Examination of Witnesses (Questions 640
- 659)
MONDAY 29 MARCH 2004
MR ROB
HULL AND
MS CAROL
HUNTER
Q640 Valerie Davey: Then you must
be pretty disappointed at today's report from Ofsted which says
that the Advanced Vocational Certificate in Education is not popular
and that "it is neither seriously vocational nor consistently
advanced".
Mr Hull: Yes, I am disappointed
with that report today. Partly it reflects a historical position
and some of the early teething problems with that qualification,
problems which have and are being tackled. Next year a revised
version of the vocational A-level is going to be introduced, which
has the same sort of structure as the AS/A2 structure for the
normal A-level, but some of the issues around with the vocational
A-level are wider, more general issues, which led to our remit
to Mike Tomlinson. In trying to get parity between the vocational
qualifications and the academic qualifications, we have tended
to impose more external examination and assessment than is appropriate
for some vocational qualifications. One of the challenges we put
to Mike Tomlinson's group is to see whether he can develop an
appropriate assessment regime for vocational qualifications which
matches the kind of learning but also generates public confidence
in the quality. We are doing things to the existing qualifications
but we also think there are longer term issues, which we are looking
to Mike Tomlinson to help us with.
Q641 Valerie Davey: Immediately,
for young people and their parents who want them to start this
course in September, how do we give them the confidence that this
is something worth doing and that it will equip them for their
future work?
Mr Hull: I think we do that by
some of the things we are already doing with the Qualifications
and Curriculum Authority to enable schools and colleges to deliver
those qualifications more effectively. I also indicated that there
are some changes to the qualifications coming through.
Q642 Valerie Davey: Do you see any
work necessary with the universities as well to encourage them
to recognise that these are qualifications which their young people
coming to university may also have and be of value for their purposes?
Mr Hull: Yes, I think so and we
do engage in dialogue with higher education, particularly the
admissions tutors, to help them to understand what qualifications
are coming through, but it is not easy to influence higher education
at large because each admissions tutor is making his or her own
decisions, at the end of the day.
Q643 Valerie Davey: You said the
employers were involved. Were universities and higher education
involved as well?
Mr Hull: Yes, there was some involvement
there as well.
Q644 Valerie Davey: So they have
a responsibility for what they have produced?
Mr Hull: They do to some extent,
yes.
Q645 Mr Turner: Mr Hull, how long
do you think it took for the GCSEs to command the confidence of
employers after their introduction?
Mr Hull: I do not know the answer
to that. I was not involved in this area of work at that time.
My impression is that by the end of the 1980s it was pretty well
established as a qualification and well recognised. It was introduced
in 1986.
Q646 Mr Turner: So that is four years;
and the A2?
Mr Hull: It is only a couple of
years since the A2 was first examined. I think people are still
coming to understand it, though the A2 is close in standard to
the A-level.
Q647 Mr Turner: Indeed, and even
with that two years, they are still coming to understand it. My
concern is that when you have launched something and it has gone
wrong, you not only lose credit and the students who have gone
through the system perhaps lose credit and credibility, but you
lose credibility with future generations of students as well and
employers. How will you prevent that if you change the system?
Mr Hull: You mean in the future?
Mike Tomlinson's work on reforming qualifications is deliberately
seen as a long-term programme of work. I think, if we plan that
work over an extended period, if we work hard on communications
strategies and on getting the theory right, then there is a prospect
for doing that, but it is a significant undertaking to maintain
confidence through that process, and we will be worrying a lot
about that to get it right.
Q648 Mr Gibb: What went wrong with
the GCSE exams, on this same line of questioning?
Mr Hull: I thought the question
was about the vocational A-level. The one in the press this morning
is about the vocational A-level.
Q649 Mr Gibb: I am not asking about
the vocational A-level. I am asking you about the GCSE.
Mr Hull: In the 1980s?
Q650 Mr Gibb: No. Why are you getting
rid of it? What is the concern with the GCSE?
Mr Hull: The issues around the
GCSE are about the extent to which you should put weight on a
qualification at 16 as opposed to 19. The rationale for 14-19
reform is about moving towards a programme of continuous learning
through from 14-19, so that we move away from an expectation that
young people will leave school at 16 and stop learning at 16 to
a programme of learning through from 14-19. If we move from where
we are now to a 14-19 programme of learning, then for all young
people we ought to be putting increasing emphasis on achievement
at 18/19 and less so on achievement at 16. Achievement at 16 ought
to be more of a stepping stone than seen as a terminal examination.
That is one kind of argument about the way in which the GCSE exam
is positioned in the overall 14-19 programme. Then there are arguments
which I do not know whether Mike Tomlinson brought out when he
met you about the extent to which the GCSE qualification is now
apt for 14-16-year-olds. The claim is made, and I think there
is some force in it, that by taking a series of exams at the same
level in related subjects and doing the same sort of course work
again and again, the same sort of exams again and again, the young
person is being tested repeatedly for the same things and that
if one moved to a different framework of assessment, you could
do it in one shot rather than doing the same sort of things in
geography coursework and history coursework and so forth.
Q651 Mr Gibb: May I just halt you
there? You have been far more informative than Mike Tomlinson
was. Are you saying then, that there will not be an exam in every
subject under the diploma system and that you need to be testing
the core skills?
Mr Hull: No, I am not saying that.
What we have asked Mike Tomlinson to do is look for ways of reducing
the burden of assessment and making sure the assessment is appropriate
to the learning programme so that you do not need to assess the
same thing twice necessarily.
Q652 Mr Gibb: That is the point I
wanted to hone in on.
Mr Hull: You would still be tested
in geography and history if those were the subjects you were doing
in your main learning programme, but you might not be doing the
same range of assessment tasks as you do at the moment in those
subjects.
Q653 Mr Gibb: Please explain to me
what is being assessed twice at the moment when you do an exam
in history and an exam in geography?
Mr Hull: In coursework in many
subjects you will be doing some sort of project; you will be going
through the skills of getting a project together to present your
written work in a particular way, and so on. Those kinds of things
are being tested in several different ways as opposed to the subject
matter which, of course, is not replicated in the different subject
areas.
Q654 Mr Gibb: So one plan is to reduce
the amount of coursework, is that the idea, and have more assessment
by examination under the new system?
Mr Hull: There is a variety of
options being canvassed by Mike Tomlinson in his interim report,
including assessment by teachers but not by the structured coursework
that we have now.
Q655 Mr Gibb: So more self-assessment
by teachers and fewer exams than currently is the system?
Mr Hull: That is what he is canvassing.
Q656 Mr Gibb: Can I ask you about
exams at 16? Will there be fewer exams generally for people at
16 than currently?
Mr Hull: You are talking as if
I know the future. I made clear earlier that we are waiting to
see Mike Tomlinson's final proposals and then we will take a view
on the way forward. I would expect Mike to be recommending a reduction
in the amount of external examining, yes.
Q657 Mr Gibb: Could you also say
what was wrong with the D-G grades at GCSE? Why did that not work?
Mr Hull: I think initially, back
in 1986, the D-G grades were working quite well. What we see in
the late 1980s and early 1990s is an increase in performance by
young people at 16 which looks as if it fed through into increased
participation post-16. Young people who previously had experienced
failure, in their terms, were experiencing the D-G grades as success
and were feeling that they could take them forward. Over the last
15 years, I think increasingly the D-G grades have come to be
seen as failure as achievement. The higher levels have become
more important as the economy has needed the higher level skills.
Something has happened to perceptions. Certainly that sort of
perception has not applied in the GNVQ qualification at the equivalent
level. We had a foundation GNVQ, which is equivalent in level
to D-G grades, and you could succeed in the foundation GNVQ and
it had a different sort of effect on you.
Q658 Mr Gibb: Is that because it
had a different name?
Mr Hull: It may have been something
like that, yes, indeed.
Q659 Mr Gibb: What you are saying
in essence is that one exam encompassing a whole broad range of
abilities will tend to result in the lower grades being regarded
less well, as a failure almost?
Mr Hull: I am not saying that.
I am saying in this case that seems to have happened. I am not
sure.
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