Examination of Witnesses (Questions 279
- 299)
WEDNESDAY 18 APRIL 2007
RT HON
ALAN JOHNSON
MP AND MR
JON COLES
Q279 Chairman: The Secretary of State
is on a very short timetable. This is the first time we have ever
been kind to a Secretary of State, and that is because we thought
this was going to be a double-hander, Mike Tomlinson followed
by the Secretary of State, so he has benefited from a late start,
but he has to get away sharpish, so it is going to be a fast-running
session. Secretary of State, given those circumstances, can I
appeal to you? You know what ministers are like, they like to
talk a lot sometimes, so we are going ask short questions and
we hope for punchy answers.
Alan Johnson: Okay, good.
Q280 Chairman: Can I welcome you,
Secretary of State. It is a pleasure to see you here again. How
long have you been in the job now?
Alan Johnson: Almost 12 months.
Q281 Chairman: How much longer do
you think you will be there?
Alan Johnson: The next 10 years,
I should imagine.
Q282 Chairman: It does worry this
Committee sometimes, Secretary of State, that the turnover at
the top in the Department for Education does not do anyone any
good, does it, and you are not likely to be here after a reshuffle,
are you?
Alan Johnson: It is beyond my
power. I would very much like to be here after a reshuffle.
Q283 Chairman: Would you like to
keep the brief?
Alan Johnson: Absolutely.
Q284 Chairman: Even if you were elected
as Deputy Leader?
Alan Johnson: I think Ken Baker
in his biography said that moving from the Department for the
Environment to Education—this was in the eighties—was
like being a football manager leaving Arsenal and being sent to
Charlton. Charlton was then in the third division, which gives
you some indication of how the Department for Education was seen
in those days. It is not seen like that now, it is in the premiership
now and I am going to stay here. I think it is a great Department.
Q285 Chairman: If the rumours are
right and you became Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, would
you be able to do education with that job?
Alan Johnson: Yes; absolutely.
Q286 Chairman: Okay, that clears
that out of the way. Let us get started. Do you want to say anything
to get us started on Diplomas?
Alan Johnson: No.
Q287 Chairman: Straight into questions?
Alan Johnson: Yes.
Q288 Chairman: Good. We are looking
at skills in their entirety because it is an issue that this Committee,
over the years, has tried to push up the political agenda, and
I am pleased to see that there is much more attention on skills
than there has been in the past. It used to be the Cinderella
of the Department for Education and Skills in terms of attention,
in our view. You are doing Diplomas which many of us thought were
a real breakthrough, although, of course, you know the history
of disappointment that Tomlinson, amongst many others' comments,
is not being delivered in full. Do you think it is fair that some
of your ministerial team insist on saying that new Diplomas are
90% of Tomlinson?
Alan Johnson: I think it is fair,
yes. Whether you could be as precise as 90%, I think I may have
been the one of my ministerial team who said this, I am not sure,
but the message we were getting over was to try and get round
this argument of constantly referring back, "Is it pure Tomlinson
or is it not?", and if you look at what Tomlinson was recommending,
the Extended Projects, the concentration on functional skills,
the baccalaureate style of the Diploma, amongst lots of other
things he said, the reason why we published the league tables
with maths and English, five GCSEs with maths and English, was
because Tomlinson suggested we do that. The reason why we are
looking to stretch and we are looking for an A* at A level is
because it was in Tomlinson's report. So, there is an awful lot
of his report (which was, of course 14-19) that we are actually
doing and I think you can equate it, as near as damn it, to about
90%.
Q289 Chairman: You know that the
current environment, the landscape, of 14-19 is complex, is it
not? There are so many products out there. There is even a product
that many employers, many people trust a great deal, and that
is BTEC, but it is a market place. If the new product is not attractive
it will not flourish and it will not survive, will it? Why do
you think this particular product will flourish and survive?
Alan Johnson: I think it will,
because it is the bit that is missing and has been missing from
our education system historically. We have had, on the one side,
theoretical study and, on the other side, workplace training,
job training, and there has been nothing that mixed the theoretical
with the applied to any great degree. There has been some attempts
at this, but I am talking generally, and that is what excited
people about Tomlinson and that is why I think this really is
revolutionary; and you are quite right to say, Chairman, that
it is very complex and it is very difficult, but that is why people
shied away from it in the past. This has to be the major change,
Graham Lane, I think, said in the last century, in education,
and I think he is right.
Q290 Chairman: Can I ask you one
more question before we move to general questioning. Why push
ahead with a review of A level next year at a time when everything
is changing? On the one hand everything is changing, at the same
time I am looking at a report that has just come out from you,
the consultation on funding on the CSR period, and I read the
first sentence of paragraph seven where it says, "In broad
terms, we propose to retain the current funding arrangements for
pre- and post-16 provision over the CSR period and to facilitate
coherent planning by 14-19 partnerships through changes to the
funding arrangements. Other options, such as the creation of a
single 14-19 funding system, or funding learners through the institution
in which they spend most time, which present very significant
practical and legislative barriers, are not being considered further."
So, there are two points. On the one hand, you have got a complete
review of A level. These new Diplomas are not even bedded down,
they have not even begun to bed down, on the one hand. On the
other, in your CSR discussion document you say: "What is
the point of changing any funding arrangements to 14-19?",
although there is a clear thrust in the Department that 14-19
should be seen as the span that is most relevant to this period?
Alan Johnson: On the second question,
we are talking about a three-year CSR period. We do not see a
case for changing the funding arrangements during that three-year
period. There may be a very good case to changing the funding
arrangements after that. On the A level review, we were committed
to that in the White Paper. It is a review of A level. It is not
a review of Diplomas and A levels, a return to whether we should
go back to pure Tomlinson; it is a review of A levels. So the
fact that Diplomas are just getting off the ground in 2008 is
exactly why it is not going to be an overall review of the whole
thing together. It is looking at A levels specifically.
Q291 Chairman: There seems to be
no overall review of anything, because the elephant in the room,
the more I look at this period, Secretary of State, is apprenticeships.
They are out there, they are important, you want 500,000 of them,
but they seem to bear no relationship to what you are doing in
the rest of the area?
Alan Johnson: No, I think that
is wrong.
Q292 Chairman: How do they relate
to Diplomas then?
Alan Johnson: Very importantly
they relate to Diplomas. We are looking at apprenticeships as
part of the offer that comes to a 16-year-old, whereas Tomlinson
said that apprenticeships ought to be subsumed into the Diploma.
We believe that was wrong. We believe that apprenticeships have
a good brand separate from Diplomas. We have just reached, the
latest information is, a 59% completion rate on apprenticeships
and we have just said as part of the CSR that any qualified 16-year-old
should have a guaranteed apprenticeship in place. So, we are doing
an awful lot there in relation to what the choice should be between
14 and 19 and ensuring there is diversity—this is about
raising participation as well as raising attainment—that
can inspire people to stay in education and training.
Q293 Chairman: Are you not falling
into that very trap that you made in Question Time that I particularly
challenged you about when you made the unfortunate remarks about
secondary modern and grammar in terms of how you view these Diplomas?
If you have got apprentices here, Diplomas here, A levels here,
people think it is a hierarchical system: if you are really good
you do A levels, if you are not so good you do the Diploma and
if you are not as good as that you do the apprenticeship. Is not
that what you are asking for?
Alan Johnson: No. It was not Question
Time, by the way, it was a question and answer session at a union
conference where the premise of the question was, "Is not
this all difficult? It can all be made much simpler if you did
not have the diversity?" Yes, if you just said, "Here
is one offer and it is a Diploma and there is no other offer—there
is no international baccalaureate, there is no A level (not that
we can control the choice of the international baccalaureate),
there are no apprenticeships, it is all moulded into one",
and I say this because the premise of your point here is about
pure Tomlinson again.
Q294 Chairman: Sure.
Alan Johnson: We would have been
sitting here in a different position having a whole series of
different arguments had we gone down the pure route of Tomlinson.
Tomlinson, of course, is ill, which is why you could not see him,
but Mike is working for us as our champion in the education world
on Diplomas. We would have had a different discussion, but the
discussion would have been about abolishing A levels—a quarter
of a million young people took A levels last year, it has been
the gold standard since 1951—denying choice just for an
argument to reduce complexity, and I actually think the diversity
there is right, I think this is the right choice to take, and
it might make life a bit more complicated but is that what happens
when you offer choices to people?
Chairman: Some of us are not so fond
of Digby Jones' description of the gold standard, but never mind.
Paul.
Q295 Paul Holmes: We have had a whole
series of witnesses sitting where you are now from schools, colleges
and from sector skills groups, all of whom are committed to Diplomas
and applied to deliver them in the first wave—they were
all keen on Diplomas—but 80% of them are saying they are
worried it is going to go off half-cocked, it is not going to
be ready in time, the training is not going to be done in time,
there are going to be problems and you said at the Association
of School and College Leavers Conference on 9 March, "It
could all go horribly wrong." Were you taken out of context
there or were you reflecting the concerns of all the practitioners
who are involved in this?
Alan Johnson: It was taken out
of context in the sense that the premise of the question was that
this is all very difficult. I think the best quote on this is
from the QCA in the written evidence they submitted to you. They
said, "In ambition, scope, complexity and potential the introduction
of Diplomas across 14 lines of learning at three levels in each
line is a major national reform of secondary curriculum and qualifications
currently without parallel in any other country."[1]
So the premise of the honest question to me from head teachers
by and large who supported Diplomas was: "This is really
difficult, is it not?", and my answer was, "Yes, it
is." Actually things are going horribly right. We got through
the Gateway process and it worked very successfully. I am very
pleased with the way that went. We might deal with that in more
detail in a second. I am pleased that even from remarks like that,
which was a remark taken out of context but at least got some
publicity, that there is a growing awareness now, not just that
Diplomas are coming, but this is not a vocational Diploma, it
is not another form of job training, this is something really
exciting. I think to sit in front of people and say blandly, "This
is all a walk in the park and there are no difficulties to it
at all", of course this is a very precious thing, and because
it is a precious and fragile thing we have to make sure we deliver
it successfully.
Q296 Paul Holmes: You have said that
Diplomas are 90% Tomlinson. You have defended that line from your
officials, but surely the whole point of Tomlinson was that you
had an overarching Diploma that removed this absolute snobbery
that is in our system, and I speak as somebody who was a teacher
and the head of sixth form, between the academic and the vocational
divide. Your Government has not gone down that route. You have
rejected most of Tomlinson and are going for just another vocational
or academic/vocational, however you are going to describe it,
alongside all the other stuff that already exists, especially
the A level gold standard. So, how can you really say it is 90%
Tomlinson?
Alan Johnson: I think, just repeating
the point I made earlier, because Tomlinson himself will tell
you that we have taken on board the majority of what he was recommending,
the argument, and the difference of opinion between us, I guess,
is do you subsume A levels and GCSEs and apprenticeships completely
into the Diploma? We thought that would be a mistake, and I think
that was right. I think the arguments we would be having now were
we doing that would be just as controversial and probably more
problematic, but you are absolutely right about this snobbery.
This is what we are committed to do here, to remove this very
English snobbery. Let us leave Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
out of this. It is an English snobbery about academic qualifications
being somehow infinitely superior to vocational qualifications.
That is why we have to get this right. If we get this right, there
will be people who will take this course as a route into higher
education, as well as people taking this course as a route into
employment, and that is what we have to work together, given that
we have our disagreement. I might have this disagreement with
the Select Committee, but that has got to be our objective now
given that we have moved on from the initial decision on Tomlinson.
Q297 Paul Holmes: When GNVQs were
introduced we were told the same things, and I was the head of
sixth form at the time and my school was one of the first to introduce
GNVQs. We were told that this would be the answer to all these
problems, and now that has gone by the wayside and Diplomas are
coming in. Are we not going down exactly the same route to failure
that we had with GNVQs?
Alan Johnson: No, because this
is different. With the Extended Project, with the concentration
on functional skills, with the concentration on a specialism in
there as well, with the non-cognitive stuff, with the learning
and teachers—that is why it is Tomlinson, that is why Tomlinson
should have the majority of praise when this is all delivered
successfully to our grateful nation in 2013.
Q298 Jeff Ennis: Secretary of State,
your colleague, the Minister of State for Schools and 14-19 Learners,
which I am pleased to see is his title now, wrote to us on 28
March with the results of the Gateway process,[2]
which has obviously been key to introducing the Diplomas. Are
you satisfied with the number of authorities that have been put
into categories one and two, which are the ones that are going
to start delivering in 2008? I think there are about 38,000 places
nationally that are going to be offered in 2008?
Alan Johnson: Yes.
Q299 Jeff Ennis: As opposed to a
figure of roughly 50,000 which was bashed about for a period of
time?
Alan Johnson: Fifty thousand was
never a target, it was a guide in the implementation plan. We
are very satisfied, and I hope that when you take evidence from
elsewhere—and your Committee's report, incidentally, will
be very helpful to us—that satisfaction will be shared right
across the board. We have got something like two-thirds of local
authorities now engaged with the first five Diplomas in 2008.
70% are either engaged now or will be ready in 2009; so it is
a small proportion that we have asked to apply, again, through
the Gateway process. Following on from that we have sent out a
pack—and we have had some good feedback—to all of
the local authorities and consortia that applied as to how now
to take this forward, and as I go round the country talking to
local authorities, no-one has come up to me and said, "That
was a bad process", even the ones who did not get through
the Gateway. I think people think this was a robust and fair process.
1 Ev 2 [Qualifications and Curriculum Authority]. Back
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