29 March 2006

This annual review is an opportunity to look back over the achievements and issues of the past year, and to review the work in progress for the future.

As our report shows, the scope of work of the QCA is very wide indeed.

We serve learners of all ages and in all locations in which learning takes place - young people in full-time study in primary schools, secondary schools and colleges; in workshops, studios, salons, factories and laboratories; on farms and on assembly lines and behind cash registers; in full-time or part-time employment; and young mothers and their children from the age of three.

Every context of learning except universities; all accredited qualifications except graduate and post-graduate degrees.

And across that full range, our focus is on the quality of what is to be taught and learned, the quality of the assessment, and the quality of the qualifications earned as a result.

We have a critical role to play in building what Jonathon Porritt calls the human capital of each individual - and by which I mean, in the present context, the intellectual capacity and technical skill of the individual and the nation.

Let me show you some other images. These come from the UK Skills website, and they show competitors at the Worldskills competition in Helsinki last year.

UK Skills is chaired by Chris Humphries when he is not doing his day job at City and Guilds, Graeme Hall is the Chief Executive, and I have the privilege of being one of the members of the Board.

I was involved with Worldskills Australia for many years, and attended Worldskills International Skills Olympics in Montreal and Seoul, wearing the green and gold. I have since attended the international Worldskills in St Gallen in Switzerland in 2003, and in Helsinki in 2005, sporting the Union Jack.

And the UK is of course bidding to hold Worldskills here in 2011, the year before the London Olympiad, the success of which is absolutely dependent upon our national stock of skill, of human capital.

Look particularly at the faces of the competitors:

Now those images illustrate, better than words, something I keep banging on about, which is that higher order thinking is inherent in top quality vocational education, and that school-based vocational curriculum is education rather than training.

Inside the head of that young man and that young woman is the learning muscle - the brain - which is exercised, grown and made powerful by what it is taught and what it learns to do.

Were he translating a passage from Homer, he would be no more challenged nor intent; were she removing a clot from an artery, she could not be more focussed, urgent and precise.

The quality of all learning is expressed in the quality of the interaction of brain, eye and hand - reasoning, judging, doing - whether it is cabinetmaking, creating fine jewellery, writing a sonnet, or solving an equation.

Good quality vocational education - and I make the qualification ‘good quality’, because sometimes what passes for vocational education is disaffected teachers teaching disaffected children some low-level practical activities which have no real grounding in industry - good quality vocational education, like good quality general or academic education, involves higher order cognitive thinking and problem solving skills which are the basis for life, not just for earning a living, and which are properly described as education not training.

Now at the Helsinki Worldskills there were competitors from 38 countries, competing in 39 skills. The UK came 11th, based on average team score, with 10 medals and medallions of excellence. Those competitors, massed together at the opening ceremony, are a manifestation of one element of the human capital of their countries - their skills base.

Two factors are important in creating and sustaining the national stock of human capital.

The first is ensuring that there is maximum participation in learning. The strength of the national foundation of human capital is dependent upon the proportion of young people who complete a full secondary education; on the proportion of the population completing further, advanced or higher education; on the proportion acquiring further knowledge and skill through work-related learning and on-the-job training; and on national commitment to a culture of lifelong learning, whether leading to formal qualifications or not.

Like other Western countries, we have compulsory schooling, which ensures virtually full participation in education until age 16. We then perform very poorly: 24th out of 27 OECD countries in participation in education and training beyond age 16. Our competitor countries at Worldskills, which are also our economic competitors internationally, have much higher rates of participation in formal education beyond age 16. Our young French cabinetmaker and our Norwegian jeweller almost certainly undertook a full secondary education, perhaps the later part of it in a specialist college with a specialised curriculum.

We also rank behind many competitor countries, although not so drastically, on the proportion completing higher levels of education and work-related learning although, quirkily perhaps, we are quite high on non-accredited short-course life-long learning.

But in terms of the total population holding a Level 3 qualification, we are well behind competitor nations. We cannot expect to compete with China or India, or indeed even Eastern Europe, as just another low skill, low value added player.

The flagship strategy for raising participation in education post-16 is the specialised Diploma, and the reform of the qualifications framework. I will leave the second to Mary, and concentrate solely on the Diploma.

The diploma will draw on a whole new range of industry-based applied curriculum, designed to reflect outcomes-based national occupational standards.

A young person taking the Level 3 Diploma in Construction and the Built Environment, for example, will leave the programme with knowledge, skills understanding, and perspectives relevant to the sector; with higher order cognitive and problem-solving skills learned in an applied rather than theoretical context; with practical experience of working in the sector; and with the functional and personal skills needed for employment or higher education.

It is important to understand that the Diploma is an education programme not a training programme. We currently teach subjects such as German and chemistry to 15 year-olds, without any intention of training them to become professional interpreters or translators of German, or professors of chemistry.

Rather, we are educating them, by exercising and growing their minds and imaginations through exposure to important aspects of our culture and heritage.

The objective is that they should become highly-functioning young adults, ready to enter the world of employment directly, or in parallel with or following a period of further, advanced or higher education, or job-related training.

In the same way, the specialised Diplomas will provide an applied curriculum authenticated by industry, just as a general curriculum in German and chemistry has its foundations in academia.

It is important to emphasize that the fundamental purpose of teaching construction engineering, or web design, or joinery, or photonics or jewellery making - at this stage - is not to prepare young people for careers in these fields, but again to exercise and grow their minds and imaginations through exposure to important aspects of our contemporary culture, heritage and economy.

It is about that learning muscle in the skull.

The basis of the Diploma strategy is that young people will be attracted to stay on at school or in college because of the opportunity to take web design and joinery - taught by industry-qualified teachers in industry-standard facilities or in the workplace - and that they may well then become keen to be employed in such fields and to undertake further education and training.

But although young people completing the Diplomas will be highly-functioning and ready for both employment and further or higher education, the objective is not to make them fully job-ready in the sense of having job-specific skills, such as being able to lay a course of 100 bricks in an hour, or plumb a house: for that, the appropriate course is the apprenticeship, or further advanced education beyond the Level 3 Diploma.

They may go on to advanced industry-based training and win gold for this country in jewellery or cabinetmaking; equally, they might take medicine at Oxford, or read classics at Cambridge. If we are successful, they can be prepared for either path.

Vision, or hallucination? Believer, or non-believer? I am a believer, and I believe it profoundly, because I have seen it done.

The creation of the specialised Diplomas is the most ambitious and important educational reform currently being undertaken anywhere in the world.

It is breaking new ground by giving a central curriculum role to employers and industry.

It is immensely complex, in bringing together the awarding bodies, sector skills councils and the Skills for Business Network, colleges and schools and the QCA as the regulatory authority, to shape the new Diplomas through the Diploma Development Partnerships.

It has incredible potential for the creation of human and social capital; it also carries risks that could lead to failure.

Perhaps the greatest of those would arise if the first five Diplomas which will be available in 2008 were to be discredited by being offered in inappropriate circumstances: if the Diplomas are to gain real traction, they must be taught only by industry-qualified staff, not the phys. ed. teacher whose knees have gone, and in well-funded industry-standard facilities, not some converted temporary building at the end of the schoolyard.

The second factor in creating and sustaining human and social capital is the quality of the learning - the national performance of those who are engaged in education and the acquisition of skill.

In terms of adult job related continuing education and training we rank 6th behind Denmark, Sweden, the United States, Finland and Switzerland.

In regard to compulsory education, we are in the middle rank of achievement in maths and science: the major challenge to us is not from countries such as Norway and France, but from the ‘Asian tiger’ economies.

The QCA has a central role to play in working with Government, business and industry, employers and unions and the education sector, with the goal of raising both the level of participation in education and training, and the overall standards of national performance.

So, I turn now to the issue of standards, and the way in which participation and performance must relate together if the national stock of human and social capital is to be grown and extended.

In this country there is a tension between participation and standards; while not unknown in other countries, the degree of tension here is greater than I have seen elsewhere.

The contemporary educational narrative in most Asian countries, for example, is:

• that it is in the national interest for all young people to have access to the full range of national curriculum, and to be extended to the maximum of their capacities;
• that, as learning proceeds, curriculum should be shaped responsively to stretch and challenge all levels of ability and motivation;
• that national standards, and performance against those standards, should constantly be driven up as a matter of national policy.

Now, while we would not want to emulate some of the practices in the high-achieving Asian countries, such as the relatively large class sizes and highly formalised methods of instruction, we seem to have difficulty in uttering such self-evident educational truths simply and well.

We attach ugly labels.

Those on the supposed side of participation talk about the need for the curriculum to be inclusive and accessible, and for all children to experience success. I agree with that. But I do not agree that a bespoke curriculum designed to stretch and challenge the most able and most motivated, shaped in response to their learning needs, is elitist - or, if elitist, that that is a bad thing.

Those on the supposed side of standards rally to the flag of dumbing-down, and unearth from the archives dead examination papers testing curriculum fifty years in its grave.

Assessment standards are not rising, nor are they falling; they are held constant year on year for so long as they are measuring what is required to be taught and learned, and those requirements reflect the realities and priorities of contemporary society.

The annual debate on standards masks the fact that GCSE and A Levels are well regarded and well understood. We have research from MORI that shows levels of confidence among teachers in particular are high, and are growing.

I cannot and do not accept this national obsession with a supposed dichotomy between participation on the one hand and standards on the other. They are the two sides of the same gold coin.

As well as being concerned to maximise participation, QCA is the declared guardian of standards.

With the national curriculum tests, there is an extraordinarily thorough process of test development, which involves two pre-tests of the developing test paper.

With the general qualifications and the adult vocational qualifications, the awarding bodies have established international best practice in maintaining assessment standards at a constant level year on year.

Now, Government has asked us to make some particular changes to the GCE, with revised specifications to be taught from September 2008 and the first candidates completing in 2010.

In most subjects the number of units will be reduced from six to four, reducing the overall assessment load, but without compromising the validity of the test or the reliability of the result. That can be done.

Amongst other things, it will allow the regulatory authorities and the awarding bodies to address the problem of insufficient synoptic assessment across the subject or specification as a whole. It is true, I believe, that questions have become increasingly ‘atomised’ into fairly tightly structured components.

In the main, examination papers should in future require more extended answers than previously; there will be less guidance to students in composing the parts of their answers, and more emphasis will be placed on the structure and quality of their argument and reasoning.

A key element of the GCE reform is the issue of stretch and challenge. Government recognises the need to raise the level of demand being made by the examination, so that the most scholarly students are extended to the very limits of their capacities, which they need to be given ample opportunity to demonstrate. At the same time, the universities and employers want to be able to discriminate more clearly between various degrees of high-level performance.

The style and type of questions that have been used in examination papers for the Advanced Extension Awards (AEAs) are ideally suited to achieve such stretch and challenge: they are less structured, essentially synoptic, and more demanding.

To that end, Government has proposed that there might be some optional and harder questions in each examination paper, to be taken by the most able students.

It has also been proposed that there might be a second and more demanding paper in a subject, for which the most able students would enter. We at the QCA have been remitted to trial and test both options, and subsequently to advise the Secretary of State.

With the awarding bodies, we have now embarked on this trialling and testing, in particular to answer two important questions. If the more demanding questions are optional, will they be attempted only by the most able students? If taken optionally by candidates of mixed ability, will we be able to guarantee the standard from year to year?

If, instead, there is a separate and additional paper for which students enter separately, that potential problem would not arise. But would the results be used by Higher Education? The current AEA - which is a separate and additional paper - has not been widely entered, as it is not taken by all potential candidates and therefore is not greatly used by universities to discriminate between applicants for selection.

We are also proposing to test and trial a third approach, which is to introduce AEA style assessment material in all A2 units, for all candidates. In combination with the change to four units, this might be expected to encourage the development of more holistic assessment, allowing students to write at greater length and depth, and testing their synoptic understanding.

What would this mean? I often use the analogy of the examination standard as an assessment hurdle.

In international athletics, the hurdle can be set at any of five heights, from 42" to 30", at 3" intervals. In men’s hurdles the height is set at 42", and in high school athletics at 39" or 36" depending on age.

In the GCE, a candidate gaining an A grade may be regarded as clearing 42", a B grade as clearing 39", a C 36", a D 33" and an E grade 30".

Because of the continuing improvement in educational performance in this country, an increasing number of young people is clearing the 42" hurdle at A grade: 10 per cent in 1985, 16 per cent in 1995, 23 per cent in 2005.

At some stage - and I am suggesting that it might be soon - the time will come to raise the height of the hurdle, to stretch all young people further and to better discriminate between those at the top end of the range.

The inclusion of AEA style material in all A2 units, for all candidates, would raise the height of the hurdle from 42" to 45". The standard of the examination, and its degree of difficulty, would be deliberately increased. Another level, perhaps A* - or even two levels - would be introduced. The fundamental objective would be to stretch and challenge all students - the entire cohort presenting for the examination - and not simply the selected or self-selecting few.

Now, a key criterion that such a change would need to satisfy is preservation of the current A grade standard. We would need to be certain that an A grade in 2010 was the same standard as in 2005 (that is, a height of 42"), even though there was then a higher level of A* at 45". If that could be assured, I suspect that stretch and challenge resulting from an increase in the level of demand on all candidates would be the best way to move us up the international performance tables, reflecting the increase in our national stock of human and social capital.

For the QCA and the awarding bodies, raising the height of the hurdle would require some change in mindset. Changing an assessment standard is deliberate manipulation of a kind we have worked assiduously to avoid - either down or up. But given the steady and expected increase in performance standards, I put the view that the time has arrived to make the assessment standard more demanding, to give higher ability and highly motivated young people more headroom in which to demonstrate their scholarship and prowess, and to use the assessment standard as a strategic tool to drive up performance further.

For that reason, the recent announcement by the Secretary of State on GCSE Further Mathematics is to be defended against political correctness, and to be welcomed as a realistic, sensible, timely and constructive decision. The new two-tier two-paper GCSE Maths to be introduced from September this year will be followed by a GCSE in Further Mathematics, for which GCSE Maths will be a gateway. The intention is to provide a more challenging curriculum and a more demanding assessment, to stretch and challenge the most able young people.

As I said before, the strategy of providing a curriculum designed to extend the most able and motivated students is a common and successful strategy in driving up performance in many other countries, including Korea, Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong, where standards of performance in mathematics and science are well ahead of countries such as UK, Sweden and the United States. There is a different and more demanding curriculum for the higher ability groups, tested by different and more demanding assessments, shaped and taken only in response to their needs.

Elitism? Hardly. This is the way betterment has been achieved in every field of human endeavour, since we rose from the mire. Why should it not be the case, now?

The government has given us a breakthrough; it offers real hope for the future, and much good will come from it.

Ken Boston