Q
197Jeff
Ennis: Dr. Creswell, do you concur with that
point? Mike
Creswell: Greg is making a good point. It is critical
that Ofqual is able to take a view about developments that come forward
from QCDA in so far as those developments affect its capacity to
regulate standards and liability and so on. This concerns the way
Ofqual is able to take a view and for that view to stick when it comes
to the finalisation of the criteria. I take some comfort from the fact
that it is Ofqual that will own those criteria and, presumably, unless
those criteria will enable it to regulate, then it will not accept
them.
6.19
pm Sitting
suspended for a Division in the
House. 6.31
pm On
resuming—
Q
198Jeff
Ennis: I wanted to seek clarification of Kathleen’s
point that she made in reply to an earlier question about having
provision in the Bill for the power to fine. Do Greg and Mike have any
views on the power to
fine? Greg
Watson: I am happy to answer that in all seriousness.
The first thing is to repeat what I said earlier: a regulator that
finds itself counting crashed planes and fining people for crashing
them is an unsuccessful regulator. The important thing is that effort,
power, authority and resource within Ofqual must be devoted to getting
qualifications that are fit for use into the system in the first place.
That is an important principle. The second thing concerns OCR, as I
mentioned earlier. It is a charity, a not-for-profit organisation
embedded in a university, part of an international group that lives on
its reputation. The currency of the business we are in, if you want to
call it that, is reputation, integrity and trust. If you want to wound
my organisation, you wound its reputation rather than its finances.
Most of what is envisaged for Ofqual will be about a public debate. If
at any stage Kathleen and her colleagues were to feel that OCR was not
doing its job properly, the threat of being shamed is much stronger
than the threat of being fined for an organisation like mine.
Mike
Creswell: I would add that AQA is not-for-profit but
we do a lot of examining in areas where we believe there is a social
need because we are an educational charity. It would be passing strange
to have to make provision, possibly at the expense of the examining
that we do for its social and educational good, against the possibility
of being fined. I would think it inappropriate, given the structure of
the awarding bodies and the kind of social contract that exists about
putting in effort and resources that are not profitable but are
socially desirable.
Q
199Jeff
Ennis: There is one other quick point I want to raise. The
main examining boards we have in this country are global brands and do
quite a lot of business overseas. Do you see the implementation of the
Bill adding to that global brand, in terms of extra scrutiny and so on?
Will it allow you to market the brand globally even
further? Greg
Watson: We will have to wait and see what becomes of
Ofqual. I am mentally playing the 150-year-old Cambridge brand against
the one-year-old Ofqual brand. It may take some time before Ofqual has
that global
traction.
Q
200Mr.
Laws: Mike, in your note to the Committee you tell us
about the much-publicised problems in summer 2008 when Ofqual asked
your organisation to lower the standard it was setting in GCSE science
to come into line with the other two bodies. Could you tell us a bit
about your experience and concerns, and more about any potential
solution to the
problem? Mike
Creswell: Yes, happily, without rehearsing the GCSE
science thing, because in a way that is done and dusted. It absolutely
highlights that I hear what Kathleen says when she talks about the
power to direct to awarding bodies how they should go about setting
standards. I am clear that in broad procedural terms, that power is
there. Indeed, I am clear that in the science incident, all the
awarding bodies had followed the procedure as laid down. However
precise that procedure was made, I am sure that we would all follow it,
but there is a distinction between following the process and what
results come out of it.
What the GCSE
science incident really highlighted was that however much Ofqual may be
empowered to command a process, that does not guarantee results and
standards that are consistent at the end of the process. That is what
the science thing illustrated. That is why it is extremely important
that when events like that arise—though rare, they will arise
again—Ofqual has the authority in the room so that everybody
understands that though everybody will have followed the process, if
the outcomes are looking different, Ofqual has the power to compel a
standard to change. There is a key distinction between Ofqual
guaranteeing the actual standards set and Ofqual guaranteeing that the
processes are all in tune. The same processes do not, as GCSE showed,
necessarily produce identical standards.
Q
201Mr.
Laws: So you think that the powers in the Bill need
to be strengthened in that
respect? Mike
Creswell: I think that Ofqual should simply have a
power to direct, for a particular qualification, a particular standard
on a particular occasion. It would be used rarely, if ever, but it
would prevent Ofqual, at a time when urgent action might be
needed—certainly for GCSEs and A-levels—from finding
itself in negotiation with awarding bodies about a change in the
standards that they are proposing to set. It would ensure that Ofqual
had the authority to do that. I have to say that that requires the
clarity that I talked about earlier about precisely how we define
consistent standards. That is why part of our submission to the
Committee is about the need for Ofqual to establish clear and
measurable criteria for assessing whether our standards are
consistent.
Q
202Mr.
Laws: I wanted to ask Kathleen about that as my last
question. Before that, can I ask Greg and Kathleen to comment on what
Mike has said? Do you think that the Bill is deficient in any sense in
relation to those powers?
Greg
Watson: No. The Bill is very clear, actually, as I
see it. Bearing in mind what I have already said about the importance
of Ofqual applying maximum effort at the beginning of the process and
making sure that qualifications are fit for purpose when launched, I
think that there is then a sufficient backstop in the Bill in the form
of a power to direct that is open-ended enough to be used in the way
that Mike is talking about. However, I hope that the Committee
recognises that it will always be a failure of regulation for awarding
bodies and the regulator to find themselves in that
situation.
Q
203Mr.
Laws: You are agreeing with Mike that Ofqual should have
that power; you just think that the power is already there in the
Bill? Greg
Watson: I think that the Bill is already clear
enough. More importantly, I think that the lesson to be learned from
that situation is that by the time the technical statistical experts
from the awarding bodies were sat with Kathleen and her colleagues in
the summer, it was too late. There was a gap there. Work could have
been done three years earlier, when the structure of the qualification
was changing and the assessment arrangements were going to change, to
better understand what the features of the new qualification were
likely to throw up in the way of new
challenges.
Q
204Mr.
Laws: Without revisiting the summer too much, Mike looks
as if he is just going to
quickly— [Interruption.]
Mike
Creswell: No, I am not going to do that at all. I
merely wanted to make the point that I agree, but that is precisely why
Ofqual, for the first time in this country—the previous
regulator did not do it, and the awarding bodies have not done
it—needs to establish very clear measures by which it will
evaluate whether our standards are consistent, in advance. Then we will
not be in the situation that Greg described. Those two
things—the power to direct on a specific standard consistently,
and clarity about some of the key issues that underpin that unfortunate
public debate every summer—are what I hope Ofqual would
have.
Greg
Watson: Briefly, I want to make a connection with the
earlier discussion about accountability to Parliament and what might be
in an annual report from
Ofqual. I imagine it would be specifically laid out in the Act that
Ofqual reports those kinds of incidents and each and every occasion on
which it directed an awarding body. That would mean that the direction
is visible, and that it could be accompanied by a commentary on why a
direction is necessary, given all the other powers that might have been
used earlier in the process to avoid it.
Mr.
Laws: Kathleen, do you have the power, and do you want
it? Kathleen
Tattersall: It is good that the awarding bodies have
said so clearly that Ofqual should have the powers. I totally agree
with everything that was said on that, but I happen to believe that the
Bill already gives us the powers, as I described earlier, on conditions
and direction. That is clear. However, I reiterate what was said: there
is no point coming to a regulator two weeks before the publication of
results and saying, “This is a problem that we have not been
able to solve.” For the record, Ofqual asked nobody to lower
standards. There were three awarding bodies, each of which worked
professionally to maintain standards. Two weeks before exam results,
you are not in a position to perform an act of Solomon to prevent the
baby being cut in half, as it
were. The
only way in which you can regulate qualifications is to get it right at
the beginning. You need to lay down the requirements very clearly. We
are expecting every awarding body that is offering the same
qualification to do so in order to maintain standards.
We have
already started that process since the summer. We looked ahead and,
given the limited powers that we have under the current legislation, we
have been working with our colleagues to ensure that there is no wide
discrepancy, as there was last summer, between the interpretation of
the evidence that you need to set grade bandings that are consistent
across the boards and over time. We have been looking at the AS units
that have been awarded. We have a system in place, and we are
monitoring it, and we do not anticipate the sort of problem that we had
in the summer.
Mr.
Laws: That is helpful. I have one final question, which
follows up something that John Hayes said earlier. He was talking about
circumstances where you have a big shift in the composition of a
qualification, such as in the modular GCSEs. Is your job in holding
standards level or consistent—to end the summer
debate—such that you would expect a cohort with the same
abilities that had previously gone through under the old qualification
to get the same broad distribution of grades in the new examination,
even if its composition, modules and coursework has changed? Is that a
reasonable expectation of what keeping standards consistent
means? Kathleen
Tattersall: It is a very big part of looking at
standard setting in the first year of a qualification. Clearly, the
nature of the cohort, their prior abilities, which you might judge from
existing
evidence—
Mr.
Laws: Assume they are
identical. Kathleen
Tattersall: Assuming that they are identical in a
very large cohort, you would expect a broadly similar pattern, even if
there are some shifts because of the nature of the curriculum change or
the accessibility of the examination, modules or whatever. However, it
is
not so simple, in so far as you have three awarding bodies, each of
which has its share of the market. You have got to be very clear when
looking at the outcomes of the three awarding bodies that you are truly
reflecting the nature of the entry to those exams, and the nature of
the challenges that candidates have faced.
For me, there
is a clear balance between the technical and statistical evidence of
the nature of the cohort, which is clearly a major part of standard
setting. However, bearing in mind that young people and old people are
working very hard for their qualification and looking at the evidence
that they produce—their scripts and other things—a
balance of professional judgment and technical expertise must be
struck, which all the awarding bodies recognise. The issue is how much
value we place on those
matters.
Q
205Mr.
Walker: On the nuts and bolts of Ofqual, are you looking
for a chief executive at the
moment? Kathleen
Tattersall: Not at the moment, because we do not
have the power to do
that.
Q
206Mr.
Walker: So you have not advertised for a chief
executive? Kathleen
Tattersall: No, we have not. I think that that would
really be pre-empting the parliamentary scrutiny of the Bill. When we
reach the appropriate point we will advertise for board members in an
open and transparent manner.
Q
207Mr.
Walker: Have you in mind the type of person you would like
to be chief
executive? Kathleen
Tattersall: We clearly need someone with authority
and the ability to understand all the issues of the nature of what we
have been talking about and who has a very clear understanding of the
requirements of the outside world and its expectations of the
qualifications. We need someone who will command respect from both
yourselves, as parliamentarians, and the wider public. However, you are
asking me to write a job description for a job that currently does not
exist.
Q
208Mr.
Walker: What will the salary range be, and what is the
current salary range of the chief executive of the
QCA? Kathleen
Tattersall: I am sorry, but I am ignorant of that
fact and would have to advise you about that after the
event.
Q
209Mr.
Walker: You are already chairman of an organisation and so
must have some idea of what a competent chief executive will cost. To
be honest, I find it unbelievable that you do not have an idea of that.
Why is that?
Kathleen
Tattersall: As Andrew has said, we currently exist
very much within QCA, so the finances come from QCA. When we come to
sit down and talk about what an Ofqual chief executive’s salary
is worth, clearly one of the touchstones will be other public bodies,
such as Ofsted and the QCDA. At this point, however, when the Bill is
at an early stage in its passage through Parliament, it would be
inappropriate for us to go down that line and pre-empt your
consideration of it.
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