Examination of Witnesses (Questions 340
- 359)
WEDNESDAY 3 MARCH 2004
MR MIKE
TOMLINSON
Q340 Mr Turner: Why do you think
only 350 people responded to your consultation?
Mr Tomlinson: 350 responded in
terms of written response—and some of those were not individuals,
they were organisations and representative bodies. We also got
a lot of feedback from the various conferences and seminars we
have set up. Around all of the group we have what is an associate
network, which is individuals and organisations—some of
them are employers, some of them are organisations—and there
were meetings with all of them to have feedback. We have a lot
of feedback. Equally, I think possibly the timing of it was not
ideal.
Q341 Mr Turner: Over the summer holidays.
Mr Tomlinson: Yes.
Q342 Mr Turner: Would you be able
to provide a more extensive breakdown of who had taken part in
this process? I do not mean by name but perhaps by sector, so
that we know how many are in higher education, how many are secondary
schools, how many are big business, how many are small business?
Mr Tomlinson: Yes, we can. We
will do that as quickly as possible, certainly.[1]
Q343 Mr Turner: Thank you. Finally,
what is your estimate of the cost of implementing this change?
Mr Tomlinson: I do not have a
figure at the moment. As I have explained already, that is something
we have to work our way through, and part of that will depend
upon the work we do with institutions to look at how this would
fit in with their existing structures. We would hope that in the
final report we were able to give some figure, but I am not able
to at this moment in time.
Q344 Mr Turner: No estimate at all?
Mr Tomlinson: Not at all, no.
Q345 Mr Gibb: I would like to come
back over the next section to the abolition of the qualification
of GCSE and A-level, but I just want to pick up on something you
said about recognising achievement at all levels and that the
only way somebody can get an achievement at level 1 is to fail
at level 2. That is not my understanding of how the GCSE works.
I did not think grades D-G were failed grades. My understanding
was that a GCSE was introduced in order to achieve just that.
According to Ofsted 90.5% of pupils in Britain achieved five or
more A*-G last year, so I do not really see what the problem was
with the GCSE. Could you explain to the Committee what you see
as the problem with the GCSE that was introduced in the late 1980s.
Mr Tomlinson: I do not see a problem
with the GCSE per se; I think the problem is that, in all
the ways we look at achievement and the ways in which young people
perceive their achievements, the only things that seem to count
are A-Cs, which are equivalent to the level 2 qualification.
Q346 Mr Gibb: That is a newspaper/league
table issue, Mr Chairman. That is not an issue of actual achievement.
How it is perceived by the public and through the media will be
determined by the quality of the exam and the quality of the teaching.
Surely that is the problem that should be being addressed, not
the type of qualification. The same problems that have occurred
to the GCSE that you are highlighting could equally occur to the
entry-level diploma. Why will it be any different?
Mr Tomlinson: I think the entry-level
diploma is a very specific case and whether that has any grading
as part of it is a matter that has yet to be resolved. Going back
to your GCSE point, at the moment all 16-year-olds or thereabouts
sit the GCSE. For many learners getting to that by one single
step is quite a difficult step. There is no level 1 step to help
them up the ladder of opportunity. I think it is not just a case—not
just a case—of the media and league tables; it is also a
case in the perception of young people and employers about what
D-G means—not the grade but what does it actually tell you
about the achievement level of what young people know, can do,
and understand. It is basically regarded by many as not telling
them much or not telling them enough, and I think we have to deal
with that. When you talk to young people with D-Gs, they see themselves
as having failed and are de-motivated by that.
Q347 Mr Gibb: If you want to create
an overarching qualification—which is what you are trying
to do with this report—and that was what they were trying
to do with GCSE, will you not face the same problems? The issue
to address is the G-D and what it does mean. Why do you not tell
people what it means? Because there are two different sets of
syllabuses, are there not, for those people who are going to be
achieving the level 1? You say that it is difficult to achieve,
but if 90.5% are achieving five or more A*-G it cannot be that
problematic for the population to achieve.
Mr Tomlinson: Let me go back.
I do not think the idea of a unit qualification under GCSE can
be equated to a diploma. I think that is a step too far for me.
They are not the same thing. The diploma will offer four levels.
At any one of those levels, the majority of study and achievement
will be at the level of the diploma but not all. There is no question
of anyone falling off the edge. If you are studying most of your
units at level 2, you may well be doing some at level 1. Obviously
if you are studying those at level 2, you have already got level
1, so you are going to get the recognition for that qualification—and
quite rightly so. Within the diploma, you will either have the
units to get it or you will not—and the question of whether
you then grade them, as we have suggested in the report, "Overall
diploma". We also accept that within the components of the
diploma there is a case for grading some of those components,
particularly for selection purposes—particularly for selection
purposes—mostly centred around the main learning, I would
argue. I said at the beginning here is an argument that you could
make all the curriculum changes and assessment changes and keep
each individual unit accredited as we do now. That, I laid out
at the beginning, was an option. I do think, however, that if
you believe the learning programme has coherence and you want
everyone to have access to all of that because it contains the
skills and knowledge that we need as a basis for life, never mind
further learning and training, you cannot leave it to a whole
set of individual qualifications which do not assure you of that.
If it worked why are employees so concerned about levels of literacy
and numeracy?
Q348 Mr Gibb: Is that not a teaching
issue—
Mr Tomlinson: No.
Q349 Mr Gibb: —in the primary
schools and throughout the secondary schools rather than a qualification?
Mr Tomlinson: No, it is too simplistic
to lay the blame there. I ought to say, "Did not have skills."
It is extraordinary.
Q350 Chairman: Hang on.
Mr Tomlinson: No, no, let me put
a prior hat on. I said when I came here as Chief Inspector that
we had got to a point where we had more good teaching in our system
and more well led institutions than we had ever had in my 20-odd
years as an HMI. I do not demur from that for one minute. I do
not either demur from the fact it can always be better. We have
not yet seen through into the end of our secondary system the
effects of the national literacy and numeracy strategies, nor
the Key Stage 3 strategies. We have not seen those. They are beginning
to come through at the other end. To say simply it is a matter
of only the teachers—
Q351 Mr Gibb: I did not say teachers.
Mr Tomlinson: Well, teaching and
learning then. It is also a matter of structures and systems as
well, and part of what we are trying to do is tackle some of those
system-wide issues as well as others. Some of the teaching and
learning is dictated by the syllabus approach.
Q352 Mr Gibb: Of course?
Mr Tomlinson: Quite badly too,
and that needs tackling.
Q353 Mr Gibb: Mr Chairman, why do
you not tackle those issues rather than trying to change the exam
system and the perception of what the qualifications are, which
is a really superficial approach. You need to deal with the actual
methods of teaching. I am not blaming the teachers—you are
trying to put words in my mouth—what I am blaming is what
comes down from the universities, the departments of education,
as to how children are taught in our schools. These methods have
been foisted on our teachers for 20 or 30 years, and the fact
that the employers and the higher education institutions are complaining
about maths and English, which are two core parts of the education
system, it beggars belief what the children's knowledge is of
the other subjects that are not so clear to identify failure over.
Does this not indicate deep-rooted problems with our primary education
system, with our secondary education system and that all you are
trying to do here is really paper over the cracks, replace one
system that was designed to deal with precisely what you are trying
to achieve with another one and not tackling the core problems
with our state education system?
Mr Tomlinson: No, I do not accept
all of that accusation, no. The problems in English and mathematics,
I have already indicated, are that you cannot assume that English
language GSCE and maths GSCE are proxies for these basic skills
and the capacity to actually get a grip on them and be able to
use them. That is not only about content, but it is also about
assessment issues as well. In so far as we are saying we are wanting
to tackle that as well, I think it is unfair—not that I
am jumping exactly to diametrically oppose what your saying—to
put all the blame, as you have done, on simply the ways in which
our teachers were trained. There are other factors centered around
the way in which our syllabuses and our examinations are organised
which actually constrain teaching methods and which many teachers
that I have met over recent months regard as de-motivating them
as professionals. What we want to do in here, through the work
that is starting on assessment, is to tackle some of those fundamental
problems as well. So we are not papering over cracks, we are wanting
to go ahead on them. I think there is a danger here, Chairman,
that we are just looking at A-levels and GSCEs. I think we have
to remember, there is a whole raft of other qualifications which
young people follow that should have equal validity and equal
credibility, and the fact is that at the moment we do not have
a national qualifications framework which gives anyone a clear
sense of how they can move through it. The only route that most
people will know is GSCE, A-level, higher education. If you ask
anybody else for another route, they will be stumped to tell you
how you get there.
Q354 Jonathan Shaw: What is your
prognosis, Mr Tomlinson, if we keep going, if nothing changes?
Where will we be? Will girls continue to excel and boys continue
to decline?
Mr Tomlinson: That is certainly
a possible scenario. I think if we do nothing, and I mean absolutely
nothing, if we do nothing I think we run the risk of increasingly
finding that we have a lower and lower skilled work force that
is not well-suited to the sorts of job that are going to be available
in decades to come. I think we will have an awful lot of young
people who will feel very much let down by the education system
insofar as it did not seem to meet their aspirations and needs
and, I suspect, following on from that, there will be significant
levels of disaffection in more general terms.
Q355 Jonathan Shaw: So the three
Ds: disillusionment, drop-out, delinquency. Is that your prognosis
for continuing in the way we are?
Mr Tomlinson: I am not sure I
would use those three D's precisely in that way, no, but I do
think within that the element is certainly one of a significant
drop-out and a significant disillusionment, but also with that
there are groups of people who would not have the skills and levels
of education necessary to be employable.
Q356 Jonathan Shaw: In your discussions,
Mr Tomlinson, with various bodies that you have told the Committee
about, what evidence did you hear about disillusionment. Particularly
we are concerned with young boys. This Committee has heard a lot
of evidence about the disillusionment of young boys within the
current system. As you said, there is this big day in May where
all their secondary school careers they wait for and, of course,
many of them never get there because they do not think it is for
them. So you are more interested in bite-sized chunks, accreditation
building up over a number of years. Is that it? Are boys a particular
concern for you?
Mr Tomlinson: Boys are obviously
of concern, given their relative levels of performance compared
with girls, but I think it is equally true to say that there are
girls, particularly from some ethnic groups, who are equally disillusioned.
Talking to a lot of these young people, the views that came over
were, first of all, what was being offered to them did not seem
to them at the time to be where their aspirations and hopes were.
For some young people there is no doubt that the applied, practical
context is usually motivating the relationship to job, work or
whatever; it is hugely motivating as a context in which to learn.
It is interesting then, when you look at that, that it turns them
on to other learning, not just within that area: it encourages
them to achieve in areas like language and numbers, which they
might not have done otherwise. So one of their concerns was the
relevance issue, just not relevant to me, just did not grab you.
Q357 Jonathan Shaw: So, "I want
to be a plumber, but I realise that I need to be able to do my
books. If I am going to have a successful business I need to understand
marketing"?
Mr Tomlinson: Yes.
Q358 Jonathan Shaw: "So I need
to use ICT"?
Mr Tomlinson: Yes; that is right.
Then that becomes a reason for learning rather than merely being
told it is good for you. There are those, and we must protect
them, there are those students who actually thrive in what one
might call "the wholly theoretical area", where they
love and achieve highly in that area. We must protect those as
well to continue to have that opportunity. So that is one area
of disillusionment. Secondly, the disillusionment with—many
young people felt that what they could do was never really recognised
by their schooling and by their qualifications.
Q359 Jonathan Shaw: Whose fault is
that?
Mr Tomlinson: I think it is probably
a whole mixture. We do not within our system at the moment . .
. . We are moving more and more to a point where what we value
is what we can measure. That is understandable, but there are
many other things that make up education.
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