Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300-310)
LORD SUTHERLAND
OF HOUNDWOOD
KT
26 JANUARY 2009
Q300 Mr Stuart: So you think it
is a meeting of equals? It all depends on the culture, does it
not? The Ministry might want something to happen and an individual
might think that it will cause difficulties and say, "I don't
think we should do this, Minister," and the Minister might
say, "Well, I've thought about it and I think you should."
Are you saying that they really are in a position to say "No,
I'm not doing it"?
Lord Sutherland: You can make
a public statement. The evident one is to say "Well in that
case, I'm not going to continue in this job." When I was
head of the inspectorate, that was always an option open to me.
If there had been pressure on me from Ministers that was unacceptable
and unsustainable, that was an option. The similar one I made
this time was that if there was any pressure I would go to the
press, and I would.
Q301 Mr Stuart: That comes back
to the heart of this responsibility issue which we started with.
If we rely on the fact that people will resign their job every
time they are pushed by Ministers to do something that they should
not do, we will not have many people left in public service. The
last thing I would do is suggest that people involved in public
service are anything other than people of great integrity and
genuine commitment. The reality is that people do not routinely
resign. Again, to suggest that it is their fault for agreeing
to it is to get it completely the wrong way round. Did the Ministry
push this hard? Short of Ken Boston saying, "I resign,"
which looks prima donna-ish over such a thing—well, I do
not know. I am just trying to tease out whether you got it the
wrong way round.
Lord Sutherland: I hear what you
say. There is no doubt that that would be the nuclear option that
we should never rely on—but it is there. There are ways
in which you can make a clear and straightforward point about
this. Ken made his claims about the organisation before and how
well it would operate and how well it would not, but I did not
even see a letter back from QCA saying, "You have asked us
to do all of this; it is too much."
Q302 Mr Stuart: Fair enough. You
have said that you welcome Ofqual being put on a statutory footing,
yet you also say in your report that it was reactive rather than
proactive in its scrutiny. Do you think that Ofqual was created
too hastily and without proper thought to the consequences?
Lord Sutherland: It is always
a problem that if you are going to do something new, you will
do it in the middle of something else. If it had not done it last
April, it would be doing it now when it was waiting for the outcome
of your response to my report or whatever. That is always a difficulty.
I have seen some legislation going through in other areas where
I have wondered about setting up shadow organisations and appointing
chief executives and so on. All that has been done elsewhere.
It is not as if it is unique. The sooner it got on with it the
better.
Q303 Mr Stuart: Do you thing that
being on a statutory footing will make it a better organisation?
Lord Sutherland: Yes, it will
give it powers and if it does not use them it will rightly be
excoriated.
Q304 Mr Stuart: One more question,
if I may. An issue that I do not think we have touched on directly
is that your report is comprehensive in setting out what was done,
what was not done, by whom and when, but it is less consistent
in setting out why something happened or was not done. Can you
explain why your report is not more consistent about explaining
the reasons behind the failures?
Lord Sutherland: The reasons why
people do things are many and various. I remember how once in
a senate meeting when I was a junior lecturer my professor of
philosophy tried to explain to the vice-chancellor the difference
between a reason and a motive, a matter on which there is extensive
literature in philosophy. He failed. The mistake he made was to
assume that everything is done on rational grounds. It is not.
People have motives and emotions that move them. They are sometimes
in entrenched positions. Sometimes they feel threatened. There
are all sorts of reasons. You would need a better amateur psychologist
than I am to chance putting that sort of judgment in a report
of this kind.
Q305 Chairman: As a former chief
inspector—
Lord Sutherland: I knew I should
not have mentioned that.
Chairman: That was between 1992 and 1994.
This pertains particularly to this inquiry. We now have the power
to interview the applicant for the job of chief inspector, the
head of Ofqual and so on. How do you react to that power of a
parliamentary committee?
Lord Sutherland: We are in the
Wilson room, and this is a Harold Wilson-like comment. I remember
back in 1979, when Norman St John-Stevas proposed that there should
be select committees with real powers, I said to somebody, "That
is going to change the way in which the House of Commons works."
I am glad to say that it has. I think it is very important that
this Committee has a range of powers. This is a pattern that seems
to work very well in the USA. I do not see why it should not work
well here.
Q306 Chairman: So you would have
applied for the job if you had known that you would have to face
us?
Lord Sutherland: That is a different
question.
Chairman: The present chief inspector
says she would not have applied for the job if she had known that
she was going to be interviewed by this Committee, so that was
a slightly mischievous question.
Lord Sutherland: I was interviewed
for the principalship at King's College many years ago; there
was a student on the committee. I was interviewed for University
of London; there was a student on the committee. Having a student
on the committee often means that it is like holding it in public,
which is the issue here. I had no objections to that.
Chairman: Let us look at the future of
national testing. David.
Q307 Mr Chaytor: Looking forward
to 2010, there is a question mark over the shape of the tests.
There will be no Key Stage 3 tests in 2009 or 2010. Do you think
it wise for the Government to proceed with a testing system at
a higher level of intensity than the current one? If the pilots
for the single level tests are given the go-ahead we will have
tests twice a year and every 10 and 11-year-old will be sitting
them. Is that a sensible way to proceed?
Lord Sutherland: That is outside
the report.
Q308 Mr Chaytor: Are there any
lessons to be learned from your inquiry that might inform future
policy about the way Key Stage 2 is assessed?
Chairman: We are trying to get value
for our money, you see; with all your experience we thought we
would throw a few other questions at you.
Lord Sutherland: Complexity is
always an issue. First, if you make the system more complex there
are additional risks of things slipping up to guard against. Secondly,
there is a group of able people looking at this at the moment.
One will read, with fascination, what they have to say. Thirdly,
I believe it is important to have some sort of national testing
system. One of the difficulties of the current one, apart from
its intensity, is that it tries to satisfy too many different
things. What is the point of national testing? One is that it
lets parents know whether or not their children are meeting a
certain standard that is regarded as, at least, acceptable throughout
the nation. Having that in place is important, whatever form it
takes. Another is that it ensures that if there is a failure in
reaching national standards, it is not because of the particular
way a school or a local authority carries out its procedures.
That has to be checked as well. Also, people do not make enough
of the point that national testing is a way of deciding whether
Government policies and expenditure are delivering the goods.
They pin their policies and expenditure to meeting certain targets
which are not just for the teachers but for the system that they
are planning and funding. I would want any system that develops
to take account of those three very important tests—or checks—on
what our national testing system should do.
Q309 Mr Chaytor: Do you think,
though, given your support for the principle of a national testing
system, that each of the functions you described can be adequately
represented by a single form of test? Or is the logic of your
remarks that there should be different forms of test to fulfil
the requirements of each function?
Lord Sutherland: I am not in a
position to go as far as that yet, because I am still thinking
about it. I am reassured, however, to know that people who are
more expert on this than I am are considering it. I will test
what they say against those principles, but yes, that is a possibility.
All teachers assess the children in front of them, if they are
good teachers, so assessment goes on. The issue is that if it
is pedagogically important, is it important in relation to these
national criteria?
Q310 Chairman: Did you have the
moment, when you were in the middle of this inquiry, that I did
when I looked at all this? There were 9.5 million scripts whizzing
around the country—an environmental disaster, let alone
anything about education. There was a vast contract worth tens
of millions and people coming from all over the country to be
trained in centres. You can have a national testing system delivered
locally. It seems to me that you can have a system, where the
testing and questions are done by a perfectly respectable group
of people, which is administered and marked locally. Is that not
a possibility?
Lord Sutherland: I think there
are a lot of options. I was reassured by various decisions taken
this year that the magnitude of the task has been reduced. There
is no Key Stage 3 for a start. That will be very significant considering
the timescale we have for this year. In reducing the magnitude
of what is going on, I think this is a trend in the right direction.
There are different ways of doing it. This is not really all that
relevant but I will say it anyway. I chair the Associated Board
of the Royal Schools of Music. A primary core function that they
carry out worldwide is to set standards for musical performance.
Now, if you can do it for that, across the world, it must be possible
to check across the country whether our children can read, count,
spell and write. However, the current system has had such difficulties
that I would be surprised if there were not significant changes.
Chairman: In the words of quite a well-known
20th-century philosopher, I think we shall pursue that intimation,
with interest. That was a good session. Thank you, Lord Sutherland.
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