Letter to the Chairman from Dr Ken Boston
AO
As you are aware, I resigned as Chief Executive
of the QCA on 12 December 2008. On 31 March 2009 the QCA Board
was given Government approval to accept the resignation. During
the interval of more than three months I was under so-called "suspension".
With the belated acceptance of the resignation, the public silence
imposed by that particular form of house arrest is over. I now
hope again to contribute constructively to the national discussion
of issues relating to curriculum, assessment, qualifications and
skills, although regrettably from outside the system rather than
from within.
There is however one matter which I believe it is
proper to raise first with the Select Committee, rather than in
the media.
In his prepared statement to the House of Commons
on the release of the Sutherland Report on 16 December 2008—and
in his answers to Michael Gove and David Laws—the Secretary
of State for Children, Schools and Families set out to demonstrate
(1) that I had been complacent in my management of the delivery
of the key stage tests; and (2) that I had repeatedly been pressed
for answers by Ministers on numerous occasions, the most recent
being 17 June 2008, and had given them strong reassurances that
the tests were on track. He drew heavily on paragraphs 4.92 and
4.93 of the Sutherland Report (page 77) and on paragraph 4.137
(page 85). The Secretary of State and the Schools Minister, Jim
Knight again relied extensively on these three paragraphs in their
evidence to the Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families
on 4 February 2009.
Paragraph 4.92 quotes evidence given to Lord
Sutherland by Jim Knight, who says that he met with me and David
Gee, the head of the NAA (the assessment division of QCA) on 17
June. Knight's evidence implies that I was complacent and disengaged
at the meeting, and left everything to David Gee. Paragraph 4.93
refers to DSCF's notes of the meeting, at which I am alleged to
have been present.
This is fiction. I was not at the meeting Jim
Knight arranged with David Gee, nor had I been asked to attend.
The DCSF note of the meeting does not in fact list me as one of
the attendees. Further, there was no meeting between Jim Knight,
David Gee and me, on any date during the period covered by the
events into which Lord Sutherland was asked to inquire.
Paragraph 4.137 (page 85) is about the escalation
of risk by QCA to DCSF during the test delivery period up to the
time of the failure, which became apparent on 25 June. It was
quoted in full by the Secretary of State in the House of Commons,
and again two months later in his evidence to the Select Committee
and reads as follows:
"In practice what happened in 2008 was that
DSCF observers escalated their own assessment of risks to the
DCSF ministers on a number of occasions. On this basis, ministers
usually pressed QCA's Chief Executive for answers. At this point,
because information was not being escalated within QCA effectively,
ministers were given strong reassurances by QCA that all was on
track. As late as 17 June when the Schools Minister met QCA's
Chief Executive and NAA's Managing Director, they provided reassurances."
This too is fiction. Not only was I not present
at 17 June meeting, but until the delivery failure at the end
of June I had had only two meetings with the DCSF Ministers in
2008. David Gee was present at neither of them. On 18 March the
QCA Chairman, Sir Anthony Greener and I met with Ed Balls and
Jim Knight—at QCA request—to discuss the future of
the QCA. The national curriculum tests were mentioned only briefly
and in passing, and no specific delivery issues were raised by
Ministers. On 2 June, the Chairman and I met with Ed Balls and
Jim Knight on a range of matters, including the tests: as I advised
Lord Sutherland, I did indeed on that occasion reassure the Secretary
of State that earlier problems with marker recruitment, marker
training and the distribution of scripts had been overcome, and
I did so on the basis of evidence which I believed to be sound.
I was not asked to meet directly with the Schools
Minister in the months leading up to the delivery failure at the
end of June, including the critical marking period in the final
eight weeks. Nor was I being "pressed" by Ministers
for answers on the telephone or by email. There was a flurry of
meetings once the delivery failure occurred (2, 3, 24 July and
6, 14 August), but these meetings were about recovering from the
failure process, conducting the review of scripts returned by
schools because of problems with marking, concluding the contract
with ETS and tendering for a new supplier for 2009. They were
not about the causes of the delivery failure and the events leading
up to it, which were the matters on which Jim Knight was asked
to give evidence, and on which Lord Sutherland reported.
During the test delivery period, QCA was of
course closely monitoring the blogs and the many reports in the
media about problems with ETS, and working around the clock to
resolve every issue which arose. We were in close contact with
DCSF officials, who were also monitoring the situation. Many of
the problems were successfully addressed by ETS, but some quite
major ones could not be resolved. Many allegations proved to be
false, such as the assertion that ETS was employing a first year
undergraduate to mark Key Stage 2 papers: he had in fact been
employed by a school to assist in the review of marked returned
scripts.
The flawed evidence on which paragraphs 4.92,
4.93 and 4.137 of the Sutherland Report is based has been used
to portray me as complacent, disengaged, and constantly beleaguered
by Ministers with questions I was unable to answer. This is far
from the truth; it was not corrected by Ministers or DCSF officials
at draft report stage; and it has been used by Ministers to my
serious disadvantage.
All this had no bearing on my decision to resign.
Clearly however, the record should not be allowed to stand. The
Secretary of State and the Schools Minister owe an explanation
to Lord Sutherland, to the House of Commons, to the Select Committee,
and to me. And the explanation cannot be that Jim Knight was simply
mistaken about the date on which he thought he met with David
Gee and me, because there was no other meeting with which it could
reasonably have been confused; nor that there were occasions other
than 2 June when I was pressed by Ministers for answers, because
that is simply not true.
15 April 2009
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