Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40
- 59)
WEDNESDAY 17 JANUARY 2007
DR KEN
BOSTON, MR
GEOFF FIELDSEND,
MS KAREN
PRICE AND
MR JOHN
ROGERS
Q40 Fiona Mactaggart: Geoff said
this is an absolutely new process. Ken said, "We have got
a way of doing this." I read e-Skills's very clear account
of the slightly frustrating iterative process you have been through
in developing it. There has been quite a lot of anxiety about
the development process from the range of evidence that we have
received. Do we know how to develop these programmes now? What
is different now to what it was in the beginning? Have we got
a system properly worked through for future ones and can someone
describe it to me?
Dr Boston: The answer is yes,
we do know now how to do this thing. We have been developing new
territory because this is entirely new. For example, the issues
of grading the units, awarding the units in the Diploma, assessing
them, whether we are going to grade the Diploma as a whole or
not. That was a big question 12 months ago. We had some very good
work done under the leadership of Cap Gemini on that. That is
ticked off. We know we are going to grade the Diplomas. We know
how we are going to arrive at those grades. We know how we are
going to arrive at the units. We know how we assemble the qualification
into its three components of core, principal and specialist and
additional. We have determined the balance between the guided
learning for each of those elements and the size of the Diplomas
at levels 1, 2 and 3. That is standard. For the next tranche we
will not have to go through all that work again; nor with the
one after. We have established a process. What we have not yet
fully established is the process for delivery of it. We have the
Gateway process but it is the roll-out, delivery and management
of risk during implementation which is the new ground now to be
broken. We have learned an enormous amount, talking to the QCA
alone, although it has been a partner in all of this. We have,
between the various partners, achieved an enormous amount in two
years. An enormous amount of learning has occurred and that learning
will not have to be repeated. It will just be applied as the new
qualifications in the subsequent tranches roll-out.
Mr Fieldsend: We had six months
to turn this content around. I will be entirely honest. I think
I underestimated just now much difference there would be between
the different Diploma lines. When you think about it, it is quite
obvious in hindsight why that would be the case. Sectors are different.
Their entry points to employment are different. Some would be
more focused on progression; others might be more focused on people
leaving school at an earlier age. An equivalent might be to get
people to sort out a curriculum for ancient Greek, physics and
art in a six month period and expect them to all look very similar.
They obviously came through in very different shapes and sizes.
What we then recognised is that, because of the pressures of timescales,
there needed to be some work done on Gordon's point about shaping
and sizing the Diplomas to make sure that there was an equivalence
in terms of level and the weight of learning et cetera that was
required. That was a particular challenge for us. We have had
to absorb some of the slippage that occurred as a result of that
but I think we now have a much better understanding about how
this process would work.
Q41 Fiona Mactaggart: How significant
in developing that has been having an understanding? I can hear
that one thing that has been significant is understanding the
employer as a consumer. I have not heard work about understanding
the needs of the student as a consumer or the teacher as a consumer
of these products. I would like to know how that has been built
into this development process.
Ms Price: Perhaps I can describe
the structure that has overseen the development of where we are,
which is something called the Diploma Development Partnership.
That is an over-arching group in our case, if I can use it as
an example. We have about eight different subgroups contributing
to the Diploma, one of employers, one of higher education institutions,
one of school teachers, one of further education. The Diploma
Development Partnership includes the whole cohort of stakeholders
that need to make this a success. Certainly we have consulted
with and involved a reasonable cohort in terms of representing
the interests. Obviously it is a communications exercise now to
talk to every school and young person.
Mr Rogers: Added to that is that
certainly within our sector the employers that we have been engaged
with are a lot of the employers who were already actively engaged
with schools and colleges, with apprenticeships or similar programmes,
and therefore there is already that engagement and knowledge in
terms of working with those partners.
Q42 Fiona Mactaggart: Have you done
any research into the attitudes of students?
Mr Rogers: The answer is no for
us.
Ms Price: We have a young persons'
interest group but I think there has been research conducted by
the Department which has been shared with us in terms of attitudes
across a cohort of young people in focus groups.
Q43 Fiona Mactaggart: Has it influenced
the development of these? It does not sound to me as though it
has. I am not blaming you for that but it is clearly not a big
factor in your thinking, is it?
Ms Price: It is in our thinking
because in terms of the content we have let that quite rightly
be driven by higher education and employers because ultimately,
if they do not take these young people on, we have failed. The
input of young people has been very much focused on how delivery
needs to change, how we can produce teaching and learning resources
that are exciting, innovative and stimulating. That is where they
have influenced that stage of it.
Dr Boston: At one level, the QCA
does consult with students. We have some consultative bodies that
contribute to thinking about schools and the curriculum. I cannot
say that they have directly designed and shaped the Diploma, but
we talk to them about the issues concerned with schooling. We
also in a more rigorous, systematic way monitor what is happening
in schools in relation to curriculum, delivery and achievement.
It is clear that the key issue that is of great concern about
the students themselves is the drop out at age 16. When you talk
to students about that, their reasons for it are that the curriculum
is boring, irrelevant, they do not want to work in that sort of
environment; they do not like the rigour which traditional schooling,
they might think, imposes and want something else. The response
to all of this has arisen from the need to find a more exciting
and interesting curriculum for many of those youngsters and extend
them in their learning and grow the mind, as I have said before.
It is clear that this sort of approach works. In my own background,
I was involved at one stage with a series of schools in which
there were clearly some young people who were failing to cope
in mathematics. They were branded as failures. These children
could not do maths. They were cast into the outer darkness. They
were put into a vocational programme in surveying. They spent
their time outside the school, learning to use dumpy levels and
theodolytes. The surveying in this case was an area of coastline,
producing contour maps from the survey points. They did this work
for a whole term. By the end of the term these youngsters, who
were no good at maths and branded themselves no good at maths,
were working in areas of quite advanced trigonometry and had dealt
with issues of space, dimension and geometry, fundamental to mathematics
which they were no good at. If they had been told they were doing
maths, they would have thrown up their hands. The reality is they
were given a curriculum which grew their minds through practical
work, reasoning, judging, doing, hand, mind and eye coordination
in the field. They grew. That is the sort of thing the monitoring
of students and schools is doing, being told by schools and colleges
what they need.
Q44 Fiona Mactaggart: That is a powerful
account of how you can shift both cognitive and effective attitudes
amongst students, which is the challenge that you have with these
new Diplomas. I recognise that the groups who have been involved
in developing them are enthusiastic about them and that is good.
You have all been quite honest about the anxiety which you have
about putting this into implementation. I imagine that the person
who led that team of disaffected young people with the theodolytes
was someone who was completely very interested in the subject,
who had confidence and so on. One of the things that makes me
anxious about this is do we have the characters in our teaching
institutions who are going to be able to deliver this kind of
thing? Is there time between now and when they have to deliver
it for us to get the benefits that the students you are referring
to have from what was then a pretty unorthodox approach on a quite
wide scale? Is it going to happen?
Ms Price: I would like to illustrate
it by a case study because the employers involved in e-Skills
UK are currently delivering a programme called computer clubs
for girls which is for 10-13-year-old girls, out of school clubs,
operating in 2,000 schools in England at the moment. It is really
re-engaging the disengaged. They are learning IT without knowing
it. What has made the difference is the employers have put their
efforts behind developing really innovative e-learning resources
that the teachers find so easy to use, plus the employers are
offering development programmes for the teachers. The teachers
are going to the employers' premises plus it happens in reverse.
The employers are going to support the teachers. We can do that
in 2,000 schools and I think it has made a change. That should
be our aspiration for Diplomas.
Q45 Mr Wilson: Employment engagement
and recognition for these new Diplomas, I think we are all agreed,
is pretty critical to their success. The Institute of Directors
has made a submission to the Committee and its membership is made
up of a cross-section of the business spectrum. They have told
this Committee that they have very little information about the
Diploma Development Partnership or its work or facilitating employer
input into the composition of the Diplomas. Does it surprise you
that a key employer organisation has effectively been excluded
from this process?[7]
Dr Boston: It certainly surprises
me because we have had a lot of contact with Miles Templeman.
On one occasion quite recently, Mary Curnock-Cook and I addressed
a meeting of all their regional chairs precisely on Diplomas.
I would have thought that the IoD as a whole had, at a senior
level, including regionally, some understanding of where we are
heading. I do not know to what extent IoD members have been involved
in Diploma development partnerships. Others might have that information.
Q46 Mr Wilson: They say there is
very little involvement.
Dr Boston: From the point of view
of the qualifications development, we have seen it as very important
to talk not only to the Institute of Directors but also Richard
Lambert and the CBI and make it very clear where we see this reform
heading.
Ms Price: We have spoken to the
IoD and are liaising with both the IoD, the CBI and the trade
associations relative to IT. In terms of the process of development,
we have involved over 600 employers in the development of the
qualification and that has been a robust sample of organisation,
geographic and by size of organisation. They have been fully involved
in developing it. There are 97,000 companies in our footprint
but I am confident that, as MORI can introduce 1,000 people and
get the temperature check on the nation, the content of the Diploma
is fit for purpose, will be embraced by employers and recognised
by them. Our job now is to communicate that out there and enable
the local delivery which is the relationship between the small
businesses and the IoD members and their local schools.
Q47 Mr Wilson: Your are telling the
Committee this morning that there has been a full attempt to include
the Institute of Directors in the development and the content
of the Diplomas?
Ms Price: My answer to you is
that we have certainly been in dialogue and made them aware. I
am not sure that I could fully commit to saying there had been
a full attempt across all five lines, but they have been a constituent
partner.
Q48 Mr Wilson: Do you not think it
would be a significant oversight if you have not fully engaged
one of the major employer organisations in this country in what
is supposed to be a huge development in education in this country?
Ms Price: Yes. I do not think
they have not been engaged.
Mr Wilson: What concerns me is if—I
am not saying they would for a moment—the IoD came out against
these Diplomas and said they did not like what was in them or
something of that nature, it would be a crushing blow to the whole
development of these Diplomas, would it not?
Chairman: Are you alleging that the director
general of the IoD is saying they were not consulted on these
Diplomas?
Mr Wilson: I am not alleging it. I have
a letter that was sent to the Committee from the IoD that says
exactly that.
Chairman: The director general said they
were not consulted?
Mr Wilson: I do not know who it is signed
by because it does not have a signature on it, but it is a submission.
Chairman: We have to be clear on this
because we do not want another false story on the front page of
The Times like the one on schools for the future. We want
to nail down the facts. If there is an allegation that the director
general of the Institute of Directors says he was not consulted
on this, that should be dragged into the open. Also, if that is
not the case, we should know about it.
Mr Wilson: All I can tell you is that
I asked whether any submissions had been made to this Committee
by employer organisations and I was given a letter about ten minutes
ago from the IoD, which does not have a signatory on it. I am
asking questions based on that letter.
Chairman: I am just drawing it out so
that our witnesses can respond.
Mr Wilson: I cannot believe that the
Institute of Directors would submit a document without a full—
Q49 Chairman: Absolutely. Ken Boston,
let us have an answer then.
Dr Boston: At the senior level
we have addressed the IoD people. I do not have with me immediately
what other contact we have had with them but I have just been
given, for example, our 14-19 hospitality case range, the Diploma
development panel. We have on it Ian Campbell, director of hospitality
services with the Institute of Directors. He is directly involved
in the committee doing this work. There may well be other examples
which we could find if they are there but clearly, in putting
this expert panel together, we have gone out to get the appropriate
people we need to be represented on it. If that is the view of
the IoD, we really do need to start talking to them again and
making it clear to them where the involvement has been and what
we have been seeking to do.
Q50 Mr Wilson: They also suggest
that they have a concern about the tendency to portray sector
skills councils as the voice of business, particularly of small
employers. Do you have any feeling that you are portraying sector
skills councils as the voice of business?
Mr Fieldsend: I think sector skills
councils are set up for that purpose, are they not? The difficulty
here is that of course the IoD and others need to be involved
and consulted fully but the task and the process was one where
SSCs were set up to do what they do best, which is talk to their
employers that they are responsible directly, not via intermediaries.
From my point of view I was fully satisfied with the engagement
with employers in the way that Karen outlined. It was absolutely
typical and unprecedented. There is always a difficulty, is there
not, because there are a number of organisations around that are
responsible for representing employer views and clearly they need
to be part of the picture but this process was not about using
them to get to their members. This was a process of engaging directly
on the ground with the employers that the SSCs meet on a daily
basis.
Q51 Mr Wilson: To be successful you
do need their engagement and support. Would it surprise you that
in a sample of 500 of their members conducted less than a year
ago less than a fifth had heard of the Sector Skills Development
Agency or sector skills councils and only 3% were active participants
in them? These are senior people we are talking about.
Ms Price: Yes, it does surprise
me because I meet regularly with Miles Templeman and we have a
number of initiatives where we are working together. I am sure
that is common across a lot of the 25 sector skills councils.
I think sector skills councils work directly with employers and
wherever they can get strong partnerships going with other employer
organisations. This is not about a turf war; it is very much about
working in partnership so the needs of all employers, small and
large, across the UK are addressed. We invest a lot of time in
partnership working with employer organisations.
Q52 Mr Wilson: I am sure you do but
I am just making sure it is all employer organisations.
Mr Fieldsend: There are IoD members
on SSC boards. Richard Wilson, a skills specialist with the IoD,
was on the board until recently of Improve, which was involved
in the manufacturing Diploma.
Q53 Mr Wilson: Would it surprise
you to know that 94% of IoD members had either very little knowledge
or no knowledge at all of these Diplomas?
Ms Price: No. In terms of a survey,
it would not surprise me because quite often it is dependent on
who you ask and who has been involved. In terms of who we work
with inside employer organisations, it is typically the people
who are directly responsible for recruiting and training young
people. They might not have been part of the sample survey. We
are yet to go fully public on Diplomas and we have made a conscious
decision not to communicate our Diplomas until we are absolutely
ready and it is appropriate across our whole cohort of employers
in terms of a marketing and communication exercise. We need to
have very positive messages.
Q54 Mr Wilson: We heard from Ken
that there are going to be 50,000 young people starting Diplomas
in 2008. That is going to require training for 5,000 teachers.
Is that possible to do in the timescale that you have set yourselves?
Dr Boston: If the teachers are
not there, it will not get to anything like 50,000. That is the
whole point of the Gateway process. If we get a solid take-up—I
do not want rapid take-up—there is going to be a demand
for more teachers and they will have to be trained and recruited
over a period of time. I certainly would argue very strongly that
if it is a balance between hitting a target of 50,000 in the first
year or maintaining standards right from the start we would go
with standards. We must not compromise on this. If 50,000 is not
attainable because the teachers are not there, it will not be
reached.
Q55 Mr Wilson: Everything I have
heard this morning suggests that there are strong doubts about
how much you can deliver on time against the targets you set yourselves.
Would that be a fair reflection of the evidence we have heard
this morning?
Dr Boston: No. 50,000 is not a
target. It is the figure that the Department has come up looking
at the scope of the resources that are believed to be available
out there and the scope of the funding which is available to the
Department to deliver. Notionally, there is a view that 50,000
might be a reasonable, achievable target but it does not have
priority over quality.
Chairman: The Department seems only able
to think in big, fat, round numbers, does it not, whether it is
a 50% higher education target or 50,000 of these and 500,000 apprentices?
Q56 Mr Wilson: I want to gauge how
much time you are expecting these young people to spend with employers
as part of their Diplomas. Is there going to be a large work-based
element to them?
Dr Boston: In every Diploma, there
is a fortnight's work experience in the workplace. At least half
of the principal learning must be done in workplaces or work related
facilities. The nature of a work related facility will vary from
Diploma to Diploma, depending upon the nature of it. In FE colleges,
as you know, there are very clearly industrial type facilities
which might not be in a commercial firm in which this work will
be done but replicate it exactly. The weighting is heavily on
the teaching of principal learning in facilities that are industry
standard and there is the explicit requirement that there be 10
days' work experience in the workplace itself.
Mr Wilson: The scale of employer involvement
in this to make it work therefore is going to be huge. If that
is going to be achieved, you really do need to engage with the
major employer organisations in this country. It is a major oversight
that the IoD seems to have been excluded from the process so far,
so I hope that if you take anything away from this morning's session
you will go back and fix that problem as soon as you can.
Chairman: Perhaps the lesson might be
that the IoD ought to get its act together.
Mr Wilson: They did not come up with
the Diploma idea.
Chairman: Perhaps Mr Templeman should
be moving on.
Q57 Jeff Ennis: According to my information,
you established a Diploma employer steering group which included
Vodafone, IBM, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, Logica, EDS, BT, CA,
John Lewis, Centrica, the Government and the MoD and SMEs. That
seems to be quite extensive. The one category that is missing
from that group as far as I am concerned, Karen, is local authorities.
In my constituency local authorities are a very big employer.
What engagement have we had with local authorities, for example?
Ms Price: We have a virtual network
of over 600 employers involved and we work very closely with local
authorities because we are very cognisant of what is needed. One
of the employers that is not listed there is Hampshire County
Council. They are on our small employer steering group as well.
I take the point they are incredibly important.
Q58 Jeff Ennis: That is local authorities
in general as well as local education authorities?
Ms Price: Yes.
Q59 Jeff Ennis: This question is
to do with the work placement element of Diplomas and the work
experience situation. In my area, quite often local employers
will put up stumbling blocks like health and safety issues and
data protection issues not to take on young people for work experience.
Is the new Diploma going to be able to work around issues like
that in terms of engaging the local employers with taking young
people?
Ms Price: I think we are going
to be highly reliant on organisations like education business
partnerships to help facilitate that. Nonetheless, I do not want
to see too much emphasis put upon work experience in our understanding
of it to date. What we are talking about is employer engagement
in the curriculum in a radically different way. At the moment
we have a group of employers who are working on national teaching
and learning resources and they are pooling all their intellectual
property rights, working with educationalists to provide the tools
at real time. They are also looking at how they can develop teachers
and how the employers can go into schools and get the young people
into their premises, not necessarily for two weeks' work experience.
I think we have not even begun to tap the potential of technology
in terms of supporting that as well.
7 See also response from IoD, Ev 200 Back
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