10:30 am
Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister, Children, Schools and Families; Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, Conservative)
Moving on to Ofqual, I did find a good quote on something else in the evidence session. In response to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke, Kathleen Tattersall said that
“several studies that have been conducted over the years involving international experts looking at our system have concluded that there is grade inflation. We need to bring in that sort of expertise.”——[Official Report, Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Public Bill Committee, 3 March 2009; c. 81, Q214.]
One of the people she had in mind was Professor Timms from Durham university, who has shown, for example, that students who achieved an E in A-level maths in 1998 would have achieved a B in 2004. My first question is, do you think that there was grade inflation in that period? Secondly, given that the QCA was divided into two parts, a QCA part and a regulatory part on different floors of the building—with a Chinese wall—why did the regulatory part fail to maintain standards over that period? Was it because you and your ministerial colleagues were interfering the whole time?