[Mr. Christopher Chope in the Chair]

AS 05 OCR

AS 07 AQA

AS 08 Ofqual

Q 106

Kieran Gordon: Good afternoon, I am Kieran Gordon, chief executive of Connexions Greater Merseyside.

Daniel Moynihan: Good afternoon, I am Daniel Moynihan, chief executive of the Harris Federation of South London schools, which is an academy group.

Elizabeth Reid: I am Elizabeth Reid; I am the chief executive of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust.

Les Lawrence: Councillor Les Lawrence, I am chair of the children and young people’s board of the Local Government Association, the representative body of local authorities throughout the country.

Frankie Sulke: I am Frankie Sulke, the director for children and young people in Lewisham and I represent the Association of Directors of Children’s Services.

Q 107

Daniel Moynihan: I am honestly not here to represent the IAA, but we support the establishment of the agency. It makes sense for the Department to have an agency to take care of academies. Clearly the Department was never meant to be a local authority, so we are perfectly happy with that and we think it will work well.

The key issues for us will lie in the detail of commissioning and how that will affects academies’ freedoms to establish sixth forms, what they can offer and how that freedom will compare to the existing situation.

We broadly support behaviour partnerships. The issue with them is who decides who is in the partnerships and what form they take. In some local authorities we have very effective partnerships. In others we have produced outstanding schools initially by working alone, because local provision has been so poor that we would not want to be locked into that on a compulsory basis.

Co-operating with children’s trusts is a very good principle, as long as children’s trusts focus on integrating services and making them available, in an easy way, to individual students. If it takes away the freedom of head teachers to be responsible and accountable for running their schools, that would not be such a good thing.

Q 108

Daniel Moynihan: There are issues that need clarification. The whole issue of the commissioning of provision and the types of rights of appeal that academies will have is important to us. In one local authority, we were told by a different body from the Learning and Skills Council that we could not open sixth forms in two of our academies. It was a particularly poor part of London in terms of the staying-on rate, and the reason why we were told that was that it did not fit with the plan. Four years later we have 400 sixth-formers and an outstanding sixth form, but nothing else has changed in the area. As in that case, we would want to be sure that we had a right of appeal to the Secretary of State, and that it was clear that we could not necessarily be blocked by whatever the local plan was if it was not an entirely sensible and objective one.

We have experienced difficulties on other occasions when local authorities have not wanted an academy to open for political reasons and in order to protect underperforming local provision. We would want a right of appeal so that someone could look at that, and if we lost it, we lost it. But it is important that it exists.

Q 109

Elizabeth Reid: It makes absolute sense and, as the academies programme continues to grow, it would be anomalous and unusual for a Department of State to take direct responsibility for a very large number of schools when there are other models, both past and present, available to look at. The Specialist Schools and Academies Trust views that as a sensible provision.

Q 110

Daniel Moynihan: Yes, it seems sensible to me.

Q 111

Elizabeth Reid: No. In fact, I was under the impression that the Independent Academies Association had initially welcomed the proposition. As I said, there is a widespread view that it would be increasingly anomalous for a Department to take direct responsibility for a large number of publicly funded schools.

Q 112

Daniel Moynihan: We have fairly regular contact with different officials on different issues, so there is a fair amount of traffic.

Q 113

Daniel Moynihan: Admissions, funding and clarification on funding models, legal issues relating to academies, local discussions with local authorities and the DCSF’s role in arbitrating those discussions, so a very wide range of different issues.

Q 114

Daniel Moynihan: I have no problem with that. The point is the detail of how it would operate.

Q 115

Elizabeth Reid: It is the vast majority—94 per cent. is normally quoted. That tells you a good deal about academies’ desire to be part of those local arrangements. There is no evidence that academies find this a particularly irksome or onerous way to safeguard the interests of young people in their communities. Academies have a large proportion of vulnerable and disadvantaged children on their rolls. It is in their interests as well as everybody else’s to be part of those partnerships.

Q 116

Daniel Moynihan: All academies should be part of a hard-to-place protocol whereby students who are difficult to place are shared around. Academies are academies  because they need rapidly to improve attendance, behaviour and a range of things to do with student welfare. The question is how to do it. In many local authorities it is possible and desirable to partner with other local authority schools and the local authority and use their services rapidly to drive up standards in attendance and behaviour. You can take on professionals between you and share that. In other places, however, local schools have often been in extreme difficulty and the local authority has had no capacity. If we had partnered in those cases, it would have been a ball and chain around our necks. The issue for us is that we are happy to partner, we want to partner, but if the brief for an academy is to improve very rapidly, as some of our schools have done, we need the discretion to determine the partner.

Q 117

Daniel Moynihan: For us it has been about relationships with local authorities. Clearly, in future it will and should be wider than that. Our concern is the detail of how this operates and to what extent the children’s trust or the head teacher determines how services are provided and what happens. We want to be fully accountable and fully in the daylight for our performance, and for that we need to be responsible for decisions about services and how they are used, and not have them forced on us.

Q 118

Daniel Moynihan: For us that would be true.

Q 119

Frankie Sulke: A vast number of local authorities are huge supporters of academies. The majority of academies probably exist because local authorities have sought them out as the best way to improve outcomes for young people in their area. Therefore, local authorities are champions of academies and are as passionate about their performance as that of any other provider. It is critical that academies—which have responsibility for so many children in the area, for which the local authority is ultimately accountable—are part of the conversations that create the services around that area, that create the teams around the child, to ensure that all children, particularly the most vulnerable, have the support that they need. It is critical, particularly in areas that have a lot of academies, to have the academy principals and sponsors around the table.

Les Lawrence: I do not disagree with what Frankie has said. We see academies as being part of the diversity of schools within a local authority. In that way, we are far better able to meet the needs of young people and the parents. Because different types of schools suit  different types of young people, we often find that academies, like other schools, are equipped to enable youngsters to fulfil their potential. Different types of youngster going to different types of school facilitate that to a far greater extent.

I think also that most academies are more than happy to be part of the family of schools within a local authority, engaging significantly in all sorts of partnerships—from 14 to 19, behaviour and sharing panels. Yes, we are keen to ensure that the degree of autonomy that they have is maintained. As a result of that grown-up relationship, they always want to be part of and not separate from the arrangements made by the local authority. Many academies are keen not only to follow the code of admissions practice but to have admission arrangements that fit in and are not in competition with other local schools.

Q 120

Daniel Moynihan: The tensions certainly can be resolved. Our perspective is that the academies were built on the city technology college movement; the 15 CTCs became outstanding schools primarily because of their freedom to make decisions quickly and autonomously. It is important that that is protected in academies, but it does not mean that academies cannot work well with local authorities. It is important that academies have the freedom to manoeuvre and make their own decisions about which services they wish to use.

Q 121

Les Lawrence: There is no doubt that local authorities have welcomed the responsibility and duty to take the strategic view in terms of overall planning and of ensuring the right level of provision within each local authority. That is not going to change as a result of the way in which the Bill is structured. What I think is important in the context of the Bill is that the YPLA will take on a responsibility from the Department for those academies that are open, and also an element of performance money. I suggest that that will enable it to relate to the local authority in terms of school plans and commissioning arrangements in a far more effective and efficient way—and also in a more transparent way than if it had been left within the Department, which was trying to create as well as manage by separating those that were already in place.

Q 122

Les Lawrence: This type of arrangement enables some of those potential tensions to be managed in a fair and equitable way, and in a transparent way. It does not  infringe the strategic lead that the local authority has for 16-to-19 learning and the commissioning that will take over from the Learning and Skills Council in about 13 months. It is also a way of more closely knitting the academies into the family of schools that I was talking about earlier.

Elizabeth Reid: I think you have heard an exposition as to why this is a confidence-building move—it builds the confidence of all parties. Academies are part of our national system of education, which is diverse. Academies are a relatively new part of the system, and it makes sense for there to be oversight of the whole academies initiative in one place. That is what the YPLA will continue to provide, in the way that the Department has until now.

Q 123

Elizabeth Reid: From a number of points of view, I might not be too relaxed about that. The whole history of planning and providing for the education of 16 to 19-year-olds is quite vexed. Over the last three or four decades, there have been many difficulties. As with other parts of the Bill, the YPLA proposition provides some focus on an area in which there are many interested parties—namely, the 16-to-19 arena, where there are many providers.

Q 124

Elizabeth Reid: Because the academies are a particular form of school and a particular aspect of the diversity agenda; they are structured to be independent and to have a high degree of autonomy.

Q 125

Elizabeth Reid There are others you would have to ask. It would depend on the nature of the legislation that could be crafted and considered by the House.

Q 126

Daniel Moynihan: I am sorry. I am not a politician and I am not good at being diplomatic. My answer would be that local authorities have called in academy sponsors because the various mechanisms that they have deployed in the past to improve the schools that they offer us as academies have not worked. The key mechanism that they have deployed is their own management of those schools. It does not make sense to return those schools to local authorities. We can work in partnership with local authorities very effectively.

Q 127

Daniel Moynihan: Yes.

Q 128

Daniel Moynihan: A national body that is accountable to the DCSF—a single unit such as the YPLA—will be a high-quality, high-profile body that provides strong accountability, without variation. We are more likely to get that strong accountability and rigour from an organisation such as the YPLA than we are from myriad local authorities.

Q 129

Daniel Moynihan: Many do.

Q 130

Daniel Moynihan: No, I do not think it is. What I am saying is that academies are schools in extreme circumstances, which are often subject to extreme socio-economic conditions and in real conditions of failure. In those situations, you need a fresh start—you need something different. You need to be able to galvanise community teachers and everybody to say, “There are new expectations. Something new is going to happen. There’s a real expectation that there’s going to be rapid improvement. We’re going to do it. No excuses.” That is what an academy sponsor brings.

Q 131

Daniel Moynihan: The academies, in terms of the exam result improvements, are above the national average. Although more time is needed to prove the model fully, the average return in terms of results is good—it is above the national average. So it is working for those schools. That is why I would be reluctant to see them ever returned to local authorities.

Q 132

Daniel Moynihan: There are clear advantages in having joined-up services locally. There are clear advantages in having coherence between services and there being children’s trusts. That is definitely in everybody’s interests. The crux of the matter is to what extent the children’s trust dictates what happens in an academy or to what extent the head has autonomy and is then accountable through its exam results and its Ofsted inspection for its performance. We would not want a situation in which children’s trusts were able to dictate in detail what the school should do.

Q 133

Daniel Moynihan: I have read the letter, but I cannot remember the detail. I am sorry.

Q 134

Daniel Moynihan: I am not here to represent the Academies Association, but my view is that it is in everybody’s interest that we have effective children’s trusts that join up services. It is difficult for schools to deal with multiple agencies on their own. If children’s trusts integrate services so that they provide the best services for the particular needs of children at the point of use, then that is a good thing. But I would not want academies to be compelled to use them in a particular way. I do not know enough about the detail of this Bill to know whether that is a possibility, but we would want to resist it if it is.

Q 135

Les Lawrence: If the YPLA is a local authority sector-led body, that concern would disappear. If it is constructed in any other way, there would be some concern. We have used the phrase “mission creep” in the sense that the agency’s duties are not wholly prescribed. There is a degree of open-endedness. For example, through performance management options, it could micro-manage services more widely. With micro-management—here I have some sympathy with a strand of Dan’s point—you get a degree of control which removes local flexibility and the ability to vary the nature and delivery of services to suit a locality. You might not want to apply the same type of service in the same way right across a whole local authority because of the different nature of the communities and the locales you are serving.

The other element is a concern about how we start off—quite rightly; it is supported by local government—a national funding formula from 16 to 19. The YPLA could be a mechanism to extend a national formula down to 14 to 19 education, which could be very detrimental on school funding because each local authority, in conjunction with its schools forum, has determined a formula funding arrangement that best suits the local authority and its school. If you then begin to apply that between 14 and 16 you could have a detrimental and disproportionate effect on the funding available to schools  in different types of authorities. Colleagues in the F40 Group, for example, would particularly want that to be emphasised.

Q 136

Les Lawrence: I can assure you that Ministers are well aware of the case.

Q 137

Daniel Moynihan: The law is that every member of the teaching staff—in fact, every member of staff—is entitled to transfer across, so what happens is that existing staff transfer across to the academy. They might not transfer into the same roles, because you put in a new structure to suit your purposes best. People will transfer, but not necessarily into the same roles.

Q 138

Daniel Moynihan: No.

Q 139

Daniel Moynihan: The reality is that in schools that become academies, management of performance has usually been weak. When they become an academy, a new management team comes in. If the team does its job properly, it is rigorous about performance management, and you get staff turnover and a change in staff in the first couple of years. That is how it is done.

Q 140

Daniel Moynihan: It is not easy, but if people are clearly not up to the job, that is what needs to happen.

Q 141

Daniel Moynihan: We have been very successful in improving our schools. We have transferred staff across, and our improvement on five A to Cs in English and maths is seven times the national average. We have been able to deal with the situation. It is less than ideal, I agree, but that is the law.

Q 142

Frankie Sulke: I do think that greater consistency is welcome, due to the fact that we have had a good few years of experience now and therefore know a lot more about what works. Therefore, we can learn from each other about how to make things happen, but I would still say that there are real differences between areas. Therefore, we should avoid at all costs a one-size-fits-all approach. The way partnerships work, the sizes of localities, the levels of problems in localities, the vulnerability of children in terms of the numbers who are looked after and the challenges in local authorities are all very different, so the way in which we go about business is very different. However, there are some absolute core principles for how we go about commissioning across partners, joint commissioning and working in partnership. I think that the provisions in the Bill will considerably strengthen what is happening on the ground.

Les Lawrence: I would like to add to what Frankie has said about the growing confidence that you now begin to find in many areas as children’s trusts begin to bed down. It is a matter of both confidence within partnering arrangements and a greater understanding of some of the practical difficulties that each agency faces. Equally, practical benefits come from the different agencies working together on the integration of services. One of the most difficult areas to overcome has been what I call the cultural effect. In the health service, the police, local authorities and the voluntary communities sector, different cultures underpin the methods of operating in different environments. As that understanding comes and as aspects of the work force strategy become embedded in those cultures, consistency will develop. Equally important is the role of the lead member and the director of children’s services in statutory accountability. Local government has welcomed aspects of the Bill: the ownership of the children and young people’s plan by all those with a duty to co-operate and the membership of the children’s trust. That will do more to bring about a step change in service delivery than anything else.

Q 143

Les Lawrence: That flexibility is right if it is applied in an open and transparent way and is subject to full consultation so that all the consequences for implementation outcomes can be understood.

Q 144

Les Lawrence: The answer is a simple yes. I am democratically elected and therefore am subject to the ballot box. That is where the accountability should lie.

Q 145

Les Lawrence: When an organisation such as a children’s trust has grown up, you will see a significant amount of what I call devolved accountability and devolved responsibility down to as local a level as possible. That will ensure that communities and organisations can get on day-to-day with delivering services of a high quality and meeting the needs of citizens and the wider population. When needs arise, there will be one point of contact. Within the structure, there must be an escalation procedure for reporting issues and difficulties that arise. In that way, the lead member can be held accountable. Trend analysis and information flows are important in ensuring that there is oversight at one step removed.

There is a lot of confusion about the relationship between local safeguarding boards and children’s trusts. It is essential that we retain the freedom of the local safeguarding board to fulfil its statutory duty in serious case reviews and over the quality and nature of the social care work force. That is its responsibility at the moment. However, there must be a reporting line for oversight by the children’s trust. That must not infringe on the autonomy of the children’s trust, but must enable clear accountability. The local authority is responsible for the outcomes of serious case reviews, such as service delivery, improvements and the resulting actions. We must make it very clear what the link is. At the moment it is confused and clarity is needed. The Bill could be an opportunity to put that in place.

Q 146

Les Lawrence: Yes, for example, there is a lack of clarity over the extent to which serious case reviews should be published and over the fullness of the publicity of the action plans that should follow every review.

Q 147

Frankie Sulke: It is probably true to say that there is something everywhere that could be seen as a children’s trust board, so I understand your question—if the boards exist why make them statutory? But making them statutory will help to emphasise the importance of having—as Les has said in answer to a few questions—that partnership embedded, and of being very clear about the accountability and role of the boards. Having them as part of the statutory furniture will, I think, be helpful in that respect.

Linking into the previous question, most children’s trust boards sit underneath the local strategic partnerships and are not the only partnership board that functions within local authorities. They link in with other partnership boards on adults, economic development and regeneration, and often safer local authority partnerships. They are part of that architecture, which secures more tightly the well-being of children and young people.

Les Lawrence: One danger though, is that you could go a step too far in the Bill and over-prescribe the creation of the children’s trust board. That is something to be wary of. Creating a statutory body is absolutely essential, as Frankie has said, but if you go too far you might complicate the governance arrangements, which would then have difficulty being married up with the sovereignty of a local authority and equally with the roles of PCT boards, which themselves have a statutory basis. The statutory framework that you set around the children’s trust board should be as loose as possible and very simple in terms of the children’s plan, the membership and those who have a duty to co-operate with it. Go beyond that, and I think that you will create a governance complexity that will be a disbenefit not intended by the Bill.

Q 148

Kieran Gordon: I think that it would. I attend a number of children’s trust boards in their various current guises because my service covers more than one local authority area. The Bill would be useful if it gave a greater sense of purpose, outline and focus to the business of children’s trust boards. In my experience, they can cover a wide range of issues, but not to great effect, very often not making the most efficient use of people’s time. There is a greater focus now, particularly since the “Are we there yet?” publication, and such focus is helpful. Clearer terms of reference and a clear indication of what business the board can conduct and of what responsibility each board member has to the board and not just to their own organisations would be very helpful.

One concern I have is that, in my experience, GPs have never attended any of the boards and head teachers are largely missing as well. The Bill seems to increase the range of partners that will be called to the board, including for example Jobcentre Plus, and there is a lot of sense in that. The worry though is that we create an even bigger board and it gets strangled by its own size. We need some way of having an efficient board that can operate with an optimum number of members, which can pull in the various range of interests from around the wider partnership body, but without making it too large.

Q 149

Les Lawrence: As I understand the Bill, it would not. The ownership is shared, on a collective basis, across all the public agencies, with a defined duty to co-operate,  although you would still have the statutory duty that is specific and singular on the director of children’s services and the lead member of the board, which would not change. I firmly believe, on behalf of local government, that if you have that plan owned by all the agencies, there is a desire, a wish and an intent to achieve the outcomes that are enshrined in it, because they have all been though the sovereign decision-making arrangements in each of the organisations that have a duty to co-operate and which formulated the plan.

Q 150

Les Lawrence: I will go back to a point that I made in answer to Maria Miller. I am the elected member in the locality with a statutory duty; that is enshrined in the Children Act 2004. I have no problem in accepting that responsibility on behalf of all the bodies on the children’s trust. It is my duty to provide the strategic leadership, along with the director of children’s services. If I have neither the capability nor the capacity to do that, I should not be undertaking the role.

Q 151

Elizabeth Reid: I am happy to start. I think that we have already had a good discussion about behaviour partnerships, because they are about schools coming together to take shared responsibility. There are a number of ways of looking at this issue. It is often said, for example, that there are difficulties about the exclusion of children from schools. Most head teachers do not want to exclude children, but sometimes it appears that it is right both for the individual young person and the wider school community. If you are part of a school behaviour partnership, that is not an easier decision to make but it is a decision that can be made in a much more planned way, with some certainty that there will be proper arrangements for continuing the young person’s education.

That is very clearly a benefit, both for the school and the individual youngster. That is why I believe that schools have voluntarily entered into behaviour partnerships in the very large numbers that they have done. There are only a handful of schools that are not part of the behaviour partnerships. So I think that the benefit of those partnerships is on the way to being proven. On that basis, I think that there is no difficulty with the proposed legislation.

Again, as with a great deal of the discussion this afternoon, there is some devil in the detail and that is about understanding, in all cases, what are the sensible parameters of partnership, which can vary from locality to locality because there are different kinds of issues that schools and their communities are facing.

Frankie Sulke: I will build on that by referring back to something that Dan said very articulately earlier, which is that it is everybody’s responsibility; all those children are everybody’s responsibility. All schools share the responsibility to ensure that more vulnerable young  people and hard-to-place young people are shared and looked at collectively across an area. It is often the case that a young person who is finding it particularly difficult and being incredibly disruptive in one school will often thrive when given a fresh start in another. There is now lots of evidence to show that, when schools work together and manage moves in that way, young people really succeed very well, particularly when they go into a culture of high performance. I am with Liz in that respect and think that that has been proven.

I do think, however, that Liz is absolutely right to say again that what you legislate for and what is in the detail is incredibly important, because you need to allow local areas flexibility to do what is right for them. What is right for a London borough in which schools are located close together is very different from what is right for a big shire authority in which schools are far apart, so you cannot legislate for all the details and have to leave that to the professionals to sort out.

Q 152

Frankie Sulke: And to local discretion.

Daniel Moynihan: For me the issue of school behaviour partnerships remains about voluntarism for academies. It is true that most schools are part of behaviour partnerships, but the kind they are in are quite different to the kind Sir Alan Steer mentions in his report. The behaviour partnerships that most schools are in are about sharing out hard to place pupils and managing moves for exclusions.

In this case, however, we are talking about much broader partnerships in which groups have the power to employ specialist staff together, have common behaviour management training, take on services in managing attendance, offer staff training and work with primary schools, so we could be looking at a bigger and potentially more bureaucratic process. That is fine for academies because we go in and make a rapid assessment: what is the situation? Attendance is 70 per cent; what is the local authority doing? It has good services and we want to work in partnership with it. In other cases we have had 70 per cent. attendance while the local authority was deploying its support services, so we would not want to get into a hard partnership in such cases. We really feel that it is important that we have the choice of which schools we partner with, because partnerships per say will not improve anything: quality improves things.

Q 153

Daniel Moynihan: Yes, I am, but if we do not get that, academies and other schools should at least be able to determine who they partner with. I do not think that central or local government should say, “Here is your partnership and this is how you should partner.” I do not think that they are in the best position to do that. Schools need to determine their partnerships because they are at the point of use.

Q 154

Les Lawrence: I will have to disagree slightly with that because he is implying that he wants one rule for academies and another for everyone else, which is in the  interests of neither partnerships nor, dare I say it, young people. Many local authorities not only have behaviour partnerships and sharing panels as embedded arrangements, including those with academies and grammar schools, but are developing pupil referral units and links with colleges, because for many youngsters, especially around the age of 14 and 15, a school is not the right environment emotionally. They often find that a college placement offers a far better environment, given the nature of their individual development. The partnership is therefore flexible, depending on the individual needs of the young person.

Also, you are able on a collective basis to provide a range of support services to assist young people and their families to address many of the problems that might not necessarily be school-based and that originate outside the school. That might be the most successful way of addressing the needs and encouraging the young person to develop. On a slightly wider basis, sometimes it is a locality’s whole set of aspirations that needs to be addressed, and that needs to be understood, and often a behaviour partnership can begin to address that on a wider basis.

Daniel Moynihan: May I clarify a point that I made? I do not think I am saying one rule for academies and one rule for everybody else. I am saying schools should determine what their partnerships are and should not have that determined for them, because they are accountable for what they deliver.

Q 155

Kieran Gordon: I do not think it has. It rightly indicates that schools, which currently have a statutory responsibility to provide careers education, should reference the provision of apprenticeships in the careers education programmes and advice offered through the school and its partners. It refers to a situation where the school believes it would be in the “best interests” of pupils. My concern with that is there are schools, particularly schools with sixth forms, that might consider the best interests of the pupil to be in returning to the sixth form, for the purposes of the school’s particular interest, rather than the individual young person’s. The Bill goes some way in recognising that schools have responsibility to promote and make young people aware of apprenticeships. It does not go far enough in giving that clause teeth, although I think statutory guidance will be coming as a consequence of the Education and Skills Act. That might make it more assertive.

Q 156

Kieran Gordon: The whole process of making career decisions has to be a fusion of different processes, starting with the careers education in the school. It is rightly and properly the responsibility of the school to make sure there is a careers education programme in place and that careers education programme covers a range of issues in terms of young people’s awareness of themselves, the world of work and their awareness of their own skill needs and skill development, but yes, you are right that there needs to be independence and impartial expert advice provided by a body—Connexions currently does it—where there are trained career guidance experts working in partnership in the school as part of a school team, providing that impartial advice and guidance.

The issue we might have with apprenticeships—referencing back to those schools with sixth forms—is that the young people entering apprenticeships tend to be the same cadre of young people that the school wants to attract back in to do A-levels or the 16-to-19 elements of the diploma. It is where there is a conflict of interest if the school tries to confuse that choice for the young person. It may believe that it is in the best interests of the young person to go back to school, but if it does not present, and allow young people to explore, the range of other options, including apprenticeships, it may well stifle that choice for young people.

Q 157

Kieran Gordon: It would. We need greater emphasis on the provision of careers information, advice and guidance as part of the wider information, advice and guidance offered to young people. There are signs that that is starting to happen, but there was a feeling that the careers profession had been overlooked and the word “career” seemed to disappear from the curriculum and the agenda.

Q 158

Frankie Sulke: The commissioning—I presume that is what you are talking about—is relevant to the discussion we have just had on information, advice and guidance. The local authority having the role of looking strategically at its provision to make sure that progression routes are in place and that there is a coherent offer, including all the diversity we have talked about, is absolutely key to delivering RPA. To be honest, I am not sure how we would do it without that. There is the knowledge that we have built up of those young people between nought and 16, but also the local authority’s strategic leadership role post-19 on the economic agenda and the worklessness agenda, which they can plan coherently—not on their own, but in conjunction with other local authorities, including neighbouring local authorities. That is absolutely key.

Perhaps I can be a bit cheeky and come in on the information, advice and guidance debate. We have strived for and talked about having provider-neutral information, advice and guidance for as long as I can remember and probably for as long as anybody in this room can  remember. It is very difficult to legislate for that. The new climate, in which local authorities have a strategic leadership role in terms of commissioning 16 to 19 provision, gives us an opportunity that we have not had before to get all the providers around the table and to get an agreement about what is on offer in a locality and across localities. That might help to get the commitment to getting provider-neutral information, advice and guidance in schools. Even if you have the strongest careers professionals, what an individual teacher says in the classroom will have an enormous impact on what a young person does. We need to build a consensus around the shape of that provision in localities.

Q 159

Frankie Sulke: Yes. If we do not achieve that, there will have been no point in introducing the reforms. But that is not a role that local authorities can or would want to play on their own; they have to do that in conjunction with their providers and they have to recognise all the things that have been said today about cherishing and protecting the autonomy of providers. It is not a matter just of the autonomy of academies, but of all schools, as well as general FE colleges and sixth-form colleges. This is not about local authorities controlling matters; it is about planning together the diversity that will lead to stronger learner choice, as well as meeting employer need, which will be critical as we positively go into an upturn coming out of the recession.

Kieran Gordon: I want to make a comment on Frankie’s earlier point about neutral information, advice and guidance. Impartial does not mean neutral. Neutral would suggest to me some form of passive guidance. Actually, if it is done well, impartial information, advice and guidance should be a challenging process; it should be about encouraging young people to raise their aspirations and to look at the range of options, and it should sometimes be about putting them in uncomfortable positions by looking at the range of things that they could do. Impartiality is not, therefore, neutral, but very much about playing an active and challenging support role for young people.

Frankie Sulke: Can I just apologise for using the word “neutral”? I completely agree with my colleague on my right.

Q 160

Frankie Sulke: I can use the word “neutral” here, I think, but I am worried about it now. On provider-neutral commissioning, the principle that we are looking at the best-quality provision whoever provides it—obviously, it will provided in the place that it is best able to provide  it—must be fundamental as we go into this new world. Keeping focused on the learner and on making sure that what we commission is learner led, while taking account of employer need, is also critical. However, it is fundamental that we look at this across providers. The provision in the Bill to require local authorities to, one, secure learner choice and diversity and, two, work across local authorities, ought to give some measure of reassurance to providers. I agree that they are understandably nervous and those of us who are engaged in what we are rather pompously calling “dry runs”, sitting with the Learning and Skills Council going forward, are learning a considerable amount about how we build trust. Relationships between local authorities and providers are generally very strong—we have talked about academies, but also for general FE colleges—but there is still nervousness.

Q 161

Les Lawrence: If elected Members began to influence things to that extent, the whole veracity of the commissioning process would be seriously undermined and would not allow for planning, in the sense of concentrating on the learner. That becomes particularly important with vulnerable young people and at what I call the “age of transfer”, which is now 19, in terms of the support that a young person has up to that age. In the adult arena that support is a lot less, therefore, we need to have a very strong commissioning framework that allows all partners to join with the local authorities to ensure that there is a consistency in transfer and support such that learners can continue, especially if we are talking about apprenticeships. They do not suddenly stop at 18 or 19, they go on into adult learning arrangements. With our responsibilities to those with learning difficulties up to 25, it is absolutely important that we have the depth of those relationships right and have the right commission framework, based around quality and meeting the needs of the young person first and foremost.

Q 162

Kieran Gordon: I think that it will happen where local authorities are encouraged to work actively in a collegiate way with the local authorities covering a travel-to-work or travel-to-learn area and where providers within a local authority patch are not protected out of loyalty or whatever. It is very important that we understand that when we talk about commissioning, we are not just talking about procurement. Very often, people actually mean procurement. Commissioning must start with the learners’ needs. It must be based on a robust assessment of learner need, which is informed by what young people themselves and advocates, such as guidance workers, say. Understand that, look at the trend analysis, and look at the performance of providers in situ and of those that could be brought in, because good commissioning, at times, involves decommissioning provision. It is a big task for local authorities to undertake and they cannot do it in isolation.

Frankie Sulke: May I be very cheeky and come back in with a point?

Q 163

Elizabeth Reid: I would probably phrase it slightly differently: are there schools that have underperformed for a long time, both in the relative and absolute sense? Yes, there are a number. As we all know, action was taken recently under the national challenge, so it is undeniable that there are schools that have not made progress as fast as we now know is possible. An awful lot has been learned about how to improve schools and how to do it quickly, so those are not situations that should be allowed to persist.

Q 164

Elizabeth Reid: I think that it is entirely reasonable. As I understand the Bill, the onus is first on the local authority and it is only if the local authority fails to take or secure adequate action that the Secretary of State would seek to intervene, and the proposition is that a power should be given to a Secretary of State for that purpose.

It seems to me that if people do not wish to see interventions of whatever sort—whether in a school or a local authority—then the answer may be to speed up the efforts to move out of the zone in which that is likely. It seems to me that that is actually what is happening up and down the country and it is right and proper that that should be so. It would be desirable if there were no circumstances in which powers of intervention were necessary.

Q 165

Les Lawrence: It is an interesting arena, because on the one hand we have been accused by the Association of School and College Leaders of interfering too much to try and up the performance of schools. On the other  hand, there is an implication here that we have not done enough intervention to bring up school performance. The extent to which local authorities in the main have challenged schools has been variable, to be fair. To an extent, it has also been governed by the fact that the current process can be long-winded with warning notices; the extent to which you can assist through the SIP process; a warning notice plus getting the inspectors in; the extent to which there is a period for a degree of improvement; and also the power, I have to say, to be able to both remove governing bodies and/or the leadership in a school to affect change.

Q 166

Les Lawrence: The role of the Secretary of State, irrespective of which Government they are in should always be the final recourse of sanction. If the local authority is not exercising those powers, which it has been given, in a way that brings about improvement, then I think the Secretary of State should intervene to draw the attention of the local authority to its failings. But I would go back to say that a lot of local authorities would like to exercise their powers more effectively and quicker than to remove some of the bureaucracy in exercise of those existing powers.

Q 167

Frankie Sulke: The devil will always be in the detail. The Bill talks about standards the pupils might reasonably be expected to attain and about standards previously attained by them. It depends on the definitions attached at any time for any reason to the words. They seem completely reasonable words and it is completely reasonable to expect intervention if a local authority is not being creative, proactive and quick about turning schools around. There can be no excuse for local authorities not to be vigorous. We have sufficient powers at the moment to intervene at those schools. If you ask the Department, of course it will say that it wants the bureaucracy reduced even further, certainly where schools might not be in the local authority’s bottom category but where you would still want to have powers to federate them, to remove the governing body, and you are not able to. There is a balance for when that happens. What a lot of local authorities do, in terms of school improvement, is through persuasion and negotiation.

Q 168

Frankie Sulke: Of all the questions I thought I might be asked, whether I trusted the Government did not come up in my preparation. There is nothing wrong with the words in the Bill. It is always possible, though obviously not for current incumbents, to imagine that the words might be used unreasonably in future. How they are interpreted in terms of what reasonably might be expected from pupils could be argued. The main principle is perfectly reasonable—that local authorities ought to be doing their job in quickly turning round schools and ought to be held accountable and that the Government can intervene if that is not happening.

Q 169

Daniel Moynihan: I agree with that. Yes.

Q 170

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

On resuming—

Kathleen Tattershall: I am the chair of Ofqual, the new regulator.

Andrew Hall: I am acting chief executive of the Qualification and Curriculum Authority.

Greg Watson: I am the chief executive of Oxford Cambridge and RSA Examinations. We are one of the leading UK awarding bodies for general and vocational qualifications.

Mike Creswell: I am the director general of the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance. We are the largest general qualifications provider.

Q 171

Kathleen Tattershall: First, as you say, independence is critical to the role of the regulator. It is very important that the Bill is seen to give us the independence that we need to carry out our functions, independent of Government as a non-ministerial Department reporting to Parliament. On appointments, there will be a very clear and public process of advertising for the individuals who are interested in our committee and ensuring, through a proper process involving the Committee on Standards in Public Life, that they make clear any interest that they might have in this area, and secondly demonstrate their willingness to manage any conflicts of interests. What we are looking for on the Ofqual board is a range of expertise, not just in education but in other areas. In populating the Ofqual board we will look for people both within and outside education, but wherever there are conflicts of interest we will also look for ways in which they will be managed.

Q 172

Kathleen Tattershall: I think individuals such as those you mention would bring skills, experience and qualities to the organisation from which it would benefit. But we have a very small number of places on the board. It is between seven and 12. Clearly, not every interest, as it were, can find a seat on the Ofqual board. Indeed, having said what I have just said about interest, we will be looking for individuals who bring expertise and experience to the board, not representative individuals in that sense.

Q 173

Greg Watson: The Secretary of State was very clear in initiating the drive for an independent regulator. That was in response to comments that we and others made over a prolonged period. The intention was to put standards above suspicion. There is something that dogs the public debate every summer about a perceived involvement in how standards are set, and I think that that is exacerbated by the rate of change, potentially. We changed the qualifications system faster than we have ever done in this country, and the ever-shortening cycle and ever more frequent iterations of some of the qualifications that we trust most highly seems in itself to destabilise trust in some way.

I think that the clear intent in the Bill is to try to address those two issues, first by putting some clearer blue water between Ministers and decision making about standards, so there can be absolutely no allegation of any involvement of one in the other, and secondly by also being a check and balance on the tendency to change the system too often in destabilising ways. If you like, the intent is to act as a sane, slightly cautious, evidence-based evaluator of the case for change, always wondering what the risks might be as well as what the benefits might be, so that when we do change the qualifications system, we do so knowingly, understanding what risks we might be taking and taking the actions needed in order to make sure that those risks are not realised.

Q 174

Greg Watson: Yes, absolutely. It is important, equally, that Ofqual is independent from those it regulates. I think that it is important that Ofqual should be seen to be a strong, independent voice, not simply a sort of super-exam board, if I can characterise it that way. We would very much like to see—we very much advocated it—a strong, vocal, visible, publicly authoritative organisation. That said, we have some concerns as to whether the Bill, as drafted, entirely delivers on that intention. It is clearly in the direction that we had hoped and there are some clear principles set out that drive for independence, but there are particular features that seem still to leave residual opportunities for a Secretary of State, now or in the future, to intervene on a rainy day. Of course, it is on a rainy day that suspicions arise about political involvement.

Q 175

Kathleen Tattershall: First, as far as the annual dumbing-down debate is concerned, I think that it would be foolish to expect it to end overnight because of the creation of an independent regulator. Clearly, we will do all that we can to address all the issues and bring the debate into the public arena in a very transparent and open way in order to get a better understanding of what actually goes into creating the standards of public qualifications.

Whether we need an explicit power to introduce other forms of sampling is more debatable. On a particular occasion down the line, we may well think that we need to look at other means to get a better view, but I am very conscious that, once you begin to think that way, you must also think of the technicalities involved in setting up a sampling process. It is not as easy as choosing the sampler and then developing a test; you have to think very carefully about how that impinges on the curriculum.

My understanding of the legislation is that we are not precluded from such thoughts down the line, and I do not think it particularly necessary for the Bill to give us the powers explicitly. I do not think that there is anything in it that precludes us from saying, at some point in time, that we need to look at standards in a slightly different way.

Q 176

Kathleen Tattershall: I think that, if we are talking about Ofqual being a regulator of the educational standard system, that is a very different beast from that in the legislation, which presents Ofqual as a regulator of qualifications and national curriculum assessments. That in itself is a very broad brief; there are thousands of qualifications that come under the regulator’s system. If Ofqual looked more broadly at educational standards per se, as opposed to using some sort of standardised test to inform what the qualifications framework might be, it would be a very different organisation from the one in the legislation. I am not certain whether that would give the organisation too broad a brief and get in the way of doing a good job on the qualifications front, as well as elsewhere.

There are other organisations that look at educational issues; Ofsted, for example, looks at the quality of teaching and what actually goes on in schools. If you go down the line of Ofqual being an educational body, as you describe, you have to look very carefully at the demarcation lines between organisations such as Ofsted and organisations such as Ofqual. Furthermore, you have to be very careful regarding the burden that you might place on schools in terms of them being answerable to more than one body.

Q 177

Mike Creswell: The critical contribution that Ofqual could make to begin to end that debate, which will plainly take time, would be to provide much greater clarity than it has in the past about the precise meaning of the standards of qualifications. In the distinction that you draw between educational standards and monitoring students’ general progress on the one hand, and examination standards on the other, it is important to distinguish between the two functions that qualifications currently fulfil. One is to qualify learners, mainly young people, for progression—to go on in education or employment in a way that fits their talents and abilities. For that purpose, it is reasonable that students should essentially get a grade that reflects the performance that they give when they are assessed. However, performance will vary with the context, so a performance achieved in modular examinations will be different from a performance indicated in a final exam, and performance for course work will be different from performances in exams. For the moment, the definition of standards that I believe we all hold dear is about performance during the assessment process. The job that you are asking for, that of assessing the underlying education achievements of students, is grafted on to the qualifications results, and it requires a different methodology to the sort that you outline.

I agree with Kathleen. To give Ofqual both these jobs would be to give it some enormously difficult work, but it can really make a difference to the qualifications  debate if it is much clearer than anyone has been in the past about how it conceives standards, how it would measure the standards set by the awarding bodies and how it would evaluate what the awarding bodies are doing on standards. That is the critical contribution that it could make.

Greg Watson: The answer to your question is yes; I believe that Ofqual will in time make a difference, but it will not happen overnight. It will do so in three important ways. First, if it can achieve the unequivocal independence that we have talked about—there is some way yet to go to make it certain—so that its voice will resound differently in public and the statements that it makes will seen to be objective, considered and free of any other consideration than making a fair judgment on whether the qualifications hold water. That is the first thing.

The second thing is that Ofqual can play a role in opening up the qualifications system and making it more transparent. I think that the burden of your question was about benchmarking qualification results to other tests in order to provide some kind of external confirmation. In reality, in the examination system today we do a lot of unseen statistical work to correlate the achievements of the same learner in different subjects, the same learning across different exam boards and similar learners at different times taking the same qualification. We use a series of different measures in order to triangulate—to ensure that we keep the standards in the same place. However, little of that is open to public view. An authoritative and informed regulator can play a role in making that more visible, making public the assurance that qualifications are sound.

The third thing is that I would expect Ofqual, as compared to its predecessor, to devote more of its efforts to scrutinising what bodies like the OCR do at the point when we are developing qualifications. As a result, we would be grilled more than we might have been in the past about how we put a qualification together, how we propose that the assessment arrangements will work, how we will set standards and what some of the challenges might be in setting that standard—if, for instance, we had a change in the structure of a qualification. The very process of being challenged by a regulator at that all-important point when the qualification is created would put us on our mettle. That, too, will add to the public’s confidence that it is all the more visible and accountable.

Q 178

Kathleen Tattershall: First, our powers and responsibilities are wrapped up in three elements of the Bill. One is the objectives; you referred to those partly in terms of the efficiency objective, but there are also the standards objectives in relation to qualifications and the national curriculum assessments. Secondly, there are the conditions that we can lay down. I would expect those conditions  to be very much linked to those objectives. Some of the general conditions that we would stipulate are all conditions about how we ensure that standards are maintained throughout the process. Greg made a reference to the very beginning of the process, about how people will set the requirements and the tests, and it seems that that is all part of the standard setting. So, the conditions will address the objectives of the standards.

Thirdly, there are the powers that we have, particularly the powers of direction for when the awarding body falls short. Those are powerful powers, but I stress that we want to ensure, through working with them, that the awarding bodies can begin to address thorny issues and come up with solutions that are acceptable to the regulator. So, I think that that is right. We also have powers to cap fees, but one power that we do not have, and which I discussed with the Secretary of State via an exchange of letters on 10 February, is the power to fine. The power to fine should be in the armoury of any regulator because it is an intermediate sanctioning step before the ultimate nuclear step of not recognising or taking away the recognition of an awarding body. That power is open to debate, and the Secretary of State has said that he is very open-minded about it. We argue that it would be a very useful power, if only as a deterrent, and it would prevent the use of that nuclear power at the end. The powers in this legislation, all linked as I see them to the objectives and conditions that we would lay down, help towards Ofqual being a very authoritative independent regulator. There is that power to fine, and there are arguments about whether it is explicit enough that we are talking about standards. For me that is explicit, but if others feel that it is not the Bill has to be very clear about where Ofqual stands in respect of directing standards.

Q 179

Greg Watson: There are two important areas in which Parliament could usefully play a role in increasing the transparency and accountability of Ofqual. The first is key appointments. Above and beyond what is eventually in a Bill, significance is likely to be attached to the individuals who come to occupy the senior roles, and I think that there will be a lot to be said for some scrutiny of those roles. The subject of potential conflicts of interest has come up and there will be some scope to explore what those might be. That is all part of building public confidence.

The second dimension that could be developed in more detail in the Bill is what Ofqual might report on annually. Rather than there being an open-ended obligation to produce a report, perhaps it should be required to report under a series of defined headings and on particular types of issues or concerns that might have arisen during the year. Perhaps, if there remains any provision for the Secretary of State to intervene in certain situations, it should report on each occasion on which the Secretary of State has used that power and for what reason.

Q 180

Greg Watson: That would be potentially helpful. The report is one element; what follows from the report is another. It seems to me that the opportunity for a Select Committee exploration of that report each year could be quite instructive and could help to tease out the underlying issues that might lie behind the report.

Q 181

Greg Watson: The other benefit that we might derive from that is that there would be some sort of continuity in the public debate. Issues that emerged in one year might become part of Ofqual’s published plan for the following year and the following year’s discussion would reflect back on whether or not the right actions had been taken, to determine if progress had been made or if further action needed to be carried forward to the year after that.

Q 182

Kathleen Tattershall: Ofqual will take the evidence that it has and that comes to its attention to make any pronouncement, one way or the other, on issues of that kind. That is something that we have not particularly explored and I do not think that it would be appropriate for me to come to a view without full consideration of the evidence.

Q 183

Kathleen Tattershall: What we will be doing as a regulator is looking at the evidence, particularly where there are any issues of public concern. If that issue is a matter of public concern, clearly we will be seeking evidence on it, but there are a range of other issues where our starting point would always be to look at the evidence and to come to a considered judgment on the evidence.

Q 184

Kathleen Tattershall: Ofqual has been set up to regulate the system, to get better public accountability for the system, to ensure that there is a better public understanding of the issues and to assure public confidence. That is what regulators do. I do not think that it has been set up to address any specific concerns, such as the one that was just mentioned. However, where there are other concerns, a body such as Ofqual will be better placed, because of its independence, particularly from Government, and its accountability to Parliament, to look at any particular issue, come to a view on it and make a report.

Q 185

Kathleen Tattershall: The reason for Ofqual being established was not necessarily related to a specific concern. It was to do with public confidence in the qualification systems as a whole. What you mentioned may be a specific concern.

Q 186

Kathleen Tattershall: We have been set up to address issues of public confidence in the qualification system. Where there are specific concerns, clearly we have the powers under this Bill to look at them and to come to a considered view, based on the evidence. I will take a different sort of issue, because there were concerns last year about the national curriculum test and Ofqual took action on that by setting up a public inquiry. So it would be precipitate of me to draw any sort of conclusion at this particular time without having considered the evidence in the manner that Ofqual says it will consider the evidence before it makes any public announcements.

Q 187

Kathleen Tattershall: We are regulating a system that comprises the general qualifications awarding bodies, which are represented here by Greg and Mike. There is a third awarding body, Edexcel, which is not represented here today. We have fellow regulators regulating similar bodies in Wales and in Northern Ireland. There are a host of vocational qualifications bodies. In fact, I have just had a note passed to me to say that there are 150 awarding bodies in all that come within the regulator’s system. Most of those are in the vocational field; some of them are newly admitted employers, who also have the responsibility to make awards.

Q 188

Kathleen Tattershall: Vocational qualifications need to be seen to represent the standards of the particular industries in which they operate. There are sector skills councils, which act as a filter for employers, to ensure that the skills and qualities which employers are looking for are well represented in the vocational field. It is important that the vocational examinations which are provided actually fulfil a purpose which employers—

Q 189

Kathleen Tattershall: The concerns are sometimes that the skills are not those which employers want. The concerns are sometimes that the competences are not set at a level which employers regard as appropriate. Those are the issues in the vocational field which we will be looking at very carefully under the rules and regulations that we have through this Bill.

Q 190

Andrew Hall: I think it is fundamentally very good news for QCDA. It removes some of the potential internal mental blockages that perhaps prevented us in the past from being as rigorous as we could be in doing our delivery jobs. I remember that when I joined the organisation over two years ago, we would sit there and say we designed things for the Government, we worked closely with the Government—that was part of our remit—we reformed qualifications, we delivered assessments. Then in the same legal organisation, we had a potential regulator sitting there. We know from the way we operate that there was no interference, that there was independence. But the public perception was quite hard to see in that position. So I think, truthfully, it was very clear and very good news. It was my first comment when I walked through the door: why do we do this? So actually, it lets us do that. It lets us focus very clearly on perhaps adding more value to the development chain. We are clear that we can challenge the awarding bodies in another type of independent way that says we are here to provide advice and support and some creative challenge around the process, and do not have to worry about being seen to regulate ourselves.

Q 191

Andrew Hall: Seamless transitions, I think, are sometimes a dream. The reality is that there is a lot of work that has had to go into planning how we do this. As accounting officer, I am, as of today, still responsible for many of the aspects of Ofqual’s accountabilities, and that is a fact of life. You cannot walk away from that. The way we dealt with that was to set up a number of internal processes that very clearly segregate what is the regulatory activity that is a process and an output and a product, and we have helped Ofqual build the capacity to do that. We have provided the legal support, the financial support and the system support to deliver what they needed to do.

Probably the most challenging area is around qualification development, where historically there is someone who develops the criteria that go into the qualifications that awarding bodies produce, and then regulates those criteria as they are delivered. It is in that process that we have put a considerable amount of work into developing two teams that have worked together for about six months to really tease out the nuances in there. I think we just need to continue to drive that process for however long it is until vesting day, and make sure we support the operational transfer, the systems transfer that leaves Ofqual properly resourced to go forward and do its job.

Q 192

Andrew Hall: There are some minor details around transitional arrangements on which we have dealt with the officials, but fundamentally it has everything we need to do what we want to do. It is for us almost a dream ticket, because it makes it very clear what we have to do.

Q 193

Kathleen Tattershall: I think the question was probably addressed to me. May I take the last point, because I think that it has been covered to some extent in the earlier answers? The whole process of appointments to the Ofqual board has to be a very open, public process and one involving the Public Standards Board. Greg also helpfully mentioned that Parliament itself will have an opportunity to scrutinise the process. I think that conflicts of interest have to be addressed at that particular stage, it has to be clear that whoever is appointed, whatever their interests might be—whether they come from an employment or an educational background—that those conflicts of interest are going to be managed. In public life, people do manage conflicts of interest in a very open way. The worst conflicts of interest are those that you do not know about. What we need is a very open process whereby everyone will understand the background of the person concerned. I think that that is a manageable process.

Secondly, when we come to consistency, the regulator will require awarding bodies that offer the same qualification to act in a consistent manner, particularly with regard to the setting of standards. We can do that through working with the awarding bodies—it is important that we start with the premise that we do work with them because they have a lot of expertise, great professionalism and a commitment to ensuring that standards are maintained from year to year and are appropriate to the qualification concerned. It is appropriate that our starting point will always be working with the awarding bodies to ensure that we have an agreement about how we are going to address issues where inconsistent behaviour could lead to different standards. If we cannot achieve that through consensus, then the Bill gives us the power of direction and that is what we would have to rely on.

I am sorry, I have forgotten your first point.

Q 194

Kathleen Tattershall: Indeed it is. That is why I believe it is very important that the Bill not only gives us the independence and the autonomy, but that it is also seen to do so. Perception is a very important element of how  people understand autonomy and independence. It is not just the words on the page, it is actually how it is all enacted.

Moving to appointments, the Secretary of State will approve appointments to the board. I do not think that it is explicit in the Bill, but it would certainly be my expectation that the Ofqual chair would be involved in that appointment process. It may be that there needs to be some thought given as to whether that should be explicit in the Bill, as I believe it is in the case of the UK Statistics Authority. There is also a little bit in the Bill about the Secretary of State approving the numbers of Ofqual staff, terms and conditions of service and so on. I understand that that is all part of the accountability of Ofqual on matters that have an effect on the spending of Ofqual. It may be that there are other ways of looking at that, rather than giving an impression that the Secretary of State is, as it were, in control of Ofqual. Of course, again, that would undermine the perception, even though the reality behind the perception might be somewhat different. There are ways in which the Committee’s scrutiny of the Bill might address some of the concerns that you have expressed here, and might demonstrate more clearly that Ofqual is a body that is truly independent of Government.

Q 195

Kathleen Tattershall: That is always the point, of course, at which the issue of standards comes very much to the fore, and setting a standard for a new qualification is a difficult challenge for all concerned. It is a challenge for the awarding bodies and it will be a challenge for the regulator. That is why it is so important that we have a means of talking with the awarding bodies at an early stage about how those standards should be set and how a continuity with previous standards must be established. The Bill gives Ofqual the authority to take the lead on that, and to ensure that we all have a clear understanding of how we will go about setting standards for any new qualifications that come along.

Q 196

Greg Watson: There is one particularly important area that the Committee might find useful to explore during the Bill. That is the process by which qualifications are developed. To clarify, in the qualifications system, bodies like OCR, AQA and others develop qualifications. We write the syllabuses and, from the syllabuses, we write exams and other kinds of assessments. From those, we set standards and award qualifications. The regulator is established to oversee that and—if I can use an aviation analogy—make sure that those planes are fit to fly.

As in the aviation or food industry, the crucial job of a regulator is at the start of that process. It must make sure that only planes that are fit to fly are allowed to  take to the air and only food that is fit to eat is put on supermarket shelves. That is important because it might be tempting to think that the regulator needs lots of powers only at the end of the process to beat up awarding bodies when the standards do not add up. However, most of the risk in the qualifications arena is when qualifications are created, and we would like to see Ofqual able to assert its independence powerfully at that point.

If one reads only the Ofqual chapter in the Bill, it would seem that that is the model we are moving towards. However, an alternative route through this process is suggested if one reads the Ofqual chapter and the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency together, along with the accompanying notes. That process would begin with Ministers, and pass through QCDA, which might be heavily involved in developing the criteria against which qualifications are licensed. Only then would Ofqual have the opportunity to either say yes or no, often—presumably—under some pressure to say yes. Ofqual’s role is then simply reduced to monitoring the qualification as it rolls out and trying to deal with any difficult features of the qualifications as they unfold.

We think that it is worth exploring whether the intent that is clear in the Ofqual chapter of the Bill still stands up when the QCDA chapter, schedules and explanatory notes are stacked up; that suggests more of a subtle interplay between the bodies than we think the Secretary of State might want to achieve.

Q 197

Mike Creswell: Greg is making a good point. It is critical that Ofqual is able to take a view about developments that come forward from QCDA in so far as those developments affect its capacity to regulate standards and liability and so on. This concerns the way Ofqual is able to take a view and for that view to stick when it comes to the finalisation of the criteria. I take some comfort from the fact that it is Ofqual that will own those criteria and, presumably, unless those criteria will enable it to regulate, then it will not accept them.

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

On resuming—

Q 198

Greg Watson: I am happy to answer that in all seriousness. The first thing is to repeat what I said earlier: a regulator that finds itself counting crashed planes and fining people for crashing them is an unsuccessful regulator. The important thing is that effort, power, authority and resource within Ofqual must be devoted to getting qualifications that are fit for use into the system in the first place. That is an important principle. The second thing concerns OCR, as I mentioned earlier. It is a charity, a not-for-profit organisation embedded in a university, part of an international group that lives on  its reputation. The currency of the business we are in, if you want to call it that, is reputation, integrity and trust. If you want to wound my organisation, you wound its reputation rather than its finances. Most of what is envisaged for Ofqual will be about a public debate. If at any stage Kathleen and her colleagues were to feel that OCR was not doing its job properly, the threat of being shamed is much stronger than the threat of being fined for an organisation like mine.

Mike Creswell: I would add that AQA is not-for-profit but we do a lot of examining in areas where we believe there is a social need because we are an educational charity. It would be passing strange to have to make provision, possibly at the expense of the examining that we do for its social and educational good, against the possibility of being fined. I would think it inappropriate, given the structure of the awarding bodies and the kind of social contract that exists about putting in effort and resources that are not profitable but are socially desirable.

Q 199

Greg Watson: We will have to wait and see what becomes of Ofqual. I am mentally playing the 150-year-old Cambridge brand against the one-year-old Ofqual brand. It may take some time before Ofqual has that global traction.

Q 200

Mike Creswell: Yes, happily, without rehearsing the GCSE science thing, because in a way that is done and dusted. It absolutely highlights that I hear what Kathleen says when she talks about the power to direct to awarding bodies how they should go about setting standards. I am clear that in broad procedural terms, that power is there. Indeed, I am clear that in the science incident, all the awarding bodies had followed the procedure as laid down. However precise that procedure was made, I am sure that we would all follow it, but there is a distinction between following the process and what results come out of it.

What the GCSE science incident really highlighted was that however much Ofqual may be empowered to command a process, that does not guarantee results and standards that are consistent at the end of the process. That is what the science thing illustrated. That is why it is extremely important that when events like that arise—though rare, they will arise again—Ofqual has the authority in the room so that everybody understands that though everybody will have followed the process, if the outcomes are looking different, Ofqual has the power to compel a standard to change. There is a key distinction between Ofqual guaranteeing the actual standards set and Ofqual guaranteeing that the processes are all in tune. The same processes do not, as GCSE showed, necessarily produce identical standards.

Q 201

Mike Creswell: I think that Ofqual should simply have a power to direct, for a particular qualification, a particular standard on a particular occasion. It would be used rarely, if ever, but it would prevent Ofqual, at a time when urgent action might be needed—certainly for GCSEs and A-levels—from finding itself in negotiation with awarding bodies about a change in the standards that they are proposing to set. It would ensure that Ofqual had the authority to do that. I have to say that that requires the clarity that I talked about earlier about precisely how we define consistent standards. That is why part of our submission to the Committee is about the need for Ofqual to establish clear and measurable criteria for assessing whether our standards are consistent.

Q 202

Greg Watson: No. The Bill is very clear, actually, as I see it. Bearing in mind what I have already said about the importance of Ofqual applying maximum effort at the beginning of the process and making sure that qualifications are fit for purpose when launched, I think that there is then a sufficient backstop in the Bill in the form of a power to direct that is open-ended enough to be used in the way that Mike is talking about. However, I hope that the Committee recognises that it will always be a failure of regulation for awarding bodies and the regulator to find themselves in that situation.

Q 203

Greg Watson: I think that the Bill is already clear enough. More importantly, I think that the lesson to be learned from that situation is that by the time the technical statistical experts from the awarding bodies were sat with Kathleen and her colleagues in the summer, it was too late. There was a gap there. Work could have been done three years earlier, when the structure of the qualification was changing and the assessment arrangements were going to change, to better understand what the features of the new qualification were likely to throw up in the way of new challenges.

Q 204

Mike Creswell: No, I am not going to do that at all. I merely wanted to make the point that I agree, but that is precisely why Ofqual, for the first time in this country—the previous regulator did not do it, and the awarding bodies have not done it—needs to establish very clear measures by which it will evaluate whether our standards are consistent, in advance. Then we will not be in the situation that Greg described. Those two things—the power to direct on a specific standard consistently, and clarity about some of the key issues that underpin that unfortunate public debate every summer—are what I hope Ofqual would have.

Greg Watson: Briefly, I want to make a connection with the earlier discussion about accountability to Parliament and what might be in an annual report from  Ofqual. I imagine it would be specifically laid out in the Act that Ofqual reports those kinds of incidents and each and every occasion on which it directed an awarding body. That would mean that the direction is visible, and that it could be accompanied by a commentary on why a direction is necessary, given all the other powers that might have been used earlier in the process to avoid it.

Kathleen Tattershall: It is good that the awarding bodies have said so clearly that Ofqual should have the powers. I totally agree with everything that was said on that, but I happen to believe that the Bill already gives us the powers, as I described earlier, on conditions and direction. That is clear. However, I reiterate what was said: there is no point coming to a regulator two weeks before the publication of results and saying, “This is a problem that we have not been able to solve.” For the record, Ofqual asked nobody to lower standards. There were three awarding bodies, each of which worked professionally to maintain standards. Two weeks before exam results, you are not in a position to perform an act of Solomon to prevent the baby being cut in half, as it were.

The only way in which you can regulate qualifications is to get it right at the beginning. You need to lay down the requirements very clearly. We are expecting every awarding body that is offering the same qualification to do so in order to maintain standards.

We have already started that process since the summer. We looked ahead and, given the limited powers that we have under the current legislation, we have been working with our colleagues to ensure that there is no wide discrepancy, as there was last summer, between the interpretation of the evidence that you need to set grade bandings that are consistent across the boards and over time. We have been looking at the AS units that have been awarded. We have a system in place, and we are monitoring it, and we do not anticipate the sort of problem that we had in the summer.

Kathleen Tattershall: It is a very big part of looking at standard setting in the first year of a qualification. Clearly, the nature of the cohort, their prior abilities, which you might judge from existing evidence—

Kathleen Tattershall: Assuming that they are identical in a very large cohort, you would expect a broadly similar pattern, even if there are some shifts because of the nature of the curriculum change or the accessibility of the examination, modules or whatever. However, it is  not so simple, in so far as you have three awarding bodies, each of which has its share of the market. You have got to be very clear when looking at the outcomes of the three awarding bodies that you are truly reflecting the nature of the entry to those exams, and the nature of the challenges that candidates have faced.

For me, there is a clear balance between the technical and statistical evidence of the nature of the cohort, which is clearly a major part of standard setting. However, bearing in mind that young people and old people are working very hard for their qualification and looking at the evidence that they produce—their scripts and other things—a balance of professional judgment and technical expertise must be struck, which all the awarding bodies recognise. The issue is how much value we place on those matters.

Q 205

Kathleen Tattershall: Not at the moment, because we do not have the power to do that.

Q 206

Kathleen Tattershall: No, we have not. I think that that would really be pre-empting the parliamentary scrutiny of the Bill. When we reach the appropriate point we will advertise for board members in an open and transparent manner.

Q 207

Kathleen Tattershall: We clearly need someone with authority and the ability to understand all the issues of the nature of what we have been talking about and who has a very clear understanding of the requirements of the outside world and its expectations of the qualifications. We need someone who will command respect from both yourselves, as parliamentarians, and the wider public. However, you are asking me to write a job description for a job that currently does not exist.

Q 208

Kathleen Tattershall: I am sorry, but I am ignorant of that fact and would have to advise you about that after the event.

Q 209

Kathleen Tattershall: As Andrew has said, we currently exist very much within QCA, so the finances come from QCA. When we come to sit down and talk about what an Ofqual chief executive’s salary is worth, clearly one of the touchstones will be other public bodies, such as Ofsted and the QCDA. At this point, however, when the Bill is at an early stage in its passage through Parliament, it would be inappropriate for us to go down that line and pre-empt your consideration of it.

Q 210

Greg Watson: One hundred and fifty years.

Q 211

Greg Watson: We have advocated for a long time the need for a more visible and stronger regulator in that sector, hand on heart. I have said that the value of what we do rests so much on our public reputation, public trust and a sense of integrity in the system, but there is clearly a persistent challenge out there, partly about levels of political involvement, which I think is unjustified but understand where the perception comes from.

There is also a perception that change is too frequent, too ill-understood and that it too often puts standards at risk without us knowing the risk we are taking. I suffer the consequences of that gradual erosion of trust as much as anyone, not just in the summer, but in the perpetual and corrosive debate that runs in the media much of the time. I am looking forward to the day when there is an independent voice that will stand alongside me and, when I have got it right, will say so to build pubic confidence in what I do and that is willing, when I do not get it right, to take that into the public domain so that we can see it.

Q 212

Greg Watson: No, the thing I want to address is the public perception that we are somehow giving away a standard so that we can demonstrate in a way that gets public confidence that we are maintaining standards. I believe that we are maintaining standards and think that we go to extraordinary lengths to understand changes. For example, as the A-level is changing structure we are going to unprecedented lengths to understand the consequences of that change and some of the risk to which we and the people who take our qualifications might be exposed. That is why I want it there.

I will be honest and say that, with regard to vocational qualifications, which OCR is also involved in, I have concerns that varying degrees of rigour are applied to some qualifications by some bodies and think that it would be helpful to have a regulator who gave that more visibility. There are different sorts of risks. We have talked a lot about what might be thought of as higher profile qualifications, such as GCSEs and A-levels. In the area of vocational qualifications, where there are more different qualifications, where there often assessment arrangements that are dependent on a tutor in a college or a trainer in a training company making judgments about their own students, there are a range of additional challenges to making sure that those qualifications hold water. There is work to be done in that area, particularly with the current state of the economy and the drive to  put the right skills back into the economy, some of those qualifications will become more important than ever. It has been an area that has been under-regulated to date. I should like to see a stronger regulator in that area.

Mike Creswell: I think the straight answer to your question is that, yes, there are unquestionably commercial issues in competition between awarding bodies. One of the things that I think a strong and independent regulator will provide is an answer to the accusation that standards are dumbed down for commercial reasons. That is one of the reasons why we welcome a regulator. The other reason is because in the end the system that we operate is only there to provide good, valuable qualifications for learners so that they can go on and progress and live happy and fulfilled lives. That will not happen without some very clear public accountability and some very clear public assurance that those qualifications are worth the paper they are printed on. For that reason, put together with the commercial competition point, it is an extremely good development to have an independent regulator for qualifications.