Clause 6
Education and Skills Bill
10:00 am
Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister, Children, Schools and Families; Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, Conservative)
I was interested in the Minister’s response, and we will await the decision of the QCA on these qualifications. I hope that it makes the right decision, because if it is appraising hundreds and hundreds of exams, it will seem perverse and somewhat ideologically driven not to accredit two very well-established, credible and rigorous exams that Cambridge university—one of the top universities in this country—has created through Cambridge Assessment.
The Minister made the odd point that competition would weaken matters. That may show a difference of philosophy between Labour and Opposition Members, but Conservative Members strongly believe that competition strengthens all participants in the market place and that competition between exams will strengthen the A-level. One of my motives behind wanting to see the iGCSE accredited is that it will focus the minds of people at the QCA, when they bring in curriculum changes, to understand that they have to look at the popularity of the GCSE. They should not engage in further reforms that weaken the exams, as has happened over the last several years.
It will be beneficial to our exam system, making it more cohesive and less fragmented, if we allow the iGCSE, because in the long run it will strengthen A-level and GCSE exams. I was interested in the Minister’s comments that full-time students at school, taking exclusively iGCSEs or pre-Us, will be fulfilling the duty in this Bill. It is a pity that he will not relent in allowing these exams to constitute the relevant education and training for the purpose of the Bill, because since the QCA has not recognised these qualifications, a student who was in work and taking these exams would fall foul of the duties of this Bill, which would be absurd. However, as this was a probing amendment to draw out some response from the Ministers, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.