Mr.
Gibb: I am grateful to the Minister for that very full
response to the amendments. The hon. Member for Wakefield made a point
about knowledge versus skills. Amendment 141 would not rule out
criteria to assess skills, but the concern is that, over the past 10
years, the knowledge content of some of our qualifications—not
all, but some—has been depleted or removed from the GCSE
qualification. Ofqual agrees with us on that point, and that is why our
concern is about the level of knowledge: we are not concerned about the
level of skills being assessed but we are genuinely concerned, as are
the public, about how much knowledge we ask our children to acquire. On
many occasions, such knowledge is reduced, and that is very
damaging.
Mary
Creagh: I was curious about the hon. Gentleman’s
use of the tanning salon as an example of something that was not
equivalent to an A-level. I am sure that he is far too sensible to use
a tanning salon, as are most Committee members, because of the known
risks associated with skin cancer, but, given that there are such risks
in a tanning salon, does he not think it appropriate that people who
operate such salons have a high—a level
2 —qualification to advise their clients on the
appropriate length of exposure to tanning rays and on the sunscreen
factor that they should
wear?
Mr.
Gibb: I agree. If one goes into that industry, a
qualification in self-tanning or in how to use a tanning booth is very
important. The problem comes when we try to pretend that it is
equivalent to a module in A-level maths. It diminishes and undermines
the credibility of the vocational qualification, because everybody
knows that they are not equivalent, hence the point made by Isabel
Nisbet from Ofqual, who is also concerned about that. I cited
Ofqual’s concern about such equivalence, and we must get away
from trying to pretend that all things are the same in the pursuit of
parity of esteem. Vocational qualifications, if they are high quality,
of course have parity of esteem with academic qualifications, but if we
pretend that they are the same as academic qualifications, we destroy
the credibility of both.
Our concern
is about knowledge, and I take on board the Minister’s points
about amendment 233. It is already a requirement to publish any
determination that the Secretary of State makes under the clause. The
amendment’s purpose was to make it crystal clear that there
would be transparency. However, given her assurances that there will be
transparency, I am happy not to pursue either amendment to a
vote.
Mr.
Laws: I am also grateful to the Minister for a very
detailed response, and for her usual patience in taking a large number
of interventions.
I shall touch
on our amendments—532, 533 and 5 —and then
reflect on the wider issues raised by clause 138. The
Minister said that she believes that, embedded in the Bill, is the
content of amendment 5, preventing the Secretary of State from making a
determination under subsection (1) on the grading or assessment of the
qualifications. Perhaps it is just the time of day, but I need to
reflect on that, to look carefully at her comments and see whether she
is right that there is enough protection. If I feel that she has been
slightly generous in her interpretation of how much protection the Bill
affords, I may return to the issue.
Amendment 532
would include a provision on the power being used in exceptional
circumstances. I was not convinced by the Minister’s arguments
on that. We can point to many other parts of the Bill in which general
directions or powers are granted that are far vaguer and more difficult
to pin down than the words “exceptional circumstances”,
which are, after all, used very carefully in the explanatory notes.
However, I will press that amendment and divide the Committee later,
because it is crucial to how these powers will be
used. 2.30
pm I
should like to reflect a bit on some of the wider issues to do with the
extent to which politicians should be able to interfere in the contents
of examinations. In spite of the Minister’s suggestion that, in
some way, there are already powers that allow interference by the back
door through the QCA, she confirmed in her letter to the Committee that
there is currently no explicit statutory power to determine such
matters, which appears to bolster the back-door powers that there may
already be. Regardless of whether those powers exist or not, there is
an issue of principle about whether politicians should be able to
interfere in the ways that the Minister anticipated in her evidence
session, when she mentioned that Shakespeare should, in her view, be
part of an English language GCSE as an obligation imposed by the
Secretary of State. We heard a contrasting view from the hon. Member
for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, although I accept that he was
explaining what would happen in a world with more choice in the
education
market.
Sarah
McCarthy-Fry: Is it the view of the hon. Gentleman and his
party that our school children should not study
Shakespeare?
Mr.
Laws: No. I will explain in one second how my view differs
from the
Minister’s—
Jim
Knight: In one second? We will hold you to
that.
Mr.
Laws: In a few moments. I hope that the right hon.
Gentleman will take the opportunity to stay in the Committee Room to
hear
me. I
was about to explain the three different positions on this matter.
Clearly, I need to do so in more detail than I had initially
anticipated. One extreme view, which is interesting, coming from the
Conservative party—although I accept the proviso of the hon.
Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton that this would happen when
there was more of a market in education—is that in an ideal
world there should be, even for maintained schools,
no national curriculum that is as prescriptive as the one that the
Government want, which would determine that Shakespeare must be in the
English curriculum, for example. I think that he was also saying that
in this world of greater choice and freedom in state-funded education,
an obligation on the Secretary of State to insist that the examinations
embedded Shakespeare, for example, would also not be needed. In his
ideal world, he would no longer prescribe what the Minister seeks to
prescribe, either in the national curriculum or in the qualifications
that youngsters have to
take. Mr.
Gibb: But we are living in a world, today, in which Ofsted
says that 43 per cent. of secondary schools are not good enough. While
that situation persists—I expect that it will persist for some
time—there needs to be a considerable degree of prescription to
ensure that, through the national curriculum and our exam system,
schools are providing the kind of education that parents
require.
Mr.
Laws: Yes, I register that point, but even in the
discussions in the Select Committee there is a wide range of views
about how the national curriculum should develop. Conservative party
policy nationally is that academy schools should be able to opt out of
the national curriculum. I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman’s
perfect world would take a period of time to evolve, but he is saying,
helpfully and in a principled way, that his vision is that the
maintained sector—in future, when standards have risen and the
choice is there—would be able to operate in the same way as the
independent sector, so there would be no need for a prescriptive
national curriculum and no need for such prescriptiveness in the
examinations.
Mr.
Gibb: Of course, in that world schools would be teaching
Shakespeare and a rigorous academic curriculum, including the three
separate sciences and good maths and literacy. That is the ultimate aim
of all Committee members, is it
not?
Mr.
Laws: I suspect that that is probably so and I would be
surprised if the schools were not doing that, but the hon. Gentleman is
saying that he wants schools to be free to do so or not to do so. They
might decide that Chaucer is very important and select examinations in
which other key authors who are named in the national curriculum are
specified, such as Dickens, Hardy, Austen, Bronte, H. G. Wells or
Wordsworth. There is no obligation to cover any of those authors in
qualifications at the moment. The hon. Gentleman thinks that schools
would do that, but acknowledges that parental choice would also be
influential. Parents might want a school that does not teach some of
those subjects. It is a logical consequence of his policy that some
schools might not cover Shakespeare in their curriculum and might chose
qualifications that do not cover
him. On
the other hand, the Minister wants not only to prescribe through the
national curriculum, but has made it clear that she wants the Secretary
of State to have the power to direct that particular authors should be
covered in qualifications. That is an extraordinary degree of
direction. The Minister has cited Shakespeare as if it is obvious that
he should always be covered in English examinations. By picking out
Shakespeare, she has left
out a long list of authors who presumably she does not believe need to
be covered in English examinations. [Interruption.] She is
pooh-poohing that from a sedentary position, but her implicit position
is that Shakespeare should have special status, whereas Chaucer,
Dickens, Austen, Bronte, Hardy, Keats, Wordsworth, Wells—I could
read out lots of other names if you want me to, Mrs.
Humble—do not have the same status. The Minister is quite happy
to jettison them all and leave them to the devices of the national
curriculum and
schools. Mr.
Gibb: Far be it from me to come to the Minister’s
defence, but is it not the case that the former Secretary of State
intervened because there was a danger that Shakespeare would be removed
and would not be taught in schools? There was no evidence that those
other authors were not being taught. He intervened to tackle the
specific problem that Shakespeare would not be taught in some schools
because it was difficult, whereas those other authors probably would
have been
taught.
Mr.
Laws: Really? Is the hon. Gentleman seriously suggesting
that all those schools that were not teaching Shakespeare were teaching
Chaucer, Blake and Dickens? I very much doubt
it. In
any case, the hon. Gentleman is not suggesting that the Secretary of
State would determine such things if his reforms were accepted. Under
his model, the market would decide through parental preference. He will
have to accept that some parents might prefer not to have some authors
on the
list. The
issue of authors and English examinations seems relatively simple in
comparison to history. So far, we have not tempted the Minister to
indicate which parts of British or foreign history she thinks should be
obligatory for the GCSE. I will give way happily if she wishes to pick
any out. [Interruption.] The Minister says from a
sedentary position that she will not pick out the bits of history that
should be covered in the GCSE examination. The Secretary of State will
have that power under the clause. He could decide tomorrow morning that
particular parts of British history should be included in the history
examination. He could specify that the history of the labour movement
should be covered in the examination. We could have that degree of
political
control. As
the Minister asked for it earlier, my view is that it is reasonable to
have a minimum curriculum that sets out the key expectations, but that
it is unreasonable and unnecessary to embed that curriculum in the
examinations system. It is not necessary for Ministers to micro-manage
the curriculum to that extraordinary degree. Anyone who is interested
in this matter can look at the long list of authors in the national
curriculum who are regarded as an acceptable part of the English
literary heritage. Goodness knows whether Ministers have approved that
list or been involved in who is included or who is taken out. There is
also a list of contemporary writers. Goodness knows which Ministers
were involved in selecting Jennifer Donnelly, John Fowles and Susan
Hill to be part of that approved
list. I
question not only whether we need to be so detailed and prescriptive in
the national curriculum, but whether Ministers need to take these
extraordinary powers to specify such things for qualifications. Like
The Times, The Daily Telegraph, the Daily Express,
many other
newspapers and many colleagues in Parliament, I do not trust here-today,
gone-tomorrow politicians to take the right decisions about what should
be embedded in our exams. The Minister is on slightly different ground
when she talks about the structure of qualifications and the interest
that the Government might have in that. They already have a great
degree of influence over that through the QCDA and through the
Secretary of State’s powers not to fund particular
qualifications. We have this body that we will discuss
later—JACQA—which gives advice to the Secretary of State
about whether any of these qualifications should be funded in the
first place. In her
comments on the structure of examinations, she mentioned that she might
want these powers where Ofqual or the exam boards were refusing to
deliver what Ministers wanted. That is rather telling about an attitude
to the examinations system, and perhaps the curriculum as well, and it
is extremely top down. This is about what Ministers think is right for
children throughout the country. They are qualifications that Ministers
pick and it reflects back on our earlier debate about whether there
should be a market in qualifications where the wishes of schools,
parents and youngsters themselves should be influential in determining
what qualifications are taken up, or whether this is a really top-down
process where Ministers pick and choose qualifications and try to shunt
the qualifications framework in a particular direction. When Ministers
do that they are often extremely unsuccessful. Indeed, in the past
30 years, successive Governments have promoted vocational
qualifications that have no traction, credibility or a value in the
market.
Mr.
Walker: I have some sympathy for the hon.
Gentleman’s argument, but I also have some sympathy for the
Government’s position, which is hard to have. What would happen
if some school, some governing body or some qualification agency took
it upon itself to have a one-year module in Barbara Cartland? Surely we
would expect some form of intervention to stop that and to ensure that
Barbara Cartland did not squeeze out William
Shakespeare.
Mr.
Laws: Under the system I am suggesting there would still
be a national curriculum. It is under the system that his party is
suggesting, albeit at some stage in the future, that that complete
free-for-all would evolve. The hon. Member for Bognor Regis and
Littlehampton told us that he believes that the best schools should be
able to opt out not only from qualifications prescribed by the
Secretary of State, but from the national curriculum. Indeed, I think
the Conservative party says that already in relation to academies. So
that really is a question that is best addressed to his own Front
Bench.
I fear that I
have not yet persuaded the Minister, and I may have exhausted both the
Committee and the argument. I will want to return to the wider issues
at a later date, but I would like to press the amendment to a
vote. Question
put, That the amendment be
made. The
Committee divided: Ayes 2, Noes
10.
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