Examination of Witnesses (Questions 237-239)
LORD SUTHERLAND
OF HOUNDWOOD
KT
26 JANUARY 2009
Chairman: Lord Sutherland, it is a pleasure
to have you here in front of our Committee. You know the rules,
as you are a Member of the House of Lords, and in that wonderful
group of people in this country who do not have to appear before
the Committee.
Lord Sutherland:
Nobody told me that.
Chairman: I think one of your colleagues
at one stage had a rather interesting relationship with Gwyneth
Dunwoody, when he was advising on blue-skies approaches in No.10,
and refused to appear before her Committee. It is a pleasure for
us that you have agreed to appear before our Committee, and for
someone who has known you and your work in education for quite
some time—I think we first met when you were Vice-Chancellor
of London University—
Lord Sutherland: That is right.
That was a while ago.
Q237 Chairman: It is a while ago.
You know why we are here. We have been looking at the mess that
occurred last summer. Indeed, I have to recount to you a story
that I picked up in the first week of term after the Christmas
holidays at Almondbury High School in my constituency, where I
went, as one does in one's constituency, merely to see how the
school was getting on. Out of the blue, they said, "We're
still waiting for our last level 3 SATs tests to come back."
I wanted to make sure that that was absolutely accurate, so I
rang them this morning, and they said, "Mr Sheerman, you
won't believe this: the last 12 scripts arrived this morning."
Now, there is quite a long gap between today and the date that
we all know they should have arrived in July. So, there we are:
I just mention that as a little bit of background. Lord Sutherland,
we know what this is about. It is to find out what went wrong
and prevent it happening again. Would you like to say what you
found in your inquiry?
Lord Sutherland: If I could make
a short opening statement, I would then be interested in taking
questions and perhaps even having a discussion. There are important
things to work out.
Chairman: I do not think we can have
discussions in this Committee. Hansard does not take kindly
to it.
Lord Sutherland: Thank you, Chairman,
for inviting me, and also for focusing on the report and on the
issues so promptly in July, as you did. I think you were the first
above the line, making very important questions plain and putting
them into the public arena. I found that a good starting point
for me. I recognise that the Committee's work has been integral
throughout the sad period since June or July, when things started
to go wrong. The sessions you held before the school holidays
were very important. You picked out a number of major issues,
and I was able to build on that in the evidence I asked for and
in some of the cross-examinations that I carried out. I share
what is evident: you, like me, were hugely disappointed in the
treatment of teachers, pupils, markers, parents and school governing
bodies, and what they had to put up with. I had direct evidence
of this in a number of schools and from talking to head teachers
of my own acquaintance. They were badly let down this summer,
and there is no excuse for it in the end. I hope that my report
has been instructive in providing a description and an analysis
of what went wrong, finding the problems that were encountered
in the delivery. I hope too that there are messages for the future.
This is not simply a matter of looking backwards. As you will
have read, I identified a number of contributory factors—there
were very many of them, in fact, which was part of the difficulty.
Had there been just one issue, one would have identified that
fairly quickly and dealt with it in the report. But, in the end,
one of the key questions that remains with me, and one of the
key causes of the difficulty, was the lack of end-to-end testing
of the system. That was a major failure on the part of the Educational
Testing Service, and a primary cause, because if you do not test
the system end to end, you do not anticipate problems that you
could have anticipated—you would know that a difficulty
there will have repercussions further down the line. ETS failed
pupils, schools, markers and teachers, and it has primary, but
not sole, responsibility for what went wrong. There were a number
of significant management failings within the Qualifications and
Curriculum Authority, particularly in its management of risk,
and no doubt we will talk about that in due course. As I suggested,
it is not simply a backward-looking report: I hope that it looks
forward. I made a number of recommendations, 19 in all, if I counted
correctly, and I wanted to take a constructive and forward-looking
approach. There are some specific recommendations that I regard
as especially important to improve the system for the future.
First, there must be full end-to-end testing of the system, not
just checking that the individual bits work within themselves,
but that when you link them up, they run as a single operation
that does not have the hitches we discovered last year. Secondly,
I believe that forms of modernising the test delivery process
should be put in place, and I dare say that we will look at that
in your questions. We will have an important opportunity to legislate
for the regulation of tests on the same statutory footing as the
regulation of exams in the forthcoming children, skills and learning
Bill. I hope that we make the most of that opportunity. Taken
as a whole, those three key recommendations, and the others that
stem from them, give the Department for Children, Schools and
Families, QCA and Ofqual a clear direction for the future. I know
that the Committee has taken a great interest in establishing
the quality of the tests and the results. I recognise that that
is fundamental, and it is important that you continue to do so:
you are a continuing body—my job is officially done. I believe,
however, that the independent regulator, Ofqual, performs a vital
role in that respect. I believe that the relationship between
Ofqual and you is an important marker for the future, and it will
be a critical way for it to report to Parliament. It has the role
of overseeing the tests to ensure that "pupils get the marks
their work deserves". Many people have asked whether they
can trust the 2008 results—it is a question that I have
asked. Fundamentally, Ofqual has to determine that, and I believe
that a report is forthcoming. It is important that it is an evidence-based
report—I anticipate that it will be. An important part of
the evidence, for example, will look at the outcome of the reviews
process, which is not yet complete—you alluded, Chairman,
to some of the implications of that in your opening remarks. It
must look, too, at the content of test questions and mark schemes,
marker training—that is an important part of quality in
the system—and, as I said, the outcome of the reviews process,
which is not yet complete. Ofqual has expertise in all those areas
and, more importantly, it has the responsibility to consider that.
Having said that the question of quality is one that has to be
finally decided in relation to last year, there are two elements
to that, which I came across in preparing the report and which
I would like to share with you and comment on later. First, the
national curriculum test markers are a small constituency of dedicated
professionals—they are often teachers or retired teachers.
I want to pay tribute to them, because despite the difficulties
that they faced—and they were severe and significant at
times—they persevered to mark 9.8 million scripts to the
best of their ability in increasingly problematic contexts. We
have relied on these same people in previous years, and I have
no doubt that we will continue to do this year and perhaps into
the future. They need to be properly supported—and they
were not this year—and that is fundamental to the quality
of what goes on. I also believe, more than that, that they need
to be consulted about the delivery of the test system and how
it can be modernised and the quality improved. They have the experience—many
of them over a number of years—that would be highly relevant
to ensuring that the best quality is identified and continues
into the future. If markers find it difficult to access training—some
of them did, and that is itemised in the report; or if they find
it difficult to receive support, as the lines that were meant
to be available to them were not always functioning properly;
or if they are rushed in their marking because of poor administration
and scripts arriving late in the day or at the wrong time, that
can affect quality severely. I want to stress for the future that
paying attention to the role, support and, indeed, wisdom that
markers have about the system is important. The recommendations
that I have made focus on delivery issues—that was the job
that I had to do—but they are also pertinent to ensuring
the quality of test results in future. One element of that—and
I have referred to it already—is ensuring that Ofqual has
adequate powers to carry out its task, and that is a matter for
legislation. That is slowly being floated offshore. The process
began last April, and it will be complete when the Bill that we
all anticipate will be introduced goes through Parliament. Equally,
I stress the importance of having the voice of the marking community
available to those administering and running the system. If we
put those in place, there will be significant practical steps
forward. That is as much as I want to say at the moment, and I
am happy to pick up questions and comments.
Q238 Chairman: Lord Sutherland,
thank you for your introductory remarks. Can I open the questioning
by saying that we hoped this would be a session with you for an
hour or so—perhaps an hour and a half—and a session
with Ken Boston? At first, we were given an indication that he,
too, would appear before the Committee today, but he found he
was unable to do so. As you know, he tendered his resignation,
and it was not accepted, but he is currently on what I suppose
most of us would regard these days as gardening leave, and he
is not available to the Committee. Does that surprise you?
Lord Sutherland: I do not know
if "surprise" is the word, but it disappoints me and
I hope he will be available. I am sure there is quite a lot you
could learn in a process such as this that would help the development
of the system in future.
Q239 Chairman: It does slightly
open up a problem. When you were asked to look into this matter,
it was the Secretary of State who did so. Do you think it would
have been a better arrangement, even if he had initiated it, if
your report came back to this Committee?
Lord Sutherland: The first approach
I had was from Ofqual. Immediately thereafter, I was also approached
by the Department. I pointed out something that I am sure that
it already knew—that nobody wanted two reports and it would
be sensible to have one. However, I had a reporting line to Ofqual
which, from within the old QCA, properly realised that there was
something which would benefit from external scrutiny. That is
why it got in touch with me.
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