Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1380
- 1399)
WEDNESDAY 24 NOVEMBER 2004
MR MIKE
TOMLINSON
Q1380 Mr Gibb: I am sure that is
the case but that needs to be sorted. You can apply your criteria
and put in a paragraph saying, "That needs to be sorted out
through pilots". I just think that you are risking reliability,
you are increasing teacher workload, you are refusing monitoring
and encouragement as two different things—
Mr Tomlinson: You are only risking
it if you implement it, with respect. I still go back to the fact
that most of our countries in Europe operate that system and seemingly
parents and employers and higher education institutions in those
circumstances accept those decisions.
Q1381 Mr Gibb: Since you brought
in Europe let us talk about the International Baccalaureate for
a minute. I think it was the head of Eton who also praised your
report and thought it was very good. A number of independent heads
are doing so. Would you say that if Eton, say, did decide to switch
to the International Baccalaureate, given the comments—I
think it is that head; if I have got the wrong head then I—
Mr Tomlinson: No, no, you are
quite right.
Q1382 Mr Gibb: If he is saying that,
then it would be very wrong for Eton now, even hypocritical, given
his comments and his intervention in this important debate facing
our country, to introduce the International Baccalaureate at its
school and abandon this system for its own pupils when they have
contributed so strongly to this debate.
Mr Tomlinson: I have no reason
to believe that Eton is going down that line. I think they are
awaiting, like many other independent schools, the Government's
response through the White Paper and how that sets out as to whether
or not they feel what is being proposed does meet their particular
concerns.
Q1383 Mr Gibb: But if they did, while
that head is still head of that school, would you say that would
be hypocritical?
Mr Tomlinson: I would be sad if
he went down that line but I respect him enough to know that if
he did he would have good reason. He would not do it merely for
effect. He would do it because he believed that what was being
proposed for him did not meet the needs of his particular pupils.
Q1384 Mr Gibb: Is your prediction
that large swathes of the independent sector will not adopt the
International Baccalaureate?
Mr Tomlinson: It is only anecdotal
evidence that I have got from heads that we have spoken to, but
all the heads we have spoken to are not going to make the lead
to the International Baccalaureate at the moment until they find
out where this is going.
Q1385 Mr Chaytor: May I ask one other
thing on assessment? What are the implications of your recommendations
about shifting the balance from external assessment to teacher
assessment for SATs at Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 2?
Mr Tomlinson: I do not think there
are necessarily any.
Q1386 Mr Chaytor: Would it not be
illogical if we had got an externally based system up to the age
of 13 and then much more teacher assessment from the age of 14?
Mr Tomlinson: I think there has
been over time, even within SATs, a recognition of the role of
teacher assessment and its place in coming to an overall view
of the attainment of young people, and that has shifted early,
certainly at Key Stage 1. Whether or not that moves through I
think is a matter of decision by ministers of the day. There would
in my view be a need to look across the piste and see if there
was a consistent approach to it.
Q1387 Mr Chaytor: So if the next
ministers of the day invited you, for example, to chair a commission
of inquiry into SATs, would you?
Mr Tomlinson: I would turn it
down.
Q1388 Mr Chaytor: What advice would
you give to the person who got it?
Mr Tomlinson: I would not.
Q1389 Mr Turner: Can I go back to
some of the answers you gave on the balance between internal and
external assessment? Tell me if I am wrong, but you seem to have
concluded that the balance at GCSE is too heavily weighed in favour
of external assessment, the balance at A-level is not, but, in
coming to the conclusion about GCSE, you cannot say in respect
of any particular subject what the balance should be because the
work has not been done, so how can you come to the conclusion
you have come to?
Mr Tomlinson: The first requirement,
and it was within our brief, was that we wanted to propose how
we could reduce the overall burden. That was one of the requirements
of our brief and that was across the 14-19 phase. We also noted
increasingly the amount of teaching and learning time that was
being taken up by public examinations. Schools that had done some
work for us indicated that it was a minimum between those three
years coming up to 11, 12 and 13, of two terms of teaching and
learning time lost to public exams, in the immediate run-up to
them, during them and after them. That is a huge chunk of teaching
and learning time and it is in fact contributing to something
that bothers me greatly, and that is the fact that our system
is limiting the capacity for our able to show their scholarship
in an area of study. I believe that passionately, that we are
limiting the capacity of young people, because what we have got
to is a system of itemised, mechanistic assessment which is resulting
in teachers saying, "All you need do is put that line of
answer in there". We wanted to reduce it. I hope you might
agree that the approach to a subject like art or design and technology
in terms of the balance between internal and external assessment
might be different from that in history or in a language. That
is the only point we are making. I notice your colleague next
to you is shaking his head. You do not?
Q1390 Mr Gibb: No.
Mr Tomlinson: So you would have
a design and technology course examined entirely by external exam?
Q1391 Mr Gibb: Not necessarily written,
but if you are having someone in judging a piece of artwork, particularly
when there is so much subjectivity involved, you do need to have
somebody separate from the person who taught them to do that assessment.
Mr Tomlinson: No, it does not
operate like that. It does not operate at degree level like that
either. You have the first assessment undertaken by the teacher
and you have that moderated from external sources. That is how
it happens.
Mr Turner: You are opening up an interesting
but different debate.
Chairman: This is a duo, is it, that
is going on? Nodding and shaking your head is not good for the
record.
Q1392 Mr Turner: I accept what you
say, that there may be different levels of internal and external
assessment which are appropriate to different subjects maybe,
but you have come to a conclusion that overall there should be
less external assessment?
Mr Tomlinson: Yes.
Q1393 Mr Turner: Do you mean, because
your answers have suggested that, that there should be less external
assessment but not necessarily therefore more internal assessment?
Mr Tomlinson: Yes. Let us go back
a stage. If we are really serious about a phase 14-19, when a
young person gets to 16—and we only choose 16 because it
is the statutory school leaving age—what are we wanting
to know about that young person at 16 if they are continuing on
to study to 19? What is it that we actually want to know? That
is an important question.
Mr Turner: I know it is but I am not
allowed to answer questions. I am supposed to ask them.
Chairman: I am sorry, Andrew. You are
perfectly at liberty to answer the question.
Q1394 Mr Turner: In that case the
answer to the question is that they do not know until they have
been assessed whether they are going to stay on or not, and that
is why it is useful for them to have an objective assessment,
again, whether it is internal or external.
Mr Tomlinson: I agree with the
objectivity, yes.
Q1395 Mr Turner: I had understood
from your answers to my colleague that you were saying that the
balance between internal and external should be tilted at age
16. What you are in fact saying is that there should be less external
at 16 and there could therefore be less internal as well at 16.
Mr Tomlinson: It is possible,
yes.
Mr Turner: In that case, hallelujah,
because I agree with you: there is far too much time spent on
unnecessary testing. You have answered my question.
Q1396 Chairman: Mike, there is something
that I would like to tease out from you. At what stage do we,
under your proposals, find out what young people want? Say they
have a career intention to be a carer or an engineer or whatever.
How do we find out in your system what the student wants?
Mr Tomlinson: There are a number
of factors that are important there. First of all, I have referred
to the need for high quality, impartial, up-to-date careers education,
guidance, personal support, which is certainly not available to
all young people at the moment by any stretch of the imagination,
and linked, importantly, to labour market information, job opportunities,
what jobs require and all the rest of it, and for higher education
similar. Secondly, it is very important that at least at 14—and
it is quite explicit in my proposals that we are not talking about
having job specific training available at 14; we are talking about
broad vocational areas that would allow people subsequently to
make decisions about what specialisation within that they might
want to pursue—the core, by being absolutely common to all
pathways, is transferable across the pathways so that you would
be able to use that credit to move across and perhaps in some
cases some of the units within one line could be common to other
lines and you could transfer that credit as well. We do not want
to find people making decisions at 14. Equally, we want to acknowledge
that some people, having started down a particular route, may
decide that it is not for them and they want to transfer to another.
What we should be able to do and we cannot do easily at the moment
is make that transition as smooth as possible and enable them
to carry some of the credits, appropriate credits that they have
already got, across to that new pathway. I believe there is the
capacity to do that in here, just as there is the capacity for
a young person to earn and learn at the same time; they just may
get there a little more slowly, and equally possible for someone
to leave education, as some do for all sorts of personal reasons,
but to be able to return and continue. It is not new; it is a
system built up around the Open University.
Q1397 Chairman: We have alluded to
this in this session in terms of the evaluation of what resources
are needed for this but there is something beyond resources. It
is part of resources but it is the competence and ability of the
teaching force to deliver on what you are proposing. Some people
have questioned not just how much it will cost but whether we
have got the capacity. If we stimulate a great demand for more
youngsters to do foreign languages or engineering and we do not
have those skills in the teaching workforce, do you see that as
a very real problem?
Mr Tomlinson: I do see it as a
problem and it would have been an even bigger problem had we adopted
the IB model. It would have been an enormous problem right from
the word go. I do see it as a problem but do also believe, and
this comes from talking to a great many teachers, heads and lecturers
and so on, that there is an appetite to change 14-19 but they
will need enormous support and in-service training and the like,
not least in the vocational area, to make sure that the people
delivering have up-to-date knowledge and experience of that vocational
area that they are teaching in, which is not always the case now,
so there is a need for considerable support almost from day one.
Q1398 Chairman: But it is also said
that if you are going to get a major transformation or reform
in our educational system history suggests that you have to have
all-party support.
Mr Tomlinson: Yes.
Q1399 Chairman: Even if you can produce
the best report possible, if you do not market it, if you do not
follow it through, if you do not sell it, then not many people
hear about it and they do not get engaged or committed to it.
How do you see that? Are you out there marketing, selling? You
are today, but—
Mr Tomlinson: I have been out
there, not quite every day because I did manage to get a summer
holiday after the publication of the report, which is why I missed
Harvey's excellent article. I have been out almost every day,
and I am out this evening, talking to people, at conferences or
seminars, explaining what we are about, answering their questions,
and we have picked up on some important points that they said
we needed to bear in mind. We are getting a lot of interaction
and feedback and it has taken a variety of forms. I did a couple
of sessions last week with two of the livery companies who organise
occasions where one can literally discuss the report. We are trying
as much as possible to do so. I formally finish that at the end
of next week when in a sense my formal involvement ceases.
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