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David's Blog
August 09 posts
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lgilmore | 
28 August 2009 at 10:43 | 333 views
Last week I spent most of the time in our area, holding Advice Centres and making various local visits.
However, on Thursday I had to return to Westminster for the day to be available to comment on this year’s GCSE results.
I would like to congratulate all those pupils in our area who have worked so hard and who have secured the grades which they deserved, and I would also like to thank our local schools for all of their hard work and dedication – which has contributed so significantly to the results.
As I write this article, I have not yet been able to check the overall results for each of the schools in our area, but I have seen the national statistics – and these show that the proportion of pupils securing 5 or more A*-C GCSEs has risen again this year from 64.8% to 67.1%. This figure has, indeed, seen very big rises over the last 10 years or so, and this should be welcomed.
When I was at school (in the 1970s and 1980s!) we still had an education system which was designed around the needs of an educational elite – the top 20% or so. In the 1950s and 1960s the majority of young people left school with no national educational qualifications at all! None! In the 1970s and 1980s the focus was still on getting the top 20% or so into universities.
An education system designed around the needs of a minority is not fit for purpose in the 21st century, and particularly now that so many jobs require such high skills. So we ought to welcome the fact that more young people now take GCSEs and A Levels, and go on to university, college or into apprenticeships.
And some of the changes have been dramatic. In 1997 just 45.1% of young people achieved 5 good GCSEs, but this is now up to 67.1%. The numbers going on to university and college, and taking A levels, have surged.
But there are still two big problems with our education system. Firstly, although more students are doing well, a large number continue to fail.
Around half of all students fail to achieve 5 good GCSEs (A*-C), including both English and Maths. And in the poorest areas of the country, as many as 75% of pupils fail to attain that level.
It is staggering that in a rich and developed country such as Britain, we are still failing to get half of our pupils to this level of performance – after over 10 years of formal education.
It is also unacceptable that in Britain success in education and in life continues to be more dominated by family income than in almost any other developed country.
We really must do better. In my view that must mean: smaller class sizes in primary schools, more funding targeted on the most challenging youngsters; attracting more high quality teachers; giving more freedoms to schools to innovate; and improving school leadership and discipline.
The second issue is that there is a lot of controversy over whether the increase in exam results is about educational standards rising or about exams being “dumbed down”. Every year, when the exams results come out, there is a big political row over whether the improved results are due to higher standards being achieved or whether exams are being made easier.
Predictably, Government Ministers defend all signs of success as a vindication of their policies, while the Conservatives usually claim that better results are just a result of making exams easier to pass. The hard working students get caught up in the middle of this endless, depressing, debate.
Some politicians have suggested ways to end the confusion of the standards debate. For example, Michael Gove – the Conservative Spokesman – has suggested that vocational qualifications should not even be counted when drawing up league tables. In my view this is completely dotty. We should not be trying to dissuade students who want to do vocational qualifications from taking these up.
The Conservative view of the desirable curriculum seems to be based on that of Eton College in around 1850 – all Greek, Latin, algebra and a bit of Chaucer! If young people want to do courses in IT, engineering, or other subjects, then why not? We shouldn’t get hung up on academic education being the only education which has any status.
It should also not be for “here today, gone tomorrow” politicians to attempt to pass judgement on education standards. This is a recipe for endless doubt and confusion.
In my view we should establish a completely independent “Educational Standards Authority” to oversee standards and to provide serious analysis of results and why they are changing. The conclusions will often be far more complicated than the simple slogans of politicians. For example, evidence from Durham University suggests that some of the improvement in grades IS based on higher standards, while some does NOT reflect this. But it is then a more complicated question to understand why students of a lower general ability today are likely to achieve higher grades – this could be based on easier exams, better “teaching to the test”, more pressure on schools to get candidates through exams, or a host of factors to do with coursework and other changes in exams.
It really is crucial for us to be able to understand what is happening to our education standards – if we don’t know this then how can we have any serious debate about which policies need to be implemented and which are working?
It is time for a more informed debate about education, and not a lot of silly party political point-scoring.
Ever,
David.
lgilmore | 24 August 2009 at 10:05 | 306 views
It was the issue on which I drove our present Prime Minister to distraction. When he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown even asked my Party Leader – then Menzies Campbell MP – to try to shut me up about it. To Ming’s credit, he told Gordon Brown that he wouldn’t silence me, but that we should meet to discuss the matter. And I did meet Gordon Brown - in his modest room in the Treasury. And he did try to bully me into submission. And we did have a row. And he didn’t listen. And I think it was then that I finally concluded that Mr. Brown must be impossible to work with, and that he would never be a good Prime Minister.
And I regret to say that I have not had reason to revise this judgment.
And what was the mighty issue at stake? It was the tax credits system, and its many administrative faults, which led to literally millions of people being asked for literally billions of pounds back. And eventually things were so bad that some people on relatively modest incomes would not even claim the tax credits to which they were entitled, because they were petrified of having to pay them back.
For years, tax credit cases clogged up my local Advice Centres, and I must have raised over 1,000 cases since I was elected in 2001.
Tax credits were Gordon’s pet plan to encourage work and to end poverty. He poured billions of pounds into them. And, of course, they did help many people.
But I could never understand why our Prime Minister was in denial about the terrible administrative problems, and the unfairness of people having to pay back money even if the mistakes that had led to overpayments had been made by the Inland Revenue, and even if the person receiving the money could not have reasonably known of the error.
There is often a similarly great gulf between Government plans and the reality on the ground. Sometimes it is staff cuts that mean services are delivered ineffectively. Sometimes it is over-reliance on new technology, combined with call centres where people can never get through to a human being who can actually listen and help.
Tax credits problems are still very common, and I still see a lot of people with such problems. But tax credits are far from the only problem.
The Jobcentre offices have recently been struggling to deal with higher customer numbers, given the recession – particularly when many jobs have been cut in the Jobcentres themselves in the last two years. And the new call centres can be incredibly frustrating for people looking for a human being who can give straight answers to straight questions.
The Pensions Agency also often struggles to get things right, and I am frequently amazed by the poor standard of service which people receive when they are coming up to pension age, or have just retired.
And, of course, the Child Support Agency and its successor organization continue to struggle to process claims effectively and to deal with circumstances where one parent is too often determined to avoid his or her responsibilities.
In all these areas, it would be good to think that people could get decent service, or could easily secure a solution when matters go wrong. But people often feel that getting answers is impossible, and they give up.
One of the ways that MPs can help their constituents is to take up cases such as this, and to insist on answers. And where agencies have got it wrong or let people down, an MP ought to be able to get a solution, or even insist on some compensation.
Of course, there is also usually an independent Ombudsman who can investigate maladministration, and insist on redress when he or she believes that an agency is getting it wrong.
So if you are receiving poor service in these or other areas, please let me know – or your own MP if you live outside my Constituency.
We cannot always guarantee to wave a magic wand, but we can help to cut through the bureaucracy, and make sure that people get a fair hearing.
Ever,
David.