30 January 2003

As the regulator, the first thing that the QCA has done to ensure the smooth delivery of the A-Level examinations has been to set about implementing the Tomlinson reports in full.

In consultation with Teacher Associations, Headteacher Associations and Examination Boards, simple and clear descriptions have been produced for AS and A-Level standards, and on their embodiment in syllabus units, assessment materials, mark schemes and performance boundaries.

One description of standards has been written for teachers and examiners. This is on the QCA website (http://www.qca.org.uk/), and hard copies have been sent to all secondary schools, colleges and higher education institutions.

A second description, prepared for a general audience, is being promoted to students and parents as part of a wider communication programme.

In consultation with teachers and examiners, performance descriptions and exemplar materials have been produced for A-Level examinations using AS and A2 scripts from Summer 2002. These form the core material for training programmes co-ordinated by awarding bodies. These have been distributed to awarding bodies, and promoted through the QCA website and the education media.

The Code of Practice has been amended significantly. It is on the QCA website, and hard copies are with awarding bodies. There are three key changes:

1. In the setting of grade boundaries, the professional judgement of examiners takes precedence over technical and statistical evidence.
   
2. Common administrative and other practices are being implemented by awarding bodies, to reduce the burden on schools and colleges. For example, we are seeking to:
   
   • Reduce the number of separate batches of instructional material
   • Introduce a common reference and accountability system for queries from examination officers, students, teachers and parents
   • Introduce a common information system and user guide for key dates, codes and titles
   • Design and introduce common stationery, attendance registers and result slips
   • Extend opening hours for help lines
   • Design and introduce common packaging, including labels and description of contents
   • Notify Centres well in advance of question paper despatch dates
   • Provide a common training programme for examinations officers
   • Develop and introduce common software to allow the transfer of data and tracking of candidate progress
   • Achieve common documentation across all administrative functions that impact on Centres.
     
3. Where an accountable examiner and a chief examiner cannot agree on a grade boundary, the proposed decision of the accountable officer - supported by evidence - must be reported to the QCA forty-eight hours in advance of being taken. If the QCA does not accept the justification, it has the power publicly to dissent, and will give the awarding body twenty-four hours notice of its intention to do so.
   We have created a dedicated Curriculum 2000 website to publicise these materials, and have advertised them in a special issue of our newsletterOnQ, which is widely distributed to schools, colleges, awarding bodies and other partners. We are also using the AskQCA chat-line launched at the end of last year to communicate with teachers.

To promote confidence in A-Levels, QCA are promoting understanding of A-Levels, in conjunction with the other regulatory authorities, awarding bodies and DfES. Our approach is deliberately being shaped by the views of teachers, students and parents to reflect their concerns.

We have held focus groups with teachers and students and are carrying out surveys of teachers, parents, students and employers about what confidence they have in A-Levels, what they understand, what their concerns are and their needs for information.

We are creating a Students Roundtable (a student citizen panel of A-Level students) meeting twice a year to feed into QCA the voice of students and their advice. The outcomes of the Roundtable will be published.

Our focus group work indicates that teachers and students have fundamental questions about A-Levels which go far beyond the issue of what constitutes a standard, including re-assurance about the value of the qualification, the quality of marking, and explanation of the events last autumn.

The task ahead is rebuilding confidence in A-Levels across all the dimensions. It is about changing perceptions, not just more information. High levels of trust can easily change to high levels of uncertainty. Two years ago 79% of parents expressed a high level of trust in the examination boards.

We have an overall communication strategy geared to different audiences. It is clear that the examination system has to be more transparent, and explain itself.

Explaining the complexity of the balance, for example between statistics and professional judgement, is not an easy task and requires education - explanation rather than just description. Key ingredients of this work over the next six months are:

• A programme of engagement with the media to develop better relations with them: getting them to understand how the system works - not just educational correspondents, but all media
• A regional media programme
• Using teacher events and channels of communication
• Work with opinion formers and MPs to help shape a more realistic agenda for exams

Further, an independent observer of the 2003 examinations has been appointed (Mike Tomlinson himself); the Teacher Associations will have representatives involved in QCA auditing of the grading process; and an independent group of experts is being set up to report on the maintenance of standards in selected groups of subjects from year to year.

With these and other Tomlinson recommendations implemented, I am confident that we will not see a re-run of the 2002 episode, in precisely the same way.

The standards are clear; the awarding process is clear; the exemplar materials are abundant and thorough; the regulator has power not only to say whether a grading decision was made by a due process, but also whether or not it agrees with it; there is a massive, country-wide communication programme.

That is not to say that there will not be an episode of another type in 2003. Conducting public examinations in the way we do is a high-risk activity in a very complex and fraught environment. And all eyes will be on the examinations in summer, as never before.

At the very minimum we need be prepared again to witness the annual August outcry about falling standards.

I don't know how many people understand the difference between maintaining the A-Level standard and the number reaching that standard, but I am certain that it is a minority of the community. Following Mike Tomlinson's report and the subsequent work by the QCA and its partners, I hope that this enlightened minority has increased in size by a few percentage points - but will certainly remain a minority for 2003.

So at the very least, high pass rates and substantial numbers of A grades will be taken by some commentators to mean that the currency has again been devalued.

We must prepare the ground for that in advance: mount the arguments at every opportunity and with all audiences; pre-empt the debate by using the media to our own advantage; have clear, concise and convincing responses to the assault when it comes

The greatest risk in the delivery of the examinations in the summer of 2003 arises from the complex and demanding logistics of the operation.

There are 17.5 million unit entries, for which 50,000 examiners are required.

Now, there are 214,000 secondary teachers in England. I am not certain how many of them have taught at A-Level and have the experience to mark A-Level scripts, but the advice I have is that it is less than half of them.

So, 50,000 A-Level examinations means that a very substantial proportion of eligible and qualified teachers and lecturers must be prepared to commit professionally to the welfare of students, by undertaking marking, if the marking process is to be completed on time.

This is a very big ask. Many teachers and experienced examiners are jaundiced by the episode of last summer; examiners are poorly paid and in the main must work out of hours; the professional development and renewal that comes from marking has lost its sparkle for many examiners who have been marking for some years; the timelines are demanding and the administrative arrangements Dickensian.

Together with the Awarding Bodies and the Teacher and Headteacher Associations, the QCA and the other regulatory authorities are preparing for the summer examinations through the Examinations Taskforce at the QCA.

We have brought in PricewaterhouseCoopers as consultants to assist with project management, and to provide us with an independent health check on the state of preparation of the awarding bodies.

But I cannot assure you at the moment, with the degree of confidence I would like, that the smooth delivery of the examinations is assured.

We have a 21st century, internationally-celebrated qualification - the A-Level - underpinned by a 19th century cottage industry in which workers are paid piece rates and 24 million scripts move about the country at the whim of the Post Office.

If we succeed in delivering the 2003 summer examinations smoothly, it will be by good management rather than by luck, and by a hair's breadth. That really needs to be understood, as does the importance of all centres which provide students for examination also providing examiners to ensure that their scripts are marked.

Beyond 2003, the present system of examination delivery is simply not sustainable. The system is at breaking point. It needs radical reform.

What picture can be painted of the future delivery of A-Level examinations? Something like this:

• Examinations officers in centres should be able to input all data electronically, for all candidates and specifications, in a single transaction covering all awarding bodies.
• There might be a single, nationwide data centre, placed between schools and colleges on the one hand and awarding bodies on the other, which receives the consolidated entries, checks and confirms the data, and disaggregates it for forwarding to awarding bodies.
• Examinations officers should be able to amend their entries and to track the position of their centre's entries in the chain of processes from entry through to final marking, electronically - eliminating e-mails or telephone calls to up to five separate awarding bodies.
• Results should be received in common format, through a data centre, regardless of the awarding body - and forwarded to student centres and UCAS.
• Examining should be professionalised. Mike Tomlinson has talked and written about this: examining should be part of the normal professional activities of an experienced teacher, appropriately recognised in the remuneration package, and undertaken as part of the normal responsibilities of the profession.
• Greatly increased use should be made of daytime, non-residential marking centres, to improve both the efficiency and the validity of the marking process.
  Where feasible marking should be by on-line marking of scanned scripts or sections of scripts, with marks totalled electronically.
• As is the norm in the rest of the western world, results should be known before, rather than after, students apply for university selection.

All of this will cost new money, but none of it requires new technology - it has existed for more than a decade.

I turn now to the question of the assessment load.

As a matter of policy, I don't believe the QCA should currently take a public position on the uncoupling of AS and A2. Our immediate priorities should be the interests of the young people taking examinations in January and June 2003 - to give them a sense of stability and reassurance that the examinations they are taking will reap benefits in the form of a qualification which will endure and be respected.

But as the Qualifications Authority, we will of course make a number of formal submissions to Mike Tomlinson's review in due course.

Instead of canvassing the future structure of A-Levels or an English Baccalaureate, I want to conclude by making some remarks about the Government's response to the 14-19 Green Paper.

David Miliband crossed an educational Rubicon last Tuesday.

In releasing the Government's plan for the education of 14-19 year olds, the Minister for School Standards rejected the termsacademic andvocational education in favour ofgeneral andspecialist.

This is not a matter of semantics, but a new direction with profound significance for the future provision of education and training.

It recognises that certain core subjects - among them English, mathematics, science and ICT - should be part of the general educational diet for all young people.

Specialist subjects are not part of this core, yet each one has its own value, integrity and utility for those young people who are attracted to them. Examples include geology, web design, modern foreign languages, financial services, Latin, cabinet making, psychology and graphic design.

All specialist subjects are solidly grounded in curriculum. Some, such as geology and psychology, have their roots in university curriculum. Others, such as web design, financial services and cabinet making, derive their curriculum from industry. All offer young people the self-esteem which comes from achievement, and the prospect of long-term rewarding careers.

Two challenges now lie ahead of us:

The first is to give all young people an opportunity to combine their general education with a choice of university-driven and industry-driven specialist subjects. This requires closer programme integration between schools, further education colleges and work places, as has occurred in various ways in other countries.

It also points to the need for more credit-based units and modules, to provide accumulating career and training opportunities that open up in front of young people rather than close off behind them.

The second challenge is to ensure comparability of standards between specialist subjects regardless of their curriculum origins: for example, to ensure that an A grade in web design at A-Level ranks with an A grade in psychology. This requires the establishment of clear benchmarks or standards of performance by highly qualified experts in universities and in industry.

In most Western countries, criterion-referenced assessment is traditional ground for university-driven specialist subjects, in which performance is assessed by qualified examiners against specified standards on the evidence of written examinations.

The same generally applied for industry-driven curriculum. For example, it is only specialist, practising and high-performing web designers who can advise on the level of achievement which might be expected of an intelligent, creative, technically-competent and hard-working 18 year old in the area of web design (an A grade), and the level which represents minimum acceptable performance (an E grade).

In most advanced economies anything less than such industry verification would be seen not only as a disservice to students, but as an inadequate basis for workforce development and for building the national stock of human capital.

Further, achievement against industry-driven curriculum is measure by industry-qualified assessors and verifiers, using methods appropriate to the particular industry. The cognitive, technical and behavioural skills acquired through industry-driven programs of education and training are best measured not by written examination, but by outcomes and task performance.

In England, we seem to have difficulty in accepting that in vocational education the setting of standards for 14-19 year olds is a task for industry experts, and that the assessment of performance must be fit for purpose just as it is in other areas of the curriculum.

David Miliband has opened up a very substantial crack in the solid ice which has restrained the growth of vocational education. Let's hope the ice breaks and the thaw continues.

Ken Boston