for the 20th century but are finding perhaps some difficulty adapting to a rather different situation and environment in the 21st century. Would you share that view, or would you say, "Look, there are ways in which vocational education is handled in other competitor countries of ours and we would be much better adopting their methods"? Professor Raffe: I think probably there are two dimensions to the difference which you have been picking up. One is time and one is place. Certainly there is within both Germany and Denmark a perception that their systems are not sufficiently flexible. People from Germany come to Scotland, for example, to look at our modular system, to see how if not converting the mainstream German system into a modular approach nevertheless there are bits of the German approach where one might properly use modules, either to make it more flexible or possibly to add particular parts to the mainstream German curriculum. There is a perception within Germany that the system there requires being made more flexible. I think in Denmark there is the same perception which is much stronger, because I think reform there fundamentally was about trying to modernise the system, trying to make it both more responsive to individuals, at the level of the student, and more responsive to the changing nature of occupational demands and skill demands. In terms of coming up to date, I think there is a sense in which the German and Danish systems, the Danish system as it was, possibly are a little more rigid than we want to aim for in the 21st century. There is another dimension to it, which is the dimension of place, and certainly the comparative studies that colleagues and I have carried out suggest that countries differ in the broader contexts within which vocational education and education and training more generally are delivered. If I can give just a particular example, a study which we carried out recently, which looked at what were then the 15 member countries of the European Union, broadly identified three main groups. There is a group which we called the occupational labour market countries, comprising Germany, Denmark, Austria and The Netherlands. Another group is of southern European countries, and a rather disparate group comprised of us and various northern and western countries of Europe. The implication is that probably it is easier to transfer policies, or at least ideas, between countries within each of those groups than across the different groups. What the groups were picking up was different aspects of a context, in particular, I think, different aspects of the labour market context, the way that occupational and skill demands were expressed in the different labour markets and what that meant for education and vocational qualifications. Q908 Chairman: What are the characteristics of the three groups? Professor Raffe: Stereotyping, I would stress that even within each of these groups you are looking at pretty different countries. You cannot just say they are a particular type. Given that the occupational labour market countries were the main thing, this was a study of all transitions from school to work, so we were looking at particular aspects and we had been looking at transition to higher education which had come out with different features. We found, first, strong occupational labour markets, in the sense that occupations are more clearly defined, they are defined in a more standard way, people are more likely to remain within an occupation having entered the labour market, you tend to have more relatively standardised qualifications. In many of those countries, Denmark would be the exception, you tend to have relatively stratified education systems going down into the compulsory school period. As far as the outcomes are concerned, what you observe in those countries is that young people entering the labour market have more of the characteristics of adults in the labour market, in terms of unemployment rates, the types of occupational levels they are working at and they move more quickly into an adult-type labour market. At the other end of the spectrum we have got southern European countries, where traditionally you have low levels of educational attainment but which have increased very rapidly over the last 20 years, where you have typically much higher levels of unemployment and a much slower process of absorption into the labour market. In the short term, you have a much weaker correlation between education and unemployment, a stronger push from the family, the transition is much more strongly affected by the relationships with young people's families and the support they give. Then you have got the middle group of countries which, in a sense, is between the two, but one of the features which, for example, England, France and most of the Nordic countries have, which the southern European countries do not have, is a strong, quite important role for workplace training, whether or not as part of an apprenticeship. Again, this is something which largely is absent, at least traditionally, in the southern European countries. That is an attempt to give a potted sketch of those three types of system, with a very important caveat that there are lots of other types and there are lots of sub-types. Even if you are comparing within that last group you have to be very cautious, I think, about borrowing policies from one country to another. Chairman: Thank you for those answers to the introductory questions. We would like now to start talking a little further about international comparisons. Q909 Paul Holmes: Carrying on from what you have just been saying, certainly, when the Select Committee has looked at other countries, you pick up some interesting examples, but it is always a bit frustrating because we are there for too short a time really to get down to the root of it. Which countries that you have studied do you find are most relevant to the English example and the ones from whose examples you can learn most readily? Professor Raffe: I think it would depend on what it is you are trying to learn from the comparison. Q910 Paul Holmes: I mean in the context of the 14-19 Tomlinson inquiry? Professor Raffe: Accepting that, I was thinking more in terms of why you are trying to compare. If you want to ask fundamental questions about your own system, you look at something which is very different. Japan could be a good example. Germany, within Europe, is probably the most different country. On the other hand, if you want to ask what are good ideas in currency that you might be able to adapt for, if not import into, our own system then you want to look a bit closer to home. For England, my guess is that one place to look is within the UK. Clearly, I am quite interested in Scottish/English comparisons, I think there is quite a lot that can be learned. The other three countries which probably would come closest, in some respects, would be Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, and again there is quite a lot of common heritage, quite a lot of some of the underpinning institutional contexts are at least similar, or have been similar in the past. Certainly if you look at the way, for example, those credit systems and classification and qualifications have moved around the world, I think those countries would share quite a lot of common heritage. Q911 Paul Holmes: The thrust of the Tomlinson inquiry is trying to bring vocational education further down into the school system to age 14 and to make the movement between what has always been seen as vocational or academic, that was a false distinction but to make it much easier to move between the two, to have the two running parallel. Which single example then, the Scottish, for example, which one is the most informative for what Tomlinson is coming up with? Professor Raffe: I am not sure I agree with you that the thrust of the Tomlinson approach is to bring vocational education down. Certainly within the Tomlinson agenda is the desire to make vocational options more readily available from 14 onwards. Certainly my view, and I think that of other members of the Working Group, would be that at least up to 16 the role of vocational learning has to be quite clearly subordinate to general learning. In other words, this is a way of achieving general educational goals, it is not a way of trying to get skilled early, as it were, for a craft or for a labour force, so with that caveat. I do not actually know of a good, simple example which would import, certainly we have not tried to import an example of 14-16 vocational upgrading. There are countries like France which have tried to allow more vocational opportunities before 16. New Zealand has done similar things. Australia has done similar things, and I think fairly successfully, at least in some of the states there. I do not think that what we have done has consciously modelled itself on any of those other examples, beyond taking the general experience of what you can and cannot do, as part of our background thinking. Q912 Paul Holmes: Some people would argue that looking at other countries and drawing comparisons is open to simplistic conclusions, because the cultural differences, the attitudes which society has to the role of the state, the role of tax and spend, the values of vocational education versus academic education, all nullify any comparisons or transplants of ideas that you try to make. Would you agree with that? Professor Raffe: I would agree certainly with the idea that cultural differences or institutional differences or contextual differences, and I am using the word cultural there very loosely, certainly would invalidate any attempts to try to transplant directly particular institutions, particular policies. I think you can still learn an awful lot from comparisons. One thing which actually England could learn quite usefully, I think, is that other countries have similar problems. I think there is a tendency within England to assume that everything that happens here is so uniquely perverse that no other country can have those problems. That is not true at all. Other countries have problems of engagement, problems of parity of esteem, etc., etc. That is one useful lesson. I think the second point is, and possibly this is the main point, had I taken up your initial invitation to make a general point, it would be that the level at which you draw lessons is the crucial one. If you look at some of the recent comparisons which have been carried out with a policy framework reference, they have not tried to say, "Do all systems work, does this particular type of policy work?" What they are trying to do is abstract somewhat more general types of conclusion, usually in the form of, "If you want to have a successful system, here are the things you have got to achieve." One example of that was the OECD transitional review, which reported, I think, in 2000. I think they came out with a list of about five or six conditions which all countries should achieve. One of them, perhaps rather simplistic, if you like, was the health of the economy, that is, if you want to have a successful transition from education to work, which is a very important point. Another was the importance of clear, well-signed pathways. Another was the importance of opportunities for combining learning and work. Another was the importance of effective safety-nets. Another was the importance of effective guidance systems. That sort of jacking‑up of the level of generality from a particular institution, to try to identify more general types of conclusions, what are the successful features of other systems, not defined in terms of specifics but in terms of the conditions of those satisfied. I think the recent Ofsted report, which looked at The Netherlands, Denmark and, I think it was, New South Wales, had a similar kind of approach. It did not try to say, "Yes, this policy would work here," but it did try to say, "These are successful because they can do A, B and C." I would encourage you to look at your Danish and German examples. Q913 Paul Holmes: You said one of the interesting things, looking at other countries, was that, for a start, we realise we all have the same problems anyway. Are there any countries where (a) they have cracked the parity of esteem issue between vocational and academic, and are there any countries where employers generally say, "Education is doing a really good job in producing exactly what I need"? Professor Raffe: I think, any examples of the latter, no. As for parity of esteem, it depends a little bit on what you mean by parity. What you do find is that, if I can put it rather simplistically, young people who are at the end of their compulsory period, at the point at which the option arises to take a vocational route, there are countries where at that point they have achieved some middle level of attainment. There are countries where it will be natural for those people to follow a vocational rather than a general or academic route, and there are other countries where those people will stay in the academic route for as long as they can. I think the difference between those countries has more to do with the nature of the labour market and the demands which it is expressing, as it were, Denmark and Germany would be encouraging vocational choices, England probably would not, than it has to do with the status of vocational education in a somewhat more profound sense. Q914 Mr Gibb: I am not quite clear about when you think vocational education should start. At what age should that start? Professor Raffe: I would not want to legislate for a particular age. I think there is a trend which most countries, Germany might be an exception but most other countries, would exemplify towards a vocational and general education, towards those labels becoming more blurred, or at least for vocational and general provision to be provided within a more unified or co‑ordinated set of arrangements. At least at the upper secondary level, that trend is true of most developed countries. One indication of that, I think, is that the notion of simply at a certain age specialising in vocational education, as a clear alternative to general education, is less and less true. The occupational strategy is changing. A lot of our concepts of vocational as something very distinct depend upon types of jobs which exist but are much fewer in number than they used to be. Q915 Mr Gibb: I am still not quite with you about upper secondary then, what does upper secondary mean? Professor Raffe: In this context, upper secondary, that is what could follow after the end of compulsory schooling, so 16, yes. Q916 Mr Gibb: What should happen between 14 and 16? You said vocational education before 16 would be subordinate to a training-type education, I think that was what you said, of what type? Professor Raffe: General education. Q917 Mr Gibb: It would not be subordinate, or it would be subordinate? Professor Raffe: It would be, yes. Q918 Mr Gibb: What does that mean? If you were doing vocational-type issues between 14 and 16, what would the subject matter be then, or do you not think there should be any vocational-type education between 14 and 16? Professor Raffe: There are lots of areas of vocational education which can be valuable ways of learning some of the more general skills and competences that general education should be imparting, studying history, or geography, or whatever. I will not say the content is immaterial, clearly not, but there are ways in which a vocational content from14 to 16, as part of the curriculum, could be a very good way of achieving the goals of general education. There is more to it than that, clearly, especially if it is delivered at least partly within the workplace, it can be a way in which people will learn about specific jobs as well as more generally about the world of work. Also, of course, it can be a way in which some young people, but I would not want to say all young people, can be motivated to learn who might otherwise not have been motivated. Certainly I have no quarrel with the idea that there should be vocational provision up to the age of 16. What I would regard as two absolute conditions are, one, that should not allow people to feel that their options subsequently were being closed off, it should be very clear that at 16 their options were still as wide as they would have been had they chosen most other kinds of curricula up to that point. Secondly, that the spirit, as it were, the overall framework within which vocational education is provided up to 16 should be one whose objectives or goals are primarily those of general education. Q919 Mr Gibb: What international example is this model based on, and which country, or countries? Professor Raffe: I think that there is a trend in a large number of countries, probably Australia and New Zealand might be the ones that are closest to us because some of their educational thinking is closest, but we are not following a particular example, I think we are trying to develop curricular ideas which would work in England. Q920 Mr Gibb: This is new, this idea of a vocational-type general education between 14 and 16 is innovative, is what you are saying, or is it based on something in Australia and New Zealand? Professor Raffe: If by innovative you mean is no other country doing it then that is not the case, because Australia and New Zealand certainly are doing similar types of things. In the sense that we are consciously imitating them in specifics, absolutely, no, we are working from where we are starting from. Mr Gibb: We should look at Australia as an example, perhaps, but not by going there. Chairman: We have been there already. Q921 Mr Gibb: Are you saying that after 16, if you opt for the vocational options, that would start to become seriously vocational in nature, the genuine training taking place? Professor Raffe: Yes. I think it is a fairly simple principle. It is a matter of value judgment, as much as anything else. Beyond 16, one allows people to make choices that may be more committing. I think up to the age of 16 there is the expectation, because people are in compulsory schooling the National Curriculum applies, that it is legitimate to put stronger constraints on their choices in their longer-term interests. Q922 Mr Gibb: Where should that vocational training take place? Should that be within the comprehensive school, or should it be in specialist FE colleges? Professor Raffe: I think where it takes place is less important than whether young people want to do it and where it is going to lead them. I think that is a second-order question. Obviously, a third option would be in the workplace, and the best answer might be some combination of more than one of those. Q923 Mr Gibb: Can I ask you about PISA and TIMS. I do not know whether you have looked at these two studies. Can you understand why they perform quite well in PISA and appallingly badly in TIMS, and what the difference is? Professor Raffe: The short answer is that I do not have any certain knowledge of why. Possibly there are three conceivable explanations. One is that one or other of those was a rare example in some way, in other words, that something went wrong either in the sample selection or starting in the schools which did not take part which otherwise would have been selected. That could work either way, with respect to the comparison. I have no particular reason to believe that is the case. The fact that Scotland and Northern Ireland came out with broadly similar PISA results to England's makes me feel that, possibly, indirectly, it gives me a little bit more confidence that examples were actually telling us the real story in their own terms. A second possible explanation is that England has improved very dramatically over a number of years, relative to other countries. Personally, although I have not tried to work out the reference of this, my guess is, at least, that is part of the explanation. I am not saying it has not improved, but I do not think that would explain the difference. A third explanation could be simply that they are measuring rather different things. TIMS was trying to measure the National Curricula as delivered in different countries, and obviously it was trying to go for some kind of lowest common denominator, although probably it would not have called it that, of very different National Curricula. PISA was trying to go for skills that are used in adult life, and I think the way in which the curriculum was defined, and possibly more subtle ways in which the actual testing was done and the tests were defined, possibly could account for the differences. Q924 Mr Gibb: Scotland appeared much higher in the TIMS survey than England? Professor Raffe: Scotland appeared lower than England in the science, and I think it was within as sensible an order as maths. Q925 Mr Gibb: Why do you think it was lower in the science? Professor Raffe: I am not sure I can give you a detailed answer to that. That is actually something where, at least on the margins, PISA comes out with a certain directional difference. Q926 Chairman: David, do you think that the Government wants you to do something 14-19 that is revolutionary? People say to this Committee and the advice that is given to this Committee is that a unified system of education, where you take the academic streams and more practical streams right through together, in house, and see them as parity of esteem, and all that, has such radical implications for our country that you are introducing some kind of educational revolution. Whereas others might say, "Well, we're just trying to join them up a bit, pragmatic, good old British tradition, tinker a bit more than we have in the past." Which do you think you are doing in 14-19? Professor Raffe: In a sense, both. I think, quite clearly, what we are doing is evolutionary. In a sense, I do not believe in revolutions in education, because even if you think you have done it, you have created a revolution, people carry on doing the same old things and they simply convert the new structures into their old ways of working. Obviously, we are trying to allow for that, in how we are setting up the Tomlinson diploma framework. In terms of what the implications are of a unified framework, I am trying to give you a general definition of what I understand a unified framework or unified system to be. In a way, it is trying to co‑ordinate diversity, in other words, what I want to emphasise is it is not the same as a uniform system. We are trying to encourage what is already a system, and one of its strengths, I think, is that it does have a lot of diversity within it. We are trying to put that diversity into a more coherent framework. I am conscious, having studied the Scottish experience of trying to unify a system over the last few years, the trick is always to know which bits you try to make uniform and which bits you allow to be diverse. In very general terms, I think that is the big problem we have got to wrestle with over the remaining months of the Tomlinson Group. Chairman: Thank you for that. Can we turn now specifically to the Scottish experience for a while. Q927 Jonathan Shaw: You said that in your studies you talked about comparing the Scottish system. As a parent, if you had the choice to send your child to one or the other, which would you choose and for what reasons? Professor Raffe: Both my children went to a comprehensive school in Edinburgh. I think probably they did better there than they would have done at a comprehensive school in England. Q928 Jonathan Shaw: Can you tell the Committee why that is? Professor Raffe: I think primarily because the Scottish system had actually taken the comprehensive principle more seriously, which, in the first place, is not trying to treat it as a dumbing-down system, it is a way of trying to deliver education which caters for the needs of all young people, including the academic. In many respects, the Scottish system is a very traditional, conservative system. A lot of the concepts of an academic education in Scotland are quite traditional, and Scotland embraces that within its notion of a comprehensive system. A second reason is that, in Scotland, and this is something which we have demonstrated through our research, choosing one school compared with another school is much less consequential, in terms of, for example, exam results which your children achieve at the end of the day, than it would be in England. I think that again reflects the fact that comprehensive education is understood to be not a uniform system in that sense but certainly a uniform system in that the arbitrary choice of a school is not too consequential for your child's performance. Q929 Jonathan Shaw: What about in terms of the comparisons to have both those systems embrace vocational and skills training? Professor Raffe: We have been studying how the Higher Still reforms of post-16 education in Scotland have tried to introduce a more unified system. I think there are issues there that the Tomlinson Group has learned from. In particular, when we outlined our general strategy we identified trying to get the best, on the one hand, the Baccalaureate model, but on the other hand the sort of climbing-frame model that Scotland exemplifies. Our main conclusion was that, although the Higher Still reforms were trying to encompass school and post-school college provision, they were not actually intended to encompass the workplace provision as well. It worked better in the school system, so we see that as a kind of margin at the edge of the college system in Scotland, college equates more closely with vocational. We are aware also that it has proved harder than anticipated to define a unified system that will have a relatively tight system but a fairly stringent assessment regime that covered the board, to embrace the diversity of experience. A very practical conclusion which I draw from that, and which I think possibly did not need to be learned so much in England, is that a unified framework or system should have a much more relaxed attitude towards the different approaches to assessment and to various other things that could apply in different parts of the system. Q930 Jonathan Shaw: Just coming on to the 14-19 programme, on which you are a member of the Working Group, you said that at the moment we are at the motherhood and apple pie stage, so obviously a lot of work and some difficult decisions have to be made in the coming months before the final report to the Government. If you were asked to identify particular aspects, that you feel there are serious tensions it is crucial that we get right, what would those be? Professor Raffe: Where do I start. Q931 Jonathan Shaw: For example, teaching methods, institutional change, work-based groups? Professor Raffe: I will probably give you the things which are currently on our minds, because we are wrestling with a lot of issues at the moment. I think we are trying to see how we can get, for example, the notion of interlocking diplomas which are an attempt to realise the climbing-frame principle, how we can make that work. In other words, the idea that you are not necessarily committing yourself wholly to a diploma at one level or the next level but some of your credits at one level could contribute towards the next level. That requires some quite complicated arithmetic, or geometry, whatever the term would be, in the design process. I think that is fundamental, the intentions of the Tomlinson diploma, in particular, to get around the existing sort of post-GCSE blockage, where essentially the sheep and the goats get sorted out and people feel that if they have not actually passed that hurdle they are going to lose their way. The notion of a flexible climbing-frame is one of the principles underlying the diploma. I think that will be crucial. We are working our way towards it. A second area is, very clearly, and of course this has been well flagged in our discussions and other discussions as well with the assessment, we must reduce the assessment burden overall, but we have to do so in a way which does not unduly restrict the flexibility of choice within the curriculum. How small do you allow the units to be, if they are going to be assessed individually, that is a very practical decision to be taken, so assessment would be a second issue. I think a third issue which will be quite important to help the overall spirit of the diploma will be how we actually design the, whatever their title will be, more vocationally oriented pathways, because in some respects these are going to be the parts of the diploma that will best express how well we have joined things up. On the one hand, they have got to articulate well with more general diplomas, and clearly I do not think that there should be a sharp division between them, people should be able to, at least to a reasonable extent, pick and mix. Also, if they are going to have credibility as parity of esteem, I think also they have got to offer genuine opportunities for access to higher education, which probably then has further implications for assessment and grading, and so forth. I think there is another question as to how they are going to relate to Modern Apprenticeships. Again, some countries, The Netherlands would be quite a good example, France, I think, would be another, would allow the work-based and the school-based routes to lead to the same qualifications. Ideally, we would allow that as well within this diploma. I am pausing for words. We do not have a good vocabulary to describe this, but the more vocationally oriented pathways, as distinct from Modern Apprenticeships, we have identified already as a distinct issue, I think will be crucial. Q932 Jonathan Shaw: I suppose the concern is that in order for it to be widely embraced, which is essential if we are going to have the evolution, the one chance to get it right, there needs to be some broad consensus. If you are having difficulty in finding the words to articulate it, I suppose the concern is, are you going to be able to find the words to explain it? I think that one of the concerns raised by some of my colleagues on the Committee with Mike Tomlinson was the impenetrable language used within the 14-19 year old interim report. Have you got any comments? Do you agree? Professor Raffe: Leaving aside whether or not the interim report was opaque, which I can quite believe was not very clear, I am absolutely certain, and here again I think that particular type of pathway would be a good example, if you cannot make this fairly easily intelligible it will not work. Of course, the challenge with a unified system is that, in order to make one pathway intelligible, because it is a unified system, you have got to make all pathways intelligible. In the past, you could say, "You're going down the apprenticeship route, you don't have to worry about any of the other pathways, you don't need to know what they're like, just mug up on apprenticeships and see what the choice is there." Now, because of the way that the system is being defined, everybody who is going to play a part in it will need to understand at least the basic outline of the whole system. If I can give a very particular example, I think that one of the tensions that those vocational pathways will need to reconcile will be, on the one hand, having a fairly small number of well-defined, well-understood labels, that this is a diploma in engineering, a diploma in whatever, it might be in care, however broadly those areas are defined, and not too many of them. On the other hand, having genuine employer ownership of the qualifications and the competences that they certify, and typically, and I guess again there will be lots of European expressions would agree with this, the difficulty is that if you are not careful you end up with hundreds and hundreds of different diplomas, because each little occupation wants its own place in the sun. Q933 Jonathan Shaw: Is that a tension you have been picking up in your discussions? Professor Raffe: Our working assumption is that we will go for something like 20 such specialist areas. On the 'plane down I was reading a report on a very large-scale Dutch reform, one of the conclusions of which was I think they have got 21 and these bodies should be reduced to four, so even 20 itself does not necessarily lead to absolute parity, and maybe just the Dutch system does tend to fragment. Q934 Jeff Ennis: In your evidence, Professor Raffe, to the Scottish Education Committee, you said: "Compared with European or OECD norms, Scotland has a more polarised pattern of participation; more people complete higher education, but more people leave education by the age of 17 or 18." Why is that, do you think, in comparison with our system, why is it more polarised? Professor Raffe: I think it would be true of England as well. I think a combination of two reasons. One is that higher education has expanded and it has been allowed to expand, and also that the labour market tends to recognise and reward higher education qualifications. In Scotland there is quite an important component of those, which would include Higher National Certificates and Diplomas, which actually I think are very valuable qualifications. Nevertheless, they are recognised and rewarded by the labour market. Intermediate qualifications tend not even to be recognised, let alone rewarded. I think one of the issues and one which I hope Tomlinson will achieve is actually putting a stamp on an intermediate level of diploma, it would be advanced in the Tomlinson terminology but define a level of qualification that would have more general currency within the labour market precisely because it came to be recognised as something that everybody could have. The other side of that coin would be to do with the nature of the demand in the labour market. There is an analysis, which I am not sure I am competent to discuss in detail, which suggests that labour market demands in the UK tend to be more polarised than in many other European countries. Certainly we do not follow, for example, the examples of countries like Germany or Denmark, where you would actually require a certificate in a large number of occupational areas before being allowed to practise those occupations. Another part of the answer has to do with labour market demand. Q935 Jeff Ennis: Just to try to get a bit more information from you with regard to what you perceive to be the sort of intermediate diploma-type system that you are referring to, will that be based on GNVQs, or will there be a more general diploma? Professor Raffe: I think, if you wanted a single example, quite a number of them are based on BTEC, that would be the kind of starting-point which you would certainly recognise as being an example of a fairly successful qualification in the existing system. I would not want to be much more specific than that because these things are still being thought through. Q936 Jeff Ennis: In effect, I am trying to tease out of you what you feel about the comparison between the two systems. Obviously, you feel that the Scottish system is a more successful system, certainly a more comprehensive system than our system that we enjoy. If you actually did a swat analysis of the two systems, other than that the Scottish schools are more comprehensive, to use your parlance, what would be the main differences, other than that? Professor Raffe: I think quite a lot of the features of each system would be in common. One of the strengths, I think, of the English system which Scotland does not have to the same extent is a tradition, and I am using that term possibly somewhat advisedly, of school-based or local innovation. In Scotland, for example, when TVI came along 20-odd years ago, it was a relatively new thing for teachers to have that amount of opportunity to innovate within their own schools within a national framework. To some extent, that has increased more recently in Scotland because the modular system has made it possible. My perception is that in England they have a much stronger tradition of that capacity to innovate. Maybe it has been squeezed out more in recent years by National Curriculum, by some of the regulatory requirements. I think there is quite a strong desire that the Tomlinson framework should be broad enough to allow that spirit of local innovation to be expressed but not to be marginalised by saying, "Well, you can only do this for low-status qualifications. You can innovate locally for a mainstream diploma." Q937 Jeff Ennis: Whenever I have an interface with different trade associations, for example, I am going to a lunch this afternoon with the Silicate and Sand Association, an esteemed body, and whenever you get to meet these trade associations they always refer to the skills gap that we have in places like England and Scotland. I guess one of the tricks to overcoming the problems that we have currently, in terms of the vocational education gap, or whatever you want to call it, or the fact that it appears to be secondary in comparison with academic subjects, is the failure or apparent failure to engage more with employers. Is the Scottish system more successful in engaging with employers and trade associations than we are and getting them on board in terms of delivering a better vocational education system? How can we engage employers and trade associations better within the academic world? Professor Raffe: Historically, I would have said that the Scottish system probably was worse than the English system, certainly at a national level. This goes back essentially to the time when things like training and education were administered separately in Scotland, training was administered from here, education was administered from Edinburgh, and as a result there was not the organisational infrastructure on the industry side to liaise with the education system. I think things have developed quite a bit in Scotland since then. I do not see that it has got to the point where I can say that the situation is better than in England. Of course, a lot of the institutions are the same, the Sector Skills Councils, for example, their remit covers the whole of the UK. I think I would accept the analysis, and again one of the concepts was when we tried to do different comparative analyses of transition from school to work, although it is a rather loose term, one of the concepts which a lot of the comparisons tend to boil down to is this notion of linkages between education and the labour market. Obviously that covers a whole range of different types of linkages, it is to do with the extent to which employers and unions are involved in planning, delivering, sometimes assessing vocational or sometimes even general education. Clearly it has to do with the way in which the labour market is structured. Clearly it has to do a lot with the way in which employers actually have the incentives to engage in education. I am not sure that, in a stroke, I could solve the problem of why it is that we do not have adequate linkages. Q938 Jeff Ennis: Is it enough just to have business representatives on the local Learning and Skills Councils, for example, or do we need to have more in-depth interlinkages between schools and colleges and employer organisations? Professor Raffe: I think it has to be more in-depth. My perception is that part of the problem is, and a lot of this applies to Britain and not just to England, in a sense, institutions tend to get reshuffled every five or six years, and often they do so on a different basis, are we organising around occupations, are we organising around areas, are we organising around industries and sectors? We keep shuffling between those different possibilities or different mixes of them, things have never been allowed to settle down. I think there are additional reasons why it has been difficult to engage employers, partly because the incentives to the employers that take part are not very strong, but there is an institutional problem there. Q939 Jeff Ennis: Referring to one Government initiative which has been fairly popular in recent years, that is the implementation of specialist schools, recently we have had the addition of the engineering specialism to the number of specialisms, I think it is about nine specialisms now for which schools can aim to have specialist school status. Will the addition of an engineering specialist school status for schools to aim at assist the relationship between schools and employers and help the drive on the vocational education agenda, do you think, or is it just a side issue? Professor Raffe: I think, in a sense, there are too many ifs and buts before I can answer that question, but I could make a comment, which I think is true of England and Scotland. It is that in some European countries, when you are talking about employers linking with the education system, with vocational education, this is understood to include full-time as well as work-based education. Here, Scotland is an even more extreme example than England in this respect. Employers often see the work-based route as their province, they do expect to have an influence there, and so do unions, but when it comes to vocational education as provided in a school or in a college that is something else. They might be supportive and offer a little bit of work experience or offer a little bit of equipment here and there, but it is not actually seen as their problem. My perception is, although I have not tried to look systematically at other European countries in this regard, that is not true to the same extent of other countries. In a sense, that might answer your question, because I suspect that if it is a school, in the institutional sense of a school, then probably it will not have the same degree of employer ownership that it would have if it were a place where, for example, Modern Apprentices were being trained. Q940 Chairman: Professor Raffe, let us look at some of the down to earth differences about the Scottish system. You keep mentioning modularity. How does modularity work in the Scottish system? Professor Raffe: Perhaps the best thing would be for me to describe the particular Higher Still reform which was introduced in 1999, which in a sense was an attempt to try to bring together the academic subjects. That was based around the normally one-year highers courses, six-year studies courses which followed on from highers, with a modular system which was notionally vocational, in practice, or general and vocational, because it covered a wide range of subjects, which typically was based around 40-hour modules. The current system provides units which then can be aggregated up into courses, which typically comprise four units, which then may not be aggregated up further into programmes. Perhaps the most important feature, and this is actually the one where I feel that at least England can try to learn from the general lessons, is that this modular framework is organised around levels. The logic of the Higher Still reform was not so much to do with modularisation per se, it was to do with the idea that, at the age of 16, instead of having to choose between high status academic courses, which carry status, have currency but a lot of people would fail that, and did fail that, and, on the other hand, low status, vocational modules, which are more accessible but not worth very much, the intention was that everybody should remain within the mainstream system but join it at the level as appropriate which led on from the level of attainment they had reached already. In that sense, it was a climbing-frame. You do not say, "Here are two separate but parallel ladders," you put them all together and people can join at whichever level of that climbing-frame is appropriate and progress up it in a flexible way. It will help people progress horizontally in a flexible way as well. That is the principle and I would like very much to see that principle of flexible access, flexible progression realised within the Tomlinson diplomas. The but, if I can call it that, is that when we have studied the early experience of the system what we find is that the climbing-frame is quite effective in providing, the slogan is, opportunity for all. It does genuinely provide everybody, or virtually everybody, joining the system with a level of the course at which they can join it. We are no longer in the position of saying, "This 16 year old does not have any suitable curriculum to do." The problem is when you observe their attainment and their progression within that system you still find the same old differentials emerging. In other words, the people who have attained less well up to the age of 16 continue to do less well after the age of 16, despite the fact that, in theory, they are taking courses that are matched to the level they have attained already. Even having this flexible climbing-frame does not solve all the problems, which may be more to do with, for example, disaffection or the nature of the incentives they are facing externally, so we do not know yet what all the issues are. Q941 Chairman: You will have to guide us here, because I am never sure what is being applied in terms of English innovation or pilot programmes and what has occurred in Scotland. We were quite surprised and interested that in some of the early flexibility pilots in England, for example, two colleges appeared before us, they said that 500 or 600 of their pupils now - this is in FE colleges - were between the ages of 14 and 16. Is that happening in Scottish education, that people have a much more relaxed attitude to the place where they will be getting their education between 14 and 16 rather than later? Professor Raffe: It is starting to happen, I think is the answer. Q942 Chairman: The trick of this is that, your view, there are some drawbacks and disappointments in the Scottish modular system, whereas the experiments and the pilots in the English system are to give some work experience, some different kind of educational opportunity as early as 14, not to make it specifically vocational but different? Professor Raffe: What is interesting is that, because of the attractions of the climbing-frame, although the Higher Still programme that I have outlined was designed for 16-plus, some schools have found it quite attractive to add it, to introduce it at 14-16, precisely in order to make that part of the curriculum more flexible. For example, it is a way in which you can introduce people to courses which lead directly into the post-16 courses and possibly allow them to start on them earlier, so you vary the pace at which you climb up the ladder. So far, interestingly, they have tended to use those courses more for the academic or general subjects. When schools, sometimes in collaboration with colleges, have tried to introduce more vocational options 14-16, they will be more likely, for example, to go for units of SVQs, the equivalents of NVQs, rather than the Higher Still National Qualifications. Q943 Chairman: The changes since 1999 in the Scottish system, how do they relate to Modern Apprenticeships in Scotland, if at all? Professor Raffe: I was just pondering my response to "if at all" because, directly, the Higher Still curriculum, the National Qualifications, as they are called, is a quite distinct innovation and a quite distinct reform. The main point of connection between them is something which I think is coming to England now, and that is the Credit and Qualifications Framework, which Scotland launched formally in 2001, and this aims to bring, by, I think, next year, all Scottish qualifications into a single, unified framework. If I were to say that one of the lessons from Higher Still was possibly that you do not try to make your framework too tight, if you are trying to cover different sorts of learning experience, the Credit and Qualifications Framework has learned that lesson. It is a much looser framework which aims to be universal, so all qualifications in the Scottish system will be within that framework. Clearly, I think the intention of the Tomlinson diplomas is that the emerging, I am not quite sure whether it is 19-plus or 14-plus, whatever the adult framework in England is going to be, should be fully compatible with the diploma that we create. There have been times when, as a naturalised Scot, as it were, on the committee, I have thought to myself, this sort of problem, for example, how you provide a bit of flexibility in a Tomlinson diploma, would be a lot easier if you were working within Scotland, where the answer is, quite simply, yes, you draw down credit from other parts of the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework. I think that is the way in which England probably will be going in the long term, and I think that Tomlinson may help it to go there. Q944 Chairman: In Scotland, a Modern Apprenticeship is not a qualification per se, is it? Professor Raffe: No, that is right. In Scotland, a Modern Apprenticeship would lead typically to an SVQ Level Three. Q945 Chairman: If someone drops out before they complete the Apprenticeship? Professor Raffe: Then they may have units but they will not have a qualification. Q946 Chairman: Really there has been not much more progress on that side than there has been in England? Professor Raffe: No. Chairman: We will move on now to transition from education to work. Q947 Valerie Davey: You have referred to your own survey, and I know you have done detailed work on this, the transition from education to work. Can you outline, first of all, which age group you were looking at for this transition and then tell us about the strands which you have identified? For example, is it suggested that the vocational training was a key element in making this transition successful? Professor Raffe: Which survey? Are we talking about the comparative European study I was involved in recently? Q948 Valerie Davey: The specific transition element, yes. I agree, yours was international, but I am concerned to know, in that factor, and more related to this country, whether vocational training is key to that transition? Professor Raffe: What we have found generally, and this is a cross-national finding, I am just struggling for a moment to relate it to this country, is that the level of education tends to matter more than the type of education. Sometimes the mode of education can be important as well. For example, there are interesting contrasts between apprenticeships and full-time vocational learning. The general lesson tends to be, depending on precisely which data source you are looking at, either it is the level that counts, where you are looking at a somewhat lower level of attainment, or, for example, you are looking at leavers from secondary or upper secondary education, then you will tend to find better results, particularly in this country, for academically qualified and vocationally qualified leavers. Q949 Valerie Davey: This is the traditional outcome that we have had? Professor Raffe: Yes. Q950 Valerie Davey: So it has not changed? Professor Raffe: It has not changed, no. Q951 Valerie Davey: The area which is not mentioned in our reference, you did mention it, and I am not sure how far it was pursued in your survey, is the effect of parental influence. How far is the family background an important factor in this transition? Professor Raffe: It is a very important factor in a range of ways. I think I mentioned, when I was trying to give a potted summary of different parts of Europe, that in southern Europe family background has a very important sustaining role in what are often very, very long and prolonged transitions. These transitions are prolonged because young people can stay in the family home for a long time, it allows them to adopt a more selective search strategy when it comes to looking for jobs and that has implications for the kinds of jobs that they accept, and so forth. By contrast, I should say that, usually, if you do studies which compare young people across Europe, the UK is labelled as somewhere having precocious transitions, or earlier transitions. In other words, we are the one country within Europe where young people tend to get out of the family home and try to establish various aspects of adulthood as quickly as they can. Although that cultural pattern is declining, it is still quite important, I think. For example, I think it is reflected in the fact that we have one of the highest rates of participation in part-time employment, which again is to do with the expectation that young people can have access to enough money to maintain independent lifestyles from a fairly early age. More generally, there are various types of family influence. Clearly, there is the family influence that will be mediated partly through the education system, so if I wanted to have a single predictor of what happens to people after the age of 16 it would be their GCSE results, which, in turn, are quite strongly correlated with family background. Again, there is a lot of evidence that, to take a single example, the most obvious example, young people from families where neither the mother nor the father has a job are at much greater risk of unemployment themselves. Again, when in surveys we have done we have asked the kinds of questions to the effect of "Whose advice did you take most account of when choosing what to do at the end of school?" invariably it comes up with "Parents". One time, actually, that it has not come up, which is actually quite important, I think, was when, back in the 1980s, Scotland introduced a separate action plan which was one of the first modular systems introduced. For the first time, when we asked that question, they did not say "Parents" I think they said school advisers, or Career Service, or somebody else, the point being that the parents did not know, they could not give them that advice. Q952 Chairman: That was advice on what? Professor Raffe: This was advice on basically their future transitions and what choices to make at 16, either in respect of continuing education or leaving school. Q953 Chairman: What was the occasion on which this changed? Professor Raffe: This was the 16-plus action plan, so-called, which was introduced in 1984. Basically, it modularised post-16 education, as part of post-16 education in Scotland, and it changed the ground rules, so parents did not feel comfortable with the new situation, they could not give advice so easily. Q954 Valerie Davey: Did it not perhaps, more simply, relate to unemployment out there? What concerns me here is that, in the past, in areas where we have got strong mining or we have got strong ship work, or we have got this, that and the other, parents have been the force which says, "This is the way this family operates, this is what we do," and then, with unemployment in the eighties, all of that groundwork for family structured employment went. It is something which I think we have not taken sufficient account of, that parents no longer have, you know, the Dombey and Son, there is not that tradition of a family employment. Therefore, parents will be at a loss now, they were in the eighties, to know quite how to advise their youngsters to get a job which is going to pay? Professor Raffe: In a sense, I think there are two different levels of advice. Clearly, what is removed in the new context is the kind of specific advice, or "I can put in a word for you with this employer," or whatever, so clearly that very specific advice parents can no longer give. What they continue to be able to give, and again the evidence would suggest where their advice is heeded, is advice on the more sort of general issues, like is it important to stay on at school, is it important to get qualifications, how important is a degree or qualifications? That influence appears to remain strong, because young people tell us so. Q955 Valerie Davey: One example does not get you anywhere, but I can remember my own son doing a super design for a tee-shirt, getting friends together, they produced some tee-shirts and just gave them to their friends, which was great. My husband and I have no business background at all and, looking back to that example, if we had given him any idea, or some schools where they do a business project, he would have been away. Probably that was his niche which we missed out on, because we both come from teacher backgrounds, you are employed, you are not the entrepreneurial, go get and make and do and sell them. Whereas his friend, at the age of 14/15, everything he bought he sold at a profit. There was just a difference. These two lads had different backgrounds and yet actually they came together later and they made some progress, but that whole concept of what a job is I think families transfer, and those youngsters do not necessarily want to be in that mould. Where is the entrepreneurial stuff going to come in education at 14, because that is when he needed, "Go on, use that design, you're a designer, just use it, go and get and go and do"? We had not got that background to give him. How is this going to help them? What am I saying? I am saying, for those parents who have not got the nous to realise that their sons are going to go down a different track from them, where is that going to be picked up and supported? Professor Raffe: I suppose the ideal answer would be through some of the components of the core, as outlined in the Tomlinson diploma, in other words, the wider skills, as we call them, things to do with self-awareness. This could be broadened. For example, in Scotland, currently there is a push to develop enterprise education, and still often you have got a literal entrepreneurial way rather than enterprise in a broader sense. Skills are often the problem-solving, decision-taking, the ability to take the initiative and to be creative, and so forth. At one level, some of those wider skills ideally will be produced within mainstream education, and that education ought to be organised to allow that to happen. There is always an issue, I think, in any system like this, as to how you can provide an education which is statutory and has to be done in an equitable way for young people whose family backgrounds are going to be different. There are extreme kinds of examples that we are aware of, if you are trying to involve wider aspects of a young person's identity within the educational process, how you allow for the fact that some people might regard their family background as private and not wish those aspects to be included. Q956 Valerie Davey: I do not know if you have heard that there has been some recent research in Bristol with young people which has shown that they have no idea at all that school has a link with what they are going to do in the future. They have got to be at school until 16, when they leave then they are going to start organising their lives. There was just no linkage for a lot of young people that what they do in school is anything to do with what they are going to do in the future. Is that part of your experience at all, either in Scotland or Britain, in any of the work you have done? Professor Raffe: It is very difficult to quantify it. There are some young people of whom that is true. It is not true of the majority of young people, but I suspect in England or in Scotland there are quite a lot of people whose perceptions at 16, for example, I have seen quite a lot of research which follows people through to the age of 19 or 20, at which point they said, "I wish had I realised what the connections were between education and what I have done since." I would draw two very simple, practical conclusions from that. One is, up to a point, yes, try to improve the guidance, careers education guidance, broadly conceived at an earlier stage. The second is to make sure that you plan what education they do receive in the meantime in a flexible way which allows them to come back in to it and get credit for what they have done already. Q957 Mr Pollard: When we were out in California we met with the Chamber of Trade and they said that employers did not want fancy, vocationally trained people, they wanted people who could "read, write and 'rithmetic." Talking to the Federation of Small Business in the UK, they say exactly the same thing. There is likely to be an innovative step-change every four or five years, therefore should we not be concentrating on just the three Rs rather than trying to educate plumbers and painters, and all of that? Professor Raffe: I know you have discussed plumbers at an earlier meeting. Mr Pollard: I have to mention plumbers every time. Q958 Chairman: Endlessly. Plumbers have no inhibitions. Professor Raffe: I am glad you have mentioned them this time. I am not sure whether these are alternatives. I have to say, I agree with you, yes, the three Rs, or possibly a somewhat broader concept of what you might call the core of the curriculum, have to be central. If they are not mastered then, for one thing, it restricts the opportunities of young people to go on and learn plumbing, or whatever, because increasingly, for a large number of quite specific occupational skills, actually you need those skills in order to start them, let alone to progress up the ladder within them. I think that my short answer would be I am not sure that these are alternatives. I think the broader issue is the extent to which vocational skills should be privileged within the curriculum. Personally, I think that we are moving towards a system where, although there will be specific vocational routes, there will be a much fuzzier boundary in‑between the vocational and the general, and that possibly, certainly up to 16 but I think increasingly up to the age of 19 as well, vocational learning will be seen as having a lot of value but not primarily to earn a qualification which then immediately you can go off and use. Q959 Mr Pollard: Should we enable perhaps the less able students to have a gradual transition from education into the workplace, for example, saying that when they get to 14 they spend two days in the workplace learning a trade, bricklaying, for instance? Professor Raffe: I think my answer would be in line with my answer to one of the earlier questions about 14-16. Obviously there would be a limit, two days is probably about the limit I would place on it but I think that would depend on what else needed to be in the curriculum. I think, if those two days were spent in an educationally profitable way, in other words, that the time that was spent in the workplace were used as a source of education, I would not quarrel with the idea. What I would quarrel with, I think, is the idea that this is understood from the start as a transition to the workplace, because that implies that you are committing somebody to a particular route and that there is not going to be an opportunity for them to change their mind later. I would hope it would be quite likely that a person, by the age of 16, might have realised, after spending two years in the workplace, either that some workplaces can be pretty boring places unless you have acquired a higher level of skill, or, secondly, that even if you do enjoy what you are doing in the workplace, if you are really going to get the most out of it you might actually need to continue learning, whether it is in the school context or another context as well, or possibly that really what they wanted to do was in a completely different occupational area altogether. At the end of that two-year period there could be quite important educational lessons, but in order to make the most of those lessons you need to have a wide range of possible choices of places to go thereafter, and it has got to be planned in that spirit. Not planned as a transition to the workplace, but certainly the idea of having some contact with the workplace between 14 and 16 could be a very valuable educational principle. Q960 Chairman: Is the Tomlinson Group looking at the kind of transformation which has occurred in higher education and learning the lessons? I was reminded of this when listening to the Vice-Chancellor of Bournemouth University, when she said, "Almost all courses in this University are vocational. They have never been academic, they are vocational, they are applied courses, of one kind or another, where these people are training." I cannot remember what specific examples she gave but she could have given the health and caring professions, physiotherapy, she could have been talking about some aspects of law or environmental health or dental technicians, a whole range. In one sense, there has been a real transformation in the delivery of a unified education at the higher education level, almost without us noticing it, is that not true, but it has not happened lower down? It has happened only to those people who managed to stay in school and get the academic qualifications, but then they go off for a diverse range of vocational opportunities, do they not? Professor Raffe: They do. There is a diverse range of opportunities from 16 to 19, they are not part of a unified system in the way that higher education is. Q961 Chairman: At 16 is there really a diverse range of vocational opportunities which carry qualifications with them for the bulk of the young people that we are talking about? In Scotland and the United Kingdom we still have a large number of people leaving school at 16, or even dropping out of school before 16, with no qualifications. Is that because we have failed to give them the opportunity (a) to stay on, and (b) staying on because there is something exciting that might suit their ability at 16? Professor Raffe: It may be, to some extent. I think part of the problem is also, on the one hand, the nature of the incentives. I cannot speak to Bournemouth University's range of degrees, but the labour market often does value quite highly vocational courses from higher education. It is a bit more equivocal when it comes to vocational courses at the intermediate level. Sometimes the incentives are not very clear when it comes to staying on at 16 if you are not going to go into an academic route, and, of course, the way the English system is structured at the moment, it is rather difficult to stay in an academic route unless you have already done pretty well in the system so far. On the other hand, I am sure that part of the problem is actually the way in which that academic offer is defined, so I half agree with your question, that, yes, if we can provide a better, above all, I think, clearer and simpler and more transparent set of options beyond 16, particularly I think where people can keep their further options open, then I think that would be an incentive to stay on. Q962 Chairman: Has the Tomlinson Group discussed how you could combine Modern Apprenticeships into that, in a much more integrated way? Professor Raffe: The main group has not, except in very sort of general terms. We have set up a sub-group, I am not a member of that sub-group, which is going to look at it in more detail. Q963 Chairman: Has the Tomlinson Group discussed the possibility, as part of their recommendations, of taking a view on the possibility of children leaving school at 16 without a guarantee of training or education at all? Is it within their remit to come back to the Government and say, "Actually, we ought now to be moving towards a society where no child gets into the labour market without education or training before the age of 18"? Professor Raffe: I am trying to remember exactly how our remit is worded and how easily one could fit that in. Certainly, I think it is open to the Group to make comments on some of the other changes that might need to take place to accompany the reforms that we propose. What you have just hinted at is something that I think probably most of us would recommend, almost regardless of what the Group was proposing by way of a new 14-19 qualification system. Q964 Chairman: Taking off your academic hat, what do you feel about a child who leaves school and goes into work with no guarantee of any more education and learning? Professor Raffe: Personally, if I were able to legislate tomorrow, as it were, I would say that it would not be legal to employ somebody below the age probably of 18 without offering some kind of quality-assured training to back it up. Chairman: I am delighted to get that reply, Professor Raffe. Q965 Mr Chaytor: My recollection of the reports that the working party produced some weeks ago is that they did not say very much about the transition from 14-19 to higher education, and there was little reference, if any, to foundation degrees. I would like to ask you about your observations on the question of progression from the further education stage to vocational higher education. How do you see the relationship between HNDs and foundation degrees developing? Do you think the foundation degree model is the right model to encourage progression for those who have taken a largely vocational option between 14‑19? Professor Raffe: I think I can speak directly to the Scottish experience of HNDs rather than to the foundation degrees as being developed in England. As I commented earlier, they are a very successful model within Scotland, and certainly I would approve of the general idea that it is on that type of qualification that quite a lot of the expansion of HE should be focused. I am always a bit hesitant when it comes to planning tidy vocational progression routes, because if you look actually at how the progression operates in different countries it does not always follow the map that the organisation chart suggests. If I can give perhaps the best example of this, it is The Netherlands, which has a sort of patchwork of courses and programmes at different levels. On that map you can draw vertical lines which constitute vocational progression routes. If you look at where people go, it tends to be diagonally, and they will carry on up the general academic route and then, at some point, they will branch out into the labour market but via one of the vocational options. I would be wary of trying to design vocational programmes in higher education on the assumption that they are the next step in a vocational progression route which started at 16, or with the advanced Tomlinson diploma, or possibly before then, and that people are always going to be continuing up in this linear way. In practice, that is not how people make decisions, and lots of people, I think, probably are going to want to stick with a more general kind of education up to the end of the advanced diploma of Tomlinson and then move across into a vocational option. Certainly I would not want to discourage that, I think that is a legitimate choice. Q966 Mr Chaytor: In terms of the committee's thinking, to what extent are the curriculum reforms you propose designed primarily to increase the skill level at the intermediate level as an end in itself, or to what extent are they designed in view of increasing the proportion of the population which moves on to higher education? I suppose I am touching on the 50 per cent of school leavers, the 50 per cent of young people issue. What are your views on that? Do you think there is infinite potential in our society, I suppose, for people's skill levels to move upwards, or do you think there is a fixed capacity and if we reach 50 per cent of people in higher education that is about it? Professor Raffe: Whether or not there is a fixed capacity, I think that as we move to 50 per cent and beyond probably in the long term our concept of what higher education is will change. Probably we will be able to find less in terms of level and more in terms of some notion of lifelong learning, probably a more flexible notion of lifelong learning as well. I think, in effect, what you are asking me about is where I would put the priority, and I am answering for me rather than I think for the Tomlinson Working Group, personally I would put the priority on having more people up to the intermediate level. Coming from a country where we have a 50 per cent participation rate, the sun does not shine every day. I do not think that were I in England I would have put such a high emphasis upon achieving 50 per cent in higher education, compared with the other things that might be achieved within the education system. Partly because I think one consequence of that probably has been and certainly could be in the future to distort what happens at the lower level. I think behind your question was how we trade off these different pools, as it were, on the new diploma system. I would not want the design of the vocational components, in particular, but not only those, within the diploma system to be too distorted by this preoccupation with higher education. At the same time, we have to be realistic, and clearly all the international evidence suggests that if you want people to participate you have to allow that option, but usually the majority of people do not take up that option. Q967 Mr Chaytor: Do you think it is either/or? Is it not possible to achieve an expansion in HE whilst improving significantly the levels of achievement in the 14-19 faction? It is not really a trade-off, is it? Professor Raffe: There is a degree of trade-off in terms of how one actually designs the system. In practice, obviously, I am quite clear that we are going to be doing a bit of both and it is right that we should be trying to do a bit of both, but I would not want to go overboard for the HE target if that is going to be at the expense of the intermediate targets, or whatever. Q968 Chairman: If you have got only 16 per cent, on average, of people having any higher education in this country at the moment, 50 per cent is a long way off, is it not? Raising our levels in higher education, intermediate education, at almost any level, is a significant gain, is it not? Professor Raffe: Yes, and I am not disputing that. What I would be disputing would be the idea that we bend all other policy purely to reach a higher education target for young people, if that is going to be at the expense of making possibly more effective provision for, for example, the 50 per cent of people who probably still would not be getting into higher education under the new regime. Q969 Chairman: Some time ago, the Committee went to Manchester, with a slightly different membership but with a couple of the same members, and we were looking at higher education at that time and access and retention. What became absolutely apparent was that, as we took evidence from people, somebody said, I think it was one of the chaplains who spoke to us and said, "Look, in America, if you take a year's college, you say, 'I've got a year's college,' and if you're in England or Scotland you say, 'I started and failed'." There was no view that, what I was trying to press you on, on the module, why cannot modularity go right across the piece, so the bits of the intermediate stepping-stone, climbing-frame, whatever we want to call it, actually are yours and you hold them? If you do one year of college you have them and hold them and might want to swap them to go, you said, diagonally rather than vertically. Is not that what we want? Professor Raffe: In Scotland, to some extent, you have got that situation in higher education, where something like a third of all HE entrants are entering to Higher National rather than degree level courses, and quite a number of them will leave after one year of the Higher National Certificate or after two years of the Higher National Diploma. Quite clearly, Scotland is moving towards what I think is the kind of system that you are proposing, which, in a sense, is the climbing-frame but without the grouping of awards. Q970 Chairman: This was what I was trying to get to, in terms of the difference between the two systems. Can you say a little bit more about how that works? Professor Raffe: Essentially, I think this will be true for 16-plus rather more than for higher education. The Scottish system formally is open-ended in as much as, as far as National Qualifications are concerned, you can stay on at 16 and attempt a single 40-hour unit, or you can stay on and take a full programme that will take you through to two years full-time of school or college. All points between are potentially legitimate end points of an educational career. In a sense, I think Scotland has developed its own logic, so I am not trying to say that either Scotland should change or England should change. What you lose in that kind of system is the notion of what defines a programme, or what potentially you lose. In practice, a lot of vocational programmes in Scotland will be delivered by colleges, occasionally for things called Scottish Group Awards but more often for programmes which colleges have devised themselves, drawing down units from the national catalogue. More generally, what it means is that there are not nationally defined programmes, you cannot say what is nationally in the core. Because it is a relatively small and cohesive system, virtually everybody in Scotland who stays on in school beyond 16, of course, most people who stay on in school, will take English and the majority of them will take maths. You could say there is a kind of informal core curriculum of English and maths which will define the post-compulsory stage in Scotland. Because the English system is more diverse, I think it is harder to maintain that kind of ethos, in any case you cannot apply that logic quite so easily in a system based on larger and fewer subjects. The point you have raised, I think, is a crucial one, that what the Tomlinson Group has tried to do is balance, on the one hand, not a baccalaureate model, because baccalaureate models are designed for a minority of the population, they are not designed to cover a four- or five-year span, but, nevertheless, something that incorporates some of the principles of the baccalaureate, the notion of a programme, the notion of coherence, the notion of some concepts of balance, with at the same time the flexibility which the climbing-frame approach and the open-endedness offer. We have drawn particular lines, and one of those lines is that if you do what I think the person you have just described does and leave the system, as it were, not at a recognised cut-off point, in our system you will carry credit from what you have done already, which you might be able to cash in later on if you wanted to go back into a diploma system, or possibly if you wanted to go into the adult framework. We would not actually give you a full qualification for that, so it would be a credit rather than a qualification. Q971 That is why I was pushing you a little on how we can have an apprenticeship system which, first of all, does not lead to anything else, it does not give you any qualification at all if you do not complete it. It seems to me that there is no portability in the system? Professor Raffe: I think the answer I gave to that question in the Scottish context, possibly by a sort of roundabout route, was to refer to the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework. Once an SVQ is properly set up within that framework, which is a process still going on , then the Modern Apprentice who leaves early would carry credit within the Credit Framework for all the completed units from their Modern Apprenticeship. Q972 Chairman: You are suggesting that we have got to change radically our qualification and credit system in the English system? Professor Raffe: There is already a proposal to introduce a Credit and Qualifications Framework, or it is a Credit Framework, I am not quite sure if it is at 19-plus, for adults. It would be absolute lunacy to try to devise a 14-19 system which did not articulate with that framework, which is more or less the same as saying you are talking about a 14-plus framework. I suspect there will be some differences in terms of how it is applied, and possibly in some of the ground rules at 14-19, but they would be differences which obviously should not stop people from being able to move credit quite easily across the 19, or whatever it is, age boundary. Q973 Chairman: Professor Raffe, we are moving steadily, quickly. The Minister is winding up and we are going to have a vote, so I am going to call this session to an end, except that I am going to give you the opportunity, if there is anything that you think you should inform this Committee about. You have got the slant and drift of our questions today. Is there anything we are missing, that you think the Committee should be aware of, in terms of how you view the necessary changes in 14-19 in the position of skills in England? Professor Raffe: I think probably we have covered most of the territory I wanted to cover. I certainly would want to make the point that, if you are talking about reforming 14-19, do not start from this model that England is all bad, but our strengths, which I think England should be moving on, and I think part of the task is to acknowledge those. Given that, I think that the overall aim of the Tomlinson process, and I think I am using that term advisedly because it is not something which is going to stop in September, or even in ten years' time, or whenever the thing is implemented, it is a much longer-term process than that, would be to create a system which is genuinely inclusive and genuinely flexible. That would imply I think a more pluralist system, in various senses of that term, than the one which exists at present. Part of that pluralism clearly is going to be concerned with how you properly recognise different types of learning and different places of learning. Part of it, I think, has to do with the knowledge and flexibility, that people will want to use the framework in different ways. Chairman: That is a very good note on which to finish, Professor Raffe. Thank you very much for your attendance. We have learned a lot. Thank you. |