Shadow education secretary Stephen Twigg MP responds to today's school league tables.
Stephen Twigg MP (Labour and Co-operative, Liverpool West Derby) is the shadow education secretary
One of the Labour achievements I am particularly proud of is the way we narrowed the gap in results between students from better and less well off backgrounds during our time in office.
It’s easy for politicians to talk the language of social mobility – after all, who would argue against these things? But it is far more difficult to transform aspiration into equality.
There is still a long way to go in education and I am determined that we break the link between economic background and school results, as countries like Finland manage to.
Getting more working class children into university has long been a Labour ambition. It’s why our target of getting 50% of young people into higher education was right. We massively increased opportunities for state school children to fulfil their potential.
It’s why it is so worrying to see the way in which the government is turning the clock back. The announcement to get rid of AS Levels as a progressive qualification to a full A Level is a blow to social mobility.
There’s no need to take my word for it – just read this from Cambridge University:
“This change is unnecessary and, if implemented, will jeopardise over a decade’s progress towards fairer access to the University of Cambridge.”
Today, a decline in the numbers of students getting two or three A Level passes has been revealed, and there are a quarter of schools where students do not get the top A Level results needed for the best universities.
Improving access to university is not fundamentally about quotas for state school pupils – it is about state schools providing high quality teaching, and ensuring there is support and mentoring for gifted and talented pupils who could go to our top universities.
But we need to go further than that today. We need to also take action for the forgotten 50 per cent of students who don’t go to university.
They deserve high aspirations too. That means creating a high status standard to aim for at age 18 – a Technical Baccalaureate. This would include rigorous vocational courses, accredited by businesses and a quality work experience placement. We also have to strengthen the links between schools and the world of work – with employers sitting on governing bodies and ‘work discovery’ programmes for primary school children.
In addition, we need to broaden the experience of young people from age 16, ensuring that all students study English and Maths until 18.
The Government is not interested in all students doing these subjects – only those who don’t get a grade C or higher. But 84% of students who get a B or C in Maths GCSE drop the subject at 16. Michael Gove would leave those thousands of students behind.
The Education Secretary constantly undermines technical and practical subjects. So creative and vocational subjects like art, design and technology, music, computing and engineering have no value in his EBaccs or his new A Level reforms and are now being sidelined in schools.
A broad and balanced education is what we need if young people are going to aim high. That’s why I’m interested in establishing an A Level Baccalaureate which would provide a balance of different subjects, so young people are well rounded and grounded when they leave school. Sadly, the Government’s changes to A Levels will narrow options available to young people.
Yes we need to reform our exams and our curriculum, but it must be the right reform. Yes, let’s improve the design of qualifications in sciences,
Maths and languages, but in a way that improves the preparedness of school leavers for university, apprenticeships and the world of work.
That’s what I’ve asked a taskforce of business leaders and education experts, chaired by Professor Chris Husbands of the Institute of Education to do.
Two tier exams are not the answer. Michael Gove risks undermining a decade of social mobility, by reducing opportunities for state school pupils. He is truly the enemy of promise.
See also:
• Twigg: Gove’s plans will ‘take us back to the 19th century’ and risk a “decade of decline” – January 17th, 2013
19 Responses to “Twigg: Gove is the “enemy of promise””
Newsbot9
Even more examinations, male-biased, norm referenced (automatically writing a large % of students off, not that the Government have not ordered that for GCSE’s anyway), completely inflexible to the topic…
David Lindsay
“Male-biased”? Apart from the odd statistically rogue year, girls always did better at O-level, because they are so much more mature in the mid-teens.
The gigantic “gender gap”, on the other hand, began precisely with the introduction of Thatcher’s wretched GCSEs. Girls now do vastly better than boys because the whole thing is designed to ensure that they do. Not the only problem with GCSE. But certainly one of them.
David Cameron and Michael Gove can do nothing about this, because that would entail denouncing Margaret Thatcher in the strongest possible terms.
How hard could it be to examine everyone both by coursework and by final examination, simply awarding the lower mark as the final grade? Sadly, a great deal easier than admitting that there was nothing Iron about the oft-turned Lady.
Newsbot9
Uh no. Pure exam qualifications are skewed male.
You’re complaining about the *absence* of bias.
And that sounds like a massive amount of work wasted, and it will penalise kids not good at everything. Quite the opposite of what you want to be doing – which is finding where they excel and taking that forward!
David Lindsay
No, they were not “skewed male”. They were not designed with the sex of the candidate in mind at all.
Whereas what we have now was designed specifically in order to favour girls massively, when of course they always did do a bit better than boys at that age.
All that you are saying is that girls are, and ought to be, advantaged if it is all written over several months by the teacher. That is one of the most patronising and misogynistic things that I have ever read.
And “work wasted” on what? On learning something, imply for the sake of learning it? Is that your definition of waste?
Newsbot9
Thanks for contradicting yourself there. They were written without fully understanding the sex bias inherent in them. This is unfair.
And no, you’re the one arguing for bias towards boys. Keep on arguing that 30 years of studies are all wrong, because {magic}.
And no, you want kids to have their WORST result counted. It means if they’re poor at exams, there’s no point them trying hard in coursework…they’re not going to get anywhere. And vice versa. Those kids are going to be disruptive, with nothing to look forward to…
It’s all about writing kids off in your world!
(Tip – we need to stop doing that. And we need to start paying attention to modern pedagogy at a level above individual teachers)