Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
RT HON
RUTH KELLY
MP
2 MARCH 2005
Q20 Chairman: Does not some of the experience
which we know about already, without this greater independence
of schools, already show that many schools are driven merely by
trying to get top-class results? It is a lot easier to get top-class
results if you only have one or 2% of kids on free school meals
than it is if you have 30, 40 or 50%. When we looked at admission
we found a lot of schools which are using the rules, bending the
rules, ignoring the rules in many cases, just to make sure that
they get the best kids to get the best results and they do not
take their share of responsibility for the more difficult pupils
and they do not take their share of any of that broader context
which you seem to believe in.
Ruth Kelly: All new foundation
schools will have to operate within the code for admissions, so
I do not think these problems will arise in the way you foresee
them.
Q21 Chairman: The head of Langley School
came here and we said that there was a school admissions code
of conduct. She said "Yes, I know. We observe it. We take
regard of it". Of course the implication was that we take
regard of it and then we ignore it.
Ruth Kelly: There will also be
the adjudicator process to see whether schools are operating.
Q22 Chairman: The adjudicator told this
Committee that he did not have the powers to deliver what the
government wanted.
Ruth Kelly: Let me put this in
the context of the speech I made on behaviour and how that might
work. I am absolutely clear that by September 2007 all schools
ought to be operating in school networks, that they ought to be
sharing out, for example, and taking their fair share of vulnerable
children by September 2005. By September 2007 they ought to have
the facilities which will enable them to take previously excluded
pupils, for example facilities which may include learning support
units within schools or indeed offsite provision for difficult
pupils.
Q23 Chairman: What would the penalty
be for schools which would not come along with that?
Ruth Kelly: I maintain that there
is still a possibility of legislating. I want schools to do this,
because I think that as good systems and communities of schools,
they should do it. I have set that out extremely clearly and I
have said the two dates upon which I expect all schools to have
made sufficient progress and to have the facilities in place to
be able to do this.
Q24 Chairman: So there is a steel fist
beneath the velvet glove.
Ruth Kelly: You can put it that
way.
Q25 Chairman: You seem to be agreeing
with me.
Ruth Kelly: You never know; we
can find lots of common areas of agreement.
Chairman: Thank you very much, Secretary
of State. Can we move on now to 14-19 education?
Q26 Jeff Ennis: Just to supplement the
Chairman's point about the top performing schools in the country,
if my memory serves me right the top 200 performing schools in
the country have two things in common: the lowest number of children
on free school meals and they have the lowest number of children
with special needs. I do not think that is a coincidence. One
of the things you said in your opening remarks which I totally
agree with was equality of opportunity and that is the main thing
I want to see in our education system; everybody having an equal
chance. I am sure that many people within the profession are deeply
disappointed that you have not implemented all Tomlinson's proposals
and I know Mike Tomlinson is deeply disappointed. I guess one
of the yardsticks he was given by the previous secretary of state
when he was appointed was to try to bring about this equality
of opportunity. He actually achieved the impossible. He seemed
to get everybody on board with the whole package he was presenting
to you as the new Secretary of State. I just wondered why you
have pulled back on implementing the full Tomlinson package, which
I would have supported wholeheartedly.
Ruth Kelly: I do not think he
did get everyone on board actually. I think the degree of consensus
has been greatly over-estimated and the particular group which
he did not get on board was parents and pupils. It strikes me
that it is a completely fundamental principle of reform that you
build on what is good in the system, you make it better and you
scrap what is bad. That is the principle I have followed when
considering this package of reforms. We have historic weaknesses
in the country and there is a very great degree of consensus as
to what those weaknesses are. We are weak at basic skills; we
do not have a sufficiently relentless drive in English and maths
in secondary school. We are weak on stretch and I am not just
talking about traditional academic courses here, I am talking
about practical courses as well; we just do not have sufficient
stretch in the system. Where pupils are achieving the highest
qualifications, it is not necessarily possible for them to demonstrate
what they are capable of at the very top levels. We have an historic
weakness in the provision of vocational education and practical
opportunities for learning which motivate children in very different
ways from the traditional academic setting in the classroom. There
is consensus about those weaknesses in the system and I think
the package of proposals which I put forward addresses those key
weaknesses.
Q27 Jeff Ennis: Can you provide us with
evidence from parents and pupils as to why they are not in agreement
with the full Tomlinson package? Is there any evidence available
to prove that other than a focus group?
Ruth Kelly: You just ask them.
I was out in Bolton West on the doorstep on Saturday morning and
spontaneously people were saying they really liked what I did
about vocational training.
Q28 Jeff Ennis: Were they aware of the
alternatives? Were they aware of the alternative to Tomlinson?
Ruth Kelly: We are scrapping A-levels.
They probably were actually. If you had gone out and said you
were going to try to build a system by scrapping what people recognise
as good in the system, quite rightly people would not have liked
it.
Q29 Jeff Ennis: The Prime Minister once
coined a phrase "We are at our best when we are at our boldest".
It appears to me that the package you are putting forward is one
of two things: it is either that we are at our best when we are
at our meekest or that we are at our worst when we are at our
meekest. Which one is it?
Ruth Kelly: I think it was an
incredibly bold package of reforms which will transform educational
opportunity in the country. Why do I think that? I think it will
raise the status of vocational options, it will provide pathways
for people who often in the past have been doing dead-end vocational
courses. It will provide routes into employment as well as routes
into higher education. I cannot emphasise enough that these specialised
lines of learning will include academic as well as vocational
subjects, that it will be a mixture of the two, that you put A-levels
and GCSEs alongside practical options. If somebody chooses to
study engineering, for example, at the highest level and the highest
ability level, but they are motivated not just through teaching
in the classroom, but also by building something and by working
as well, then they could easily follow a course which includes
A-level maths, which includes AS physics, which includes building
a car, which includes some work experience. There are many incredibly
able children who might find that course of study far more attractive
than just doing two or three traditional A-levels. The real test
will be whether that will provide a route into our best universities
for engineering, whether children who study that line of learning
and gain a level 3 diploma in engineering actually compete against
children who have not and perhaps get places at Cambridge and
Imperial. I cannot tell you the answer to that because we have
not set up that line. What I can tell you is that for the level
3 diploma we will consult with Cambridge and Imperial and find
out what would work for them and find out what they would like.
In the future, you never know, they might prefer people to have
some practical experience and to show some different skills than
the traditional academic ones and choose them in preference over
people who have just done A-levels. That would be the real test
of our reforms: whether we can provide a really high quality,
high status route for people who are motivated in ways which are
not just traditional academic ways.
Q30 Jeff Ennis: You seem to be advocating
a parity of esteem between academic and vocational which Tomlinson
was trying to get to. Is the increase in vocational education
courses principally designed to engage disaffected pupils who
are obviously having more problems, as seen in the recent Ofsted
statement about pupils with challenging behaviour in the secondary
school?
Ruth Kelly: No.
Q31 Jeff Ennis: Or is it the intention
that these vocational options will be available just to the brightest
students?
Ruth Kelly: They will be available
to the whole ability range of students. I shall talk about disaffected
children and teenagers in a moment. I would suspect that a completely
mixed ability range will choose to do more specialised lines of
learning because they like doing something different and getting
out of the classroom and learning in a different way with real
practitioners who are good at teaching their subjects and have
direct experience of working in the subject. Therefore, whether
it is in construction or software design or engineering, there
will be people of different abilities studying academic qualifications
alongside more practical qualifications. There is a separate group
of children who, at the age of 14 are already disaffected with
the system and at severe risk of dropping out over the next two
years or so, some of whom would, in the normal course of events,
become persistent truants, have behaviour problems and so forth.
It is particularly important for them that they get time out of
school, out of the institution and preferably in the workplace
or indeed there are some fantastic examples in the voluntary sector
and with Skills Force run by the MoD where kids can be motivated
in a completely different way, learning alongside the national
curriculum but doing something different for a couple of days
a week as well. That is for a particular group of teenagers; that
is not what I am talking about. I am talking about the range of
specialised lines of learning. I hope that we will, over time,
be able to open up opportunities for those teenagers as well.
Q32 Jeff Ennis: If, with the passage
of time, we bring in the Kelly proposals rather than the Tomlinson
proposals, if at the end of the day there is not a significant
number of brighter children doing an element of vocational courses
within their school life, your system will have failed. Would
you agree with that?
Ruth Kelly: What I am saying is
that we will have success if people want to stay at school, continue
to learn after the age of 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 and even 19 and have
direct routes into higher education as well as into employment.
Where the specialised diplomas are at level 2, we would expect
the courses to be designed by employers relevant to the employment
needs in particular sectors with clear progression routes later
in the workplace. Where children are taking level 2 earlier and
we are delivering level 3 through schools and colleges, I would
expect that to lead to higher education opportunities or indeed
level 4 perhaps later in the workplace and foundation degrees
as well as traditional degrees. We need to make sure that everybody
sees progression and has the opportunity to progress through school,
college and later in life as well.
Q33 Mr Gibb: In this global information
age I hope we will continue to see our academically gifted children
continue to be stretched academically and not be pushed into vocational
studies. May I congratulate you, Secretary of State, on rejecting
the more damaging aspects of Tomlinson and for not slavishly following
the advice of the education establishment? I do not expect you
to comment on that, given that half the education establishment
is sitting behind you. May I just ask you about what you are going
to do to restore the value to A-level grades? Will you be proposing
returning to normative grading systems at A-level?
Ruth Kelly: No, I do not propose
to return to assessing by quota rather than by quality. It is
a fundamental principle—how I see the education system anyway—that
if pupils are capable of achieving at a certain level they ought
to be rewarded at that level. Therefore I am delighted that more
children are achieving higher grades at both GCSE and A-level.
However, because of the success in the system and because more
pupils are achieving A grade at A-level, it is important that
universities are able to differentiate between candidates, so
they can see who is doing particularly well and also to make sure
that those individual students are stretched; if more and more
are getting A grades—and 3.5% of pupils now get three A
grades—to make sure they have the opportunity to demonstrate
their full ability and to be stretched in their learning. What
I propose to do is introduce options for stretch and challenge
for those pupils, in specialised diplomas as well as for those
who are not doing specialised diplomas. I am looking at the AEA
paper, which will be an optional paper at the end on top of an
individual A-level subject. I am looking at introducing the extended
essay project for A-level students and for students doing level
3 diplomas and that will give an opportunity for universities
to see how pupils perform in those optional subjects, but also
to make available to universities the grades obtained, the marks
obtained by students who are doing AS-level so that universities
have that information available to them when they make conditional
offers. In due course when we move to a post-qualification application
(PQA) then unit grades at A-level will also be available.
Q34 Mr Gibb: One of the key planks of
the Labour manifesto in 1997 was to increase the proportion of
setting which takes place in secondary schools. At the moment
it is only something like 40% of lessons in comprehensive schools
which are setted and the rest are mixed ability. What are you
going to do to ensure that manifesto pledge is fulfilled?
Ruth Kelly: I think you will find
that a far higher degree of students are in sets for the core
subjects, though I do not have those figures to hand. I will be
spelling out in some depth shortly how I think schools should
provide catch-up support and stretch to students, including how
they might make use of ability groups. I am afraid at this point
I will have to leave you with "wait and see".
Q35 Mr Gibb: You are quite happy to cite
international surveys, you cited the Perls survey for reading,
but you did not cite the 2003 PISA survey for secondary education
in which we performed very badly. Not only did we perform very
badly in this country, we have also had a very low take-up, a
very low proportion of our schools taking part in the survey.
What is going on? Why are we having these bad results both in
participation and in the actual results which were achieved?
Ruth Kelly: If you look at the
study you will see that they did not rank us because we had not
taken part.
Q36 Mr Gibb: If they had ranked us, we
would have been very low.
Ruth Kelly: They decided the sample
was too small in order to rank us, so I do not think you can then
extrapolate to say what they might have done.
Q37 Mr Gibb: Are you saying that the
PISA 2003 is a good result?
Ruth Kelly: No. I am saying that
we did not take part in it, so you cannot actually judge our performance
on the basis of it. I regret the fact that we did not take part
in it fully and we are currently reviewing why that happened so
that we can take part fully in the next PISA study.
Q38 Helen Jones: Do you accept the divide
in English education is not simply between vocational and academic
subjects, but between vocational subjects we value, which have
high status, and vocational subjects which do not have high status?
When someone mentioned vocational subjects, this side of the table
said medicine and law, which are vocational, are they not? Latin
was originally a vocational subject. Is that not right?
Ruth Kelly: I completely agree
and in fact it is a very good example. Why do we rate them highly?
Because there are clear progression routes and a really high quality
of study. If we can provide that same clarity to other routes
and the same ability to progress, then you will see a higher status
being awarded to other subjects.
Q39 Helen Jones: It might be argued that
we actually valued them highly because they were originally subjects
which led to high status jobs. If we are really going to end that
divide between subjects which are less valued and those which
are more valued, why are we not having vocational streams in things
like law, for instance?
Ruth Kelly: It is a question.
If the law profession came to us and said that students with A
grades were not sufficiently well prepared, that would be an interesting
thing for us to examine. I think they might come to us and say
that actually students would really benefit from an extended project
and doing something alongside their A-level studies. That is why
I am piloting the extended project to supplement traditional A-level
subjects.
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