Examination of Witnesses (Questions 105-119)
RT HON.
ED BALLS
MP, DAVID BELL
AND JON
THOMPSON
16 JULY 2008
Q105 Chairman: I welcome the Secretary
of State, the Permanent Secretary and Jon Thompson to the Committee.
It is a pleasure to have you here and I am sure that you feel
the same way. This is the annual pilgrimage of the Secretary of
State to the Committee. As you know, a few Secretaries of State
have sat before us since I have chaired this Committee and its
predecessor. The great thing about such meetings is that they
usually indicate that the recess is imminent. We consider this
to be an important sitting. We usually ask the Secretary of State
if he would like to say a few words to open the sitting and then
go straight into questions.
Ed Balls: Thank
you for inviting me to the Committee for the third time in six
months. It is good to be back. We are here to discuss the Annual
Report. I am sure that you will want to talk about wider matters
concerning the Department, and about your recent reports on the
Children's Plan and Testing and Assessment. It is over a year
since our new Department was created and six months since the
Children's Plan, and I have given evidence as part of your inquiries
into those matters. I hope that we have proved over the last 12
months that this is more than simply a different name on the same
door to the same Department; I think that we have. The new Department
for Children, Schools and Families has a real mission and purpose.
Over the six months since I was last before you, we have taken
forward a number of commitments from the Children's Plan such
as the establishment of Ofqual, the National Challenge for school
improvement, the alternative provision White Paper and reforms
of pupil referral units. We have launched the myplace youth services
programme and have started a consultation on measuring child well-being.
We have done a number of things that, I hope, have shown the Committee,
since its report, that we are taking seriously our shared responsibilities
with other departments. We have seen, for example, work on child
poverty. In fact, we appeared with the Secretary of State for
Work and Pensions and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury before
the Committee to discuss that a month or so ago. We have had the
Bercow Review into speech and language therapy, which reported
directly to me and to Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary—we
will be responding to it in detail when the first joint child
health plan is produced by our two Departments in September—and,
obviously, yesterday, the youth crime action plan, which was produced
jointly by the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and my Department.
I hope that we have also made progress in responding to some of
the recommendations included in the Committee's report on our
Department. We published our timeline for the implementation of
our Children's Plan within hours of the publication of your report,
which shows how keen we were to respond to that recommendation.
We have directed more attention and resources into children with
special educational needs, and we launched the Lamb inquiry to
examine the way in which parents have engaged in the issue of
special educational needs. In addition, we have launched plans
for consultation to legislate to strengthen children's trusts.
I welcome the Committee's intention to hold an investigation and
an inquiry into those in the autumn. The Department intends to
bring forward legislation for children's trusts in the next Session.
There is a real opportunity for you to help us to get that legislation
right in advance of the Public Bill Committee proceedings on it.
We have given the Committee our response on Testing and Assessment,
which I am sure you will want to discuss today. I should also
like to make a short comment on the delivery of the National Curriculum
and test results for this year. As I said in my letter of 4 July,
the delay in the release of results to schools has caused great
inconvenience and uncertainty, which in my view is unacceptable.
As the Minister for Schools and Learners said when he gave evidence
to your Committee 10 days ago, our first priority has been to
ensure that schools receive results in an orderly way with the
minimum of delay. Key Stage 2 results were released to schools
by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) yesterday,
which, as we know, is a week later than originally planned. As
the head of the QCA, Ken Boston, said to the Committee on Monday
and confirmed last night in a statement, the volume of Key Stage
2 results available yesterday were 94% in English, 97% in Maths
and 97% in science. Key Stage 2 results will be updated further
this Friday, 18 July. At that time, all available Key Stage 3
results will also be published. As the Committee knows, and as
I am sure Ken explained on Monday, Key Stage 3 marking in English
is behind marking in maths and science, but I am advised by the
QCA that as of yesterday, more than 80% of the Key Stage 3 results
will be available and in the data feed to schools on Friday. However,
a considerably higher percentage of the results will be for maths
and science—fewer than 80% of English results will be available.
It is important that we learn lessons from the experience. When
I first announced the need for a delay in my letter of 4 July,
I said that I would ask for an independent inquiry into such matters,
which, as my colleague the Minister for Schools and Learners confirmed
to you last week, will be led by Lord Sutherland of Houndwood,
the first chief inspector of schools. The inquiry will investigate
what went wrong, the reasons for the problems that we experienced,
and what should be done to avoid a recurrence. It will report
to Ofqual, the regulator, on matters within its remit, but more
widely to me on other relevant matters that are outside Ofqual's
scope. This morning, I wrote to Lord Sutherland with the detailed
terms of reference. I have provided the Committee with copies
of that letter, and the corresponding letter and terms of reference
from Kathleen Tattersall, the chair of Ofqual, to Lord Sutherland,
on the parts of the inquiry that are relevant to her organisation.
We expect that report to be ready this autumn—it will be
ready this autumn. The results of the inquiry will be published
and I will keep the Committee informed of progress. As I said,
what has happened in recent weeks is unacceptable, and we need
to learn lessons from it through this inquiry.
Q106 Chairman: Thank you. I want
to hold back on tests and testing for the moment. May I open up
by saying that we, too, have tried to respond energetically to
the fact that this is not the old Department and the old Select
Committee but very new ones. You will know that the new Committee
has held meetings on child poverty, and that our first inquiry—we
are well into it—has been into looked-after children. So
we, too, take that responsibility seriously. One of the things
that we are concerned about is how we are able to scrutinise the
new Department. We have been going through the Annual Report with
our Specialist Advisers, and it is very difficult, having moved
from one Department to two new Departments, to discharge our responsibility
with the mismatch of figures that we have. This is a challenging
situation for us. Budgets have changed. It is much easier with
schools, but as soon as we get into the children and families
area all kinds of budgets from different Departments are involved.
That is a serious concern for us as a Committee, and we would
like a proper discussion with you and David Bell about how we
get this right, because it is not right that we find it difficult
to find out how the money is flowing. Traditionally, we could
quite easily see that. If you change the figures, David—as
you did, I think, the year before last—we ask you to change
them back again so that we can have consistency over the years.
It is important for us to discharge our responsibilities, so we
would like—not today but as a matter of urgency—discussions
about how we get this right.
Ed Balls: I understand that. To
give you one indication, if you measure our Department by the
size of our budget, our budget is smaller than the budget of the
Department for Education and Skills was, but our range of responsibilities
is considerably broader than the original range of responsibilities
of that Department. To give one example, my Department has joint
accountability with the Ministry of Justice for the operation
of the Youth Justice Board, in all aspects of policy, strategy
and implementation, but the departmental expenditure limit is
held by the Ministry of Justice and so the budgeting and how the
accounts are presented does not reflect the nature of that responsibility.
To give you another example, with the youth crime action plan,
the majority of the additional money that was contributed to the
£100 million yesterday was contributed by my Department,
but I would not say that that means that the majority of the responsibility
for delivering the plan comes to my Department. It is clearly
shared across all three Departments involved, with the Home Office
and the Ministry of Justice substantially in the lead on the enforcement
side of the plan. My sense is that this is a wider question about
how accountability for public spending agreements operates, because
in many of these areas those are now joint responsibilities. Departmental
budgets voted on in Parliament do not really capture those shared
responsibilities.
Q107 Chairman: That is right, and
I think that it is a challenge to us and to you to get this right.
Ed Balls: It is more complicated
for us because we have such a wide range of shared responsibilities.
Q108 Chairman: Or more challenging
to us because we are supposed to be checking it.
Ed Balls: From my point of view,
and I said this to you when I came here last time—I was
very pleased to come to the child poverty inquiry—the more
scrutiny by this Committee of our joint responsibilities, the
better. I have always felt that accountability and scrutiny strengthens
the hand of those people who are trying to do the right things
in co-operation with others.
Q109 Chairman: I agree with all that,
but it is just that when our Committee is looking at it, we want
to know when a flow of money comes in and whether it really is
a flow of money, and we want to know how big a flow it is and
where it flows to.
Ed Balls: Fair enough.
Q110 Chairman: The second point is
that, although it is nice to get your response to our report on
testing and assessment, it has come in late—quite late for
us to digest it—so we have decided to publish your response
and issue our response in due course. The one issue that I want
to take up with you this morning and that comes clearly and strongly
out of our report is one which, on a quick reading of your response,
still does not seem to be accepted on your side—it certainly
was not accepted by the Minister for Schools and Learners. The
evidence that we got time and again in that report, and now from
a recent Ofsted report that I received only this morning, shows
a really worrying drift towards teaching to the test and squeezing
the access to the full curriculum. It seems to us, in terms of
your initial response and what we have heard from Jim Knight,
that you do not really believe that that is the case out there,
but that is certainly how we feel about it.
Ed Balls: Do you want me to respond
to that point and to points more widely?
Chairman: No, not more widely. The real
thrust, our central concern, was that you do not seem to think
that the testing regime is pushing teachers, heads and other staff
in a school to be too obsessive about teaching to the test.
Ed Balls: It is not our view that
the common practice is to teach to the test, and it is not our
view that that is the best way to prepare children and young people
to do well in the tests. It is our view, and the view of heads
and professional teachers who are doing a good job, that a well-rounded
understanding of the subject is a better preparation to do well
in the test. Of course, part of learning is learning to be able
to reproduce information quickly in an exam. Every time I have
been educated in my life, part of that was looking at the exam
papers and doing a couple of test papers, but if that is what
you did every day throughout the year, you would make no progress
at all. Of course there must be some understanding about how to
operate in a testing regime, but it is not our view that teachers
should be or are generally teaching to the test. I think we say
in our response to the Committee that we want to gather more information
on testing and assessment, and I am happy to come back and have
further discussion with you on that. There is a range of wider
issues that your report throws up, which I could say a couple
of things about now, if you like. Are we going to have time to
discuss this later in the morning?
Chairman: I think we will have another
chance, but not this morning.
Ed Balls: In that case, may I
say one thing? Many powerful points were made in your report.
I also agree with your starting premise. You say clearly that
the principle of externally assessed national tests in order to
have proper accountability is accepted between us—that is
our starting point. There is then a question about what the practice
should be and how we can do that most effectively. I am not saying
that the current position is set in stone, but I do not think
that anybody wants to go back to the old days, when schools were
not accountable and parents did not have proper information about
how their child or the school was doing. We have made a change
already on Key Stage 1, to move to teacher assessment, and we
have the making good progress pilot and single level testing,
which is happening around the country and in many ways addresses
your concerns. The advantage of single level testing is that the
teacher is in charge of when to do the test and which test to
do, not the Government or the assessor. The monitoring of progress,
which is integral to good teaching, is in the hands of the teacher,
because the teacher is deciding on the level. Teaching to the
test is less meaningful when you are talking about a test that
is being set at a level for the individual child. We think that
single level testing allows you to have both accountability and
a more child-centred approach to testing, but we should not rush
to any decision before we have proper evaluation. As you know,
we have 450 to 500 schools that will be doing single level tests
until next July. We have an evaluation that is being done by an
external auditor—I think PricewaterhouseCoopers—for
next July. I have asked for an interim report on the first year,
after the summer. I am happy to give the Committee an interim
report, probably in October, on the progress that we think we
are making with single level testing and broader teacher assessment:
assessment for learning and making good progress. That could form
the basis of a discussion and you will have wider points to discuss.
I am anxious to say that we want to respond to the concerns expressed
in your report. We do not agree with them all. I definitely do
not agree with those who say that they would prefer to go back
to the days when we did not have this degree of accountability
and assessment—sometimes that is explicit and sometimes
implicit. We are keen to respond but we have to do it properly
and systematically. If I can provide you with an update on single
level testing after the summer, that might allow us to keep pushing
towards the right kind of reforms.
Q111 Chairman: Secretary of State,
you know that we are trying to take on those shibboleths of 20
years ago. We started with testing and assessment, we are now
at the National Curriculum and we are going to be looking at inspection.
They were fundamental in the Baker years. We all know why they
were introduced. Our job, as a Committee, is to ask, "After
20 years, are they fit for purpose?" In the first report
we said that we thought that testing and assessment has gone too
far and, however it is done, we have to shift the balance back.
We hope that you hear that message. Sometimes, Secretaries of
State hear the message but it takes a couple of years for them
to come round to listening, as when you recently introduced a
change in the law for school admissions three years after our
Committee recommended it. We welcome all change, Secretary of
State, even if it takes some time to come around.
Ed Balls: This Committee has a
fine tradition of contributing constructively to policy development,
and I am saying that this is a further opportunity to do that
on teaching and assessment. The right thing for me to do is to
keep providing you with our best information, which is why I will
come back to you with an assessment of the first year of single
level testing after the summer. I think that this is an important
opportunity. The interesting thing is that the best schools are
testing and assessing considerably more often than they are required
to by any national testing regime, but they are doing it in a
way that makes sense for the individual pupil and informs the
teacher's judgment of the progress of the child. I am not sure
whether too much or too little testing is what the debate is about;
it is about whether that testing is informing the judgment of
teachers.
Chairman: And whether it is done by an
American bureaucracy hired by the Department or it is done more
locally.
Ed Balls: I am happy to be lured
into those discussions.
Q112 Paul Holmes: A lot of people
believe that teaching to the test is narrowing the curriculum
and worsening pupil experience. When the teachers' unions said
it, you said, "That is the teachers' unions and we do not
agree with them". When our report said it, you said that
you do not agree with it. Now Ofsted has said it—it says
it in this document. Are you saying that you do not believe Ofsted's
report, the report of your inspectors who you appoint?
Ed Balls: I said that I do not
believe that most teachers are teaching to the test. We have a
very clear view, reflected in the new Key Stage 3 curriculum,
that it should be broad and engaging. By embedding creativity
in the curriculum we have been trying to ensure that teachers
are taking the broadest view of what they need to be teaching.
Q113 Paul Holmes: That would seem
to imply that you, as Secretary of State, are saying that you
do not believe Ofsted's report. David Bell, you were head of Ofsted
for four years and now you are Permanent Secretary. Since you
have ceased to be the chief inspector do you believe that the
reports are no longer accurate?
David Bell: As the Secretary of
State said, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that we are
giving greater freedom in the National Curriculum rather than
less—Key Stage 3 reforms, the Rose review of primary education
and a more flexible approach to 14-19 education. My experience
of going round the country and seeing schools in action suggests
that the vast majority of teachers are flexible and sensible about
what they do. Ofsted has not said that there is a universal narrowing
of the curriculum in every place. That is not the reality.
Q114 Paul Holmes: So the Permanent
Secretary after four years at Ofsted and the Secretary of State
do not agree with the Ofsted report. You think that Ofsted has
got it wrong.
Ed Balls: What is Ofsted saying
that you say we do not agree with?
Q115 Paul Holmes: That teaching to
the test is narrowing the National Curriculum and badly affecting
students' experience in many schools across the country—not
every school, but to a worrying extent. Ofsted has agreed with
our report and with what the teachers' unions have been saying
for a long time, but you are both saying that Ofsted, the Committee
and the teachers' unions have got it wrong.
Ed Balls: I did not say that.
I said that in our view the majority of teachers are not teaching
to the test. That is not common or best practice, but where it
is happening it is wrong. I think we say in our response to you
that we want to collect more information to see how widespread
the practice is. We do not think that it is the right thing to
do. Does Ofsted say that I am wrong to say that it is not happening
in the majority of schools?
Q116 Paul Holmes: Is Ofsted wrong
to say that the trend is continuing, and that the teaching to
the test effect can be observed also at GCSE and A-level?
Ed Balls: I did not say that teaching
to the test never happened. I said that it did not happen in the
majority of cases and that it was the wrong thing to do. I think
that Ofsted would probably agree with me on that.
Q117 Chairman: I suppose that what
we are saying, Secretary of State, is that if you are in Sanctuary
Buildings, you have one view of what is happening in the world.
Sometimes small experiences stay in your mind. Very recently,
I went to a school a stone's throw away from here. The head very
much respects you and thinks that you are a good Secretary of
State. He said that it was very nice that you gave the school
some extra money for expanding access to the curriculum. Then
he smiled and said, "Do you know what we spent it on? More
rehearsals for the tests." That is worrying, is it not?
Ed Balls: It is for that head
and his governing body to decide what to do with those resources,
not me. But that is not the judgment that I would have made.
Q118 Chairman: No, okay. Can we move
on? The last thing that I want to ask you before we start on the
more general questioning is this: where does the buck stop with
the testing regime? There is a lot of media interest in our current
problems with Key Stages 2 and 3. This Committee has been pretty
consistent in its questioning. If you push me and most members
of the Committee, you find that it is not the time or the delay
that worries us, but the quality of the marking and whether parents
and students can be assured that the tests are of a consistent
standard and a true reflection of the effort that the children
have put in over the year. That has been our concern throughout.
It is what all of us have been saying. There are worries about
the quality of marking. That is not so much the computer glitches.
We all know about that and we have all become pretty experienced
in this field over a number of years. The concern is about the
quality of the marking and the assessment of the qualifications.
I met the head of Ofqual yesterday and pointed out that to my
knowledge this American company was using not graduates to mark
papers, but people who have recently passed their A-levels. It
seemed quite disturbing that there was not that consistency of
quality in the marking. We have Ofqual; we have the National Assessment
Agency; we have the QCA, but we also have the Secretary of State.
Where does the buck stop?
Ed Balls: It is Ministers who
are accountable to Parliament, directly and through the Select
Committee, for the operation of our schools system, including
the testing regime, so in the end the accountability comes to
Ministers. That is why when I realised there was a problem, I
wrote to inform you at the first opportunity I had. That is why
I am here to give evidence and that is why the Schools Minister
came last week. In the end, we are the people who are accountable
to Parliament. But, in the case of the testing regime, we operate
things in a particular way, as you know. I do not think that people
would think it sensible or right for Ministers to make operational
decisions about individual schools' tests. I think that people
would be concerned that there was political interference, especially
given that we are judged as a Government on what is happening
in terms of school improvement. We are accountable for the funding
of the regime and the way that it operates. We ask a non-departmental
public body, the QCA, to deliver the tests on our behalf at arm's
length from us. The QCA then contracts independently of Ministers
with the people who do the practical delivery of the tests. So
the accountability is as follows: ETS is accountable to the QCA
for the delivery of its contract; the QCA is accountable to us
and more widely for ensuring that that contract is effectively
delivered; and I am accountable for ensuring that the QCA fulfils
its responsibilities and for the overall operation of the regime.
That is why the moment I saw that there was a problem I reported
it to you.
Q119 Chairman: I hear that, but you
can imagine the average parent looking at the QCA, Ofqual, the
NAA and ETS and wondering if they are disturbed about what is
going on. Who should be appearing to put people's minds at rest?
Ed Balls: But you called the QCA
on Monday because it manages the delivery of the test regime on
a daily and weekly basis. Therefore, you were right to ask it
the questions. The QCA delivers the tests through its contractor,
but we have made the important reform of having independent administrators
reporting directly to Parliament. We now have a regulator of standards
in Ofqual that reports independently of me. My information on
test quality comes from Ofqual. Ofqual wrote to me to say that,
in its view, there has been no impairment in the quality of marking.
The exact words in the letter I received from Kathleen Tattersall
are: "While results will be delayed and I cannot predict
the volume of reviews that schools will request this year, from
the processes we have observed, the quality of marking is at least
as good as previous years and justifies issuing the results."
That is what Ofqual has said independently of me to me and to
Parliament. If Ofqual takes a different view, I am sure that it
will report that immediately. I rely, as we all do, on Ofqual's
independent judgment of the quality of marking being delivered
to the QCA from ETS. Such judgments have much more power coming
from Ofqual than from me. That is why I wanted to have an independent
standards regulator.
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