Examination of Witnesses (Questions 780
- 799)
MONDAY 19 APRIL 2004
DR KEN
BOSTON AO AND
MS MARY
CURNOCK COOK
OBE
Q780 Helen Jones: I am a little bit
confused, if I may say so, Dr Boston, by what you are saying here.
If I were in school and I was taking something called a vocational
qualification I think I might have the realistic expectation that
that would qualify me for something. What you seem to be saying
to the Committee is that the purpose is to introduce people to
the world of work to teach them certain skills, but is that in
fact what people expect if they are taking something called the
vocational qualification? If they expect at the end to come out
with a qualification for some sort of job in some measure or another,
do we not have to think whether that is the right thing for them
to be doing during their school life or should they not be getting
their basic skills and maybe get those through a practical approach
in school, and the targeted vocational stuff comes later?
Dr Boston: I am starting from
the premise that there is no fundamental distinction between general
and vocational education. I am talking really in terms of the
combination of subjects which a student might do, say at aged
14, 15 or 16, not using the word, at the moment, "qualification".
I take your point if you have a qualification in French it means
you can speak French, if you have a qualification in plumbing
it means you can fix pipes, or whatever. The position I am arguing
is that for the 14, 15, 16 and 17-year-old we do not want to be
forcing them to close off their options too soon. If a young person
is clearly committed to doing maths, science, physics and chemistry
or three A-levels in the maths and science area which eventually
might become part of what Tomlinson would call a specialist diploma
attainment that is fine. If a young person wants to mix those
to do, as I have experienced before, maths, English, history and
joinery as a subject and then ended up doing a first class honours
degree on the basis of it that is equally fine. Alternatively
if a person wants to do a programme which consists of essentially
web design with some additional work which might be in the area
of marketing or advertising, provided we are confident that the
work is of a standard equivalent to other subjects and provided
we are confident that it has the analytical and rigorous intellectual
involvement which we seek then that is a perfectly acceptable
programme for a child to do. A good deal of this functional mathematics,
which Adrian Smith has been talking about, can be built up through
vocational work. I think the notion that one should get as much
general academic education through to 16 as you possibly can and
then either go on, if you are really good at it, or move sides
into the vocational education if you are not good at it is the
wrong paradigm. I think the right paradigm is to offer programmes
of value right across the board to all young people consistent,
of course, with the meeting the basic and core skills which Mike
Tomlinson built into his diplomas through the core skills component.
Q781 Helen Jones: Do you think we
should stop calling it vocational work and call it practical because
after all what is medicine or law expect a vocational education?
Dr Boston: Yes.
Q782 Helen Jones: If we do that should
we stop pretending to young people that we are going to train
them in school to be a plumber or a joiner or whatever because
in fact what they can do in school is fairly limited and set the
foundation of practical basic skills and academic basic skills
which they can build on later. Are we not misleading them? When
we call something an advanced vocational certificate of education,
which Ofsted said was neither seriously vocational or seriously
advanced, are we misleading our young people into believing they
are getting a type of education they are not actually getting
and that might be part of our problem in getting people to engage
more with practical subjects.
Dr Boston: Can I answer the first
part and Mary might like to answer the second part. It is absolutely
time we stopped using the words "academic", "general"
and "vocational", the words are simply not needed. As
I see it a qualification is a box, in it is a series of units
and the unit is what it says on the side of the tin, "this
is French", "this is web design", "this is
joinery", "this is plumbing", "this is physics",
"this is advanced mathematics". It is unnecessary, in
my view, to try and discriminate between them in terms of any
other label. The qualification or the unit is what it says on
the side of the tin, these are its contents, this tin should be
open before that tin because the learning is sequential. This
is easy, this is hard, take this one first. It seems to me that
is a far better framework to look at all of this than continuing
to talk, as we do, about general and vocational as if they were
something different. Brain surgery is a highly vocational activity
in terms of the hand, mind eye co-ordination, which I argue is
the essence of vocational education.
Ms Curnock-Cook: Just to pick
up the point about whether it is worth giving vocational education
to 14 and 15-year-olds. I think the really important point is
where they can progress to. It would be a disaster if they thought
when they get to 16 that is when they stop and have to go and
do whatever they have been learning about. It must be seen as
progression into further or higher education or possibly into
work based learning. The point I made earlier on is that we must
have very clear vocational pathways, which I do not think exist
at the moment, so that parents and young people can make those
choices with confidence knowing where it is potentially taking
them. I also think there is a very important part for vocational
learning to play in keeping young people motivated. For some youngsters
learning about something which is very much a contemporary context
will potentially keep them more interested in what they are learning
and can provide the context for them to pick up lots of basic
skills and functional skills in maths, and so on.
Q783 Helen Jones: I think I agree
with that. My point is, and it gels with some evidence we had
earlier from Professor Alison Woolf, that we should stop pretending
we can turn out 16-year-olds who are qualified joiners, plumbers
or bricklayers and instead concentrate on them getting the basic
skills they need. You are quite right many young people will learn
those basic skills better through a practical approach to them
but do we not in a way still mislead a large number of our young
people by telling them they are getting a vocational qualification
when they are not.
Dr Boston: I think the shoe is
also on the other foot, are we really pretending at 16 we have
a child who could attain employment as a French linguist?
Q784 Helen Jones: No, but no one
believes they can, do they, at 16.
Dr Boston: Why should we believe
it of a child who has done plumbing or joinery?
Helen Jones: I think that is my point,
we do not but many of our young people are misled into believing
they have the vocational qualification when actually they have
not, it is not a vocational qualification in the sense you or
I would understand it. It may be a practical one but that is a
different matter.
Q785 Chairman: Are you both talking
in different languages? There you are Dr Boston saying we should
not regard this as vocational, you do not want that divided any
more—although every country we go instantly talks about
academic and vocational quite happily—you were talking about
there are boxes and you read what is on the box and yet Mary Curnock-Cook
talked about people having clear vocational pathways. She is talking
differently.
Dr Boston: No.
Q786 Chairman: Is she not?
Dr Boston: No, I do not believe
so. When you have this framework for recognising achievement—let
me go back to that point—we see the framework for recognising
achievement, the new qualifications framework, which is the remit
we are delivering for Ivan Lewis, as being a series of qualifications
at eight levels. The first four levels would be the diplomas that
Tomlinson is talking about, if the Government decides to go with
the diplomas. If the Government does not decide to go with the
diplomas there are other ways in which that can be configured
anyway. We see at each of those eight levels there being some
core units, some optional units and potentially some elected units.
In the first four levels through to the advanced diploma the core
unit would be the core skills, the elective units or the optional
units would be Tomlinson's specialist subjects for a specialist
diploma. You could do all physics and chemistry or you could do
all so-called vocational education or you could make a mix of
them. The elective units would be a number of other things in
the diploma level which Tomlinson has talked about, potentially
things like the Duke of Edinburgh, and so on. Once you get beyond
the advanced diploma level to level five, level six, level seven
and level eight, the higher levels then you specialise very much.
You can specialise at intermediate and advanced diploma levels
by taking one stream of specialist subjects. Once you get to level
five you might have a qualification in engineering, the core units
would be generic engineering units, not basic skills units by
that stage, core generic engineering units, the optional units
would be electrical engineering, civil engineering or mechanical
engineering units and the elective units would be something which
might be chosen in terms of your employers wishes or your own
aspirations. If you were a self-employed engineer you might take
in those units marketing, small business management, taxation
or something like that. The fundamental architecture would work
in that way and would assist the very specialisation, these vocational
pathways which Mary is talking about. From entry level or foundation
level, intermediate level and advanced level you would be moving
through what we now regard as school education with a vocational
component if you wanted it and then you could take that vocational
component further to higher levels in the framework in your adult
life.
Q787 Chairman: This is a very complex
change, is it not? What depressed me listening to one or two of
the things you said this is, as Mike Tomlinson said to this Committee,
10 years away, 2014, there is an awful lot of kids going to miss
out on a great deal if we do not try and make the system we have
work now, next year, the year after and the year after that. Keynes
said in long-term we are all dead. These kids will be through
the educational system. What we saw when we went to Berlin and
to Copenhagen recently the joy which we saw there is at least
even if the system looks as if it is more designed for the 20th
century than the 21st century at least there were—what Mary
Curnock-Cook mentioned—clear vocational pathways. Here in
your response to Helen Jones you gave an answer which really worried
me because it did not seem to me that you brought out the difference,
we still have a high percentage of kids going out of school at
16 into the work place. There is nothing more vocational than
actually working. There you are, the QCA, presiding over a system
which does not demand any further education or training so that
child can go into the workforce.
Dr Boston: That is what we have
to make available, and that is my point about this trajectory
over the next 10 years. The issue we are facing is that we have
a system which is running, a system based on A-levels and GCSEs,
a system which, as you know, is equivalent of anything in the
world in terms of standard. We have to keep that on course and
sailing at the same time as we introduce whatever might result
from the Government's decision about Tomlinson. That 10 years
has to be 10 years of very tight project management so that the
existing A-levels, academic and vocational, can be transformed
into credit based units without disturbing the current structure
to any great degree and at the same time new vocational qualifications,
new qualifications more broadly, brought in, accredited, which
will increase the participation and the attainment level. With
the next 10 years that increase in the number of young people
participating is absolutely essential to the success of this endeavour
which we are on about.
Q788 Chairman: Why can we not do
something faster that actually delivers? We have taken evidence
about modern apprenticeships. In theory you would think that the
modern apprenticeship was the key thing, someone has more a vocational
bent, or a practical bent, whatever you want to call it, up until
16 at school, then gets into a modern apprenticeship which actually
leads to a qualification.
Dr Boston: But it does not, Mr
Chairman.
Q789 Chairman: No, it does not. That
is the very point I am asking you, we are asking young people
to leave school at 16, go into a modern apprenticeship that does
not end in a qualification. I think members of this Committee
are a bit unhappy that we have to wait 10 years for this to lead
to a qualification, we would expect you as the QCA to say, "Come
on, guys, this is not good enough", to ministers "we
want this to lead to a qualification and retention a lot faster
than that".
Dr Boston: Absolutely. Mary is
currently engaged in that.
Ms Curnock-Cook: I think things
are moving in the right direction.
Q790 Chairman: Not from where this
Committee sits I have to say.
Ms Curnock-Cook: It has come to
be understood that serving an apprenticeship should mean you end
up qualified at something. We are treating it like a qualification.
I believe that people who complete an apprenticeship do get a
certificate from the Sector Skills Council. As far as I can judge
amongst the various agencies involved in this there is a lot of
support now for making a modern apprenticeship into a qualification
that is accredited by the QCA.
Q791 Chairman: Mary, you have been
in this business quite a long time, on the cutting edge, the sharp
edge, how did we get into a system which had a modern apprenticeship—one
of the main things that we do for young kids that leave school
at 16 and go into work is an apprenticeship—that is not
a qualification? How could we be in that situation?
Ms Curnock-Cook: I think it was
conceived as a funding mechanism and it was a way of putting together
a programme of learning and indeed of qualifications because each
framework does contain qualifications. That is how it was done.
I think it should be changed now, I think that is very important.
The other important point is as we move quickly towards a framework
that is made up of units and credits it will mean that there are
smaller bundles of learning which people can achieve along the
way. This will start to get the engagement of smaller businesses
who might think a modern apprenticeship is too big a qualification
for them to take on as part of their business, get people into
learning, being able to accumulate credits so that later when
they move round they can still be using those to move towards
a full qualification over time.
Q792 Chairman: How quickly are we
going to see this? If I was a parent of somebody who thought that
their child going into a modern apprenticeship would mean they
had a qualification which would equip them for life I would be
tearing my hair out if I realised it was not a qualification and
probably does not prepare them for life.
Ms Curnock-Cook: Like you I hope
it will happen very quickly.
Q793 Chairman: What are the drivers?
Dr Boston: In this 10 year time
line we certainly see it as one of the very earliest and obvious
steps. I think one of the principle drivers is that it is not
a qualification and that if you walk away from it you walk away
with nothing. I think there is a real incentive for young people
involved in a modern apprenticeship to want it to mean something.
Fundamentally the driver, it seems to me, is the logic of the
situation and the illogicality of the current position, where
it is simply a funding bundle, nothing more.
Chairman: I am getting more horrified
as this session goes on.
Q794 Mr Gibb: You said that you are
intending to make the standard equivalent to other subjects in
these vocational subjects, as intellectually rigorous as other
subjects. Is that correct?
Dr Boston: The essential thing
is that the subjects that are accredited at any one level in what
might be a future diploma have to be seen as being subjects which
are regarded by the authorities as capable of making judgments
about their standards and of being of similar standards.
Q795 Mr Gibb: A vocational qualification
in website design will be as intellectually challenging to the
bright child as French?
Dr Boston: A qualification in
French, an A grade at A-level in French is a level which we are
advised by experts in French, by expert examiners and teachers
of French, by university authorities in French, taking into account
that paper in that year and the capacity of a 17-year-old or an
18-year-old person is the very best that can be achieved by a
person with that degree of training, that degree of education
under these circumstance with that paper. That is the point I
make about so-called academic subjects being industry referred.
With web design we would look for exactly the same sort of assurance
from the professionals in that area, that is from the industry.
In this whole industry of web design in this curriculum that is
being put together for web design basically on the advice of the
industry through the relevant Sector Skills Council what is the
very best quality performance or work that one could expect of
and 18-year-old hard working student, diligent, applied fully
throughout the year to this task, what is the very best effort
they could achieve? That is exactly the same level, the same way
in which we establish an A-level in a general subject. Our view
is that you use precisely the same process, in this case industry
rather than university verification, to determine where the standard
should lie. You do not start off by coming in with the assumption
that web design is innately intellectually inferior to French.
Q796 Mr Gibb: Will the universities
not be involved in the determination of the quality of a website
design examination?
Dr Boston: That would remain to
be seen depending upon the nature of the subject. Obviously in
the vocational area it is to the Sector Skills Councils representing
industry to which we would look. In a subject which is also clearly
an element of university work, engineering, web design as examples
or financial services, which is a growing area in vocational,
then presumably the verification of that standard might involve
some input from universities as well as from industry.
Q797 Mr Gibb: A bright academic child
is unlikely to take these subjects, he will want to take subjects
which are ultimately assessed by the university, not the ones
assessed by industry. If he is intending to go on to university
he will want a qualification recognised and understood by the
university.
Dr Boston: I think that is a perfectly
legitimate choice. When I say verified by industry, the marking,
the grading, the awarding would still be done by an awarding body.
It is not done by universities now it is done by an awarding body
for general subjects. It would be the same with the vocational
subjects. If a child's ambitions are to go on to university the
correct course of action is to take the group of subjects that
they think will lead to the course they want to enter and give
them the results they need.
Q798 Mr Gibb: Will these subjects
like web design and plumbing be examined at 16?
Dr Boston: They will be assessed.
That is a very big issue which the Tomlinson process has to address.
It is clearly inappropriate for many of these subjects to be assessed
by a three hour examination, they are assessed by the product
which is produced and by observation of the input in to the way
that the person went about doing that.
Q799 Mr Gibb: Who by, a teacher who
taught them or a third party independent person?
Dr Boston: That I believe is going
to be one of the single biggest problems that we have to address
in the Tomlinson issue because vocational education traditionally
has not been graded, it has simply been competent or not competent.
The reality of why it has not been graded is not because it cannot
be graded but because the grading of it is so labour intensive.
If you are to grade the performance of a web designer or a plumber
or a pilot or a brain surgeon it is one-to-one observation reporting.
The United Kingdom World Schools Team recently went to Singoli
and competed in the World Schools Competition and every one of
our young competitors, some of them from schools and colleges,
was followed round for four days by an individual assessor, one-to-one,
recording their performance. It is a highly intensive activity
and very minute and clear distinctions can be made in terms of
occupational performance. That is one of the major problems and
that is one reason why it has been so easy with the vocational
GCSEs to say, let us have a three hour examination, it is a simpler
way to give an assessment, but we have to move away from that.
Just to cut to the chase, one of the clear benefits of the assessment
is that there are significant opportunities there from the job
assessment of vocational performance.
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