Twigg: Gove is the “enemy of promise”

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””

  1. David Lindsay

    What a grandstanding fraud is Michael Gove. He
    knows perfectly well that there is no Commons majority for bringing back proper
    A-levels with AS as a qualification in its own right, just as he knew that
    there was no Commons majority for bringing back O-levels. That never happened. Until the advent of the first Labour Government since 1979, nor will this.

    In the case of examination boards, the
    application of “free” market principles to the provision of a public service
    has proved an unmitigated disaster, including for the business community more
    widely, raising the question of whether that might also be true elsewhere.
    Commercial schools, which are tax-exempt as charities rather than being taxed
    as the businesses that they are, hardly ever use anything like the export strength
    IGCSE favoured in Saint Helena and other old outposts, but instead content
    themselves with fleecing the gullible by merely being adept at getting people
    through exams that are largely rubbish anyway.

    The present structure of A-levels is an
    inevitable consequence of the replacement of O-levels with GCSEs. Even assuming
    that there is any remaining need for a qualification at 16 when the
    school-leaving age is in any case to be raised in the near future, bringing
    back both O-levels and proper A-levels would therefore involve denouncing
    Margaret Thatcher. Replacing O-levels with GCSEs was her very worst domestic
    policy, and that is saying quite, quite something. Untold numbers of us will be
    filling in the gaps as best we can for the rest of our lives.

    Let Labour alone promise to legislate, both for
    the restoration of A-levels and AS-levels (do S-levels still exist, by the
    way?), and for the restoration of the O-levels that it voted to save in the
    first place. Let Labour alone promise that ultimate legislative reversal of
    Thatcherism. No one else could, even if they wanted to, which they do not.

    For Labour to do so would entail the removal of the Blairite living dead
    Stephen Twigg. But since, true to that tendency, he has ruled out
    restoring the Educational Maintenance Allowance, good riddance. Give the
    job to Rory Weal. Or, in a Government Of All The Talents, to Lord
    Lindsay of Lanchester. Why, in that latter case, I might almost re-join
    the party. Almost.

    Ed Miliband and Jon Cruddas, over to you.

  2. LeftyOxfordLifeScientist

    Although I disagree with many of the previous administrations’ ‘reforms’ (including the 50% higher education pledge — fewer than 50% of careers should require someone to spend three years in abstract study), I entirely agree with Mr Twigg’s argument regarding Gove’s insistence about ‘old skool’ A-levels; they narrow future choice. Having sat an exam at Twigg’s alma mater that really would have better been approached from a mixture of A- and AS- levels, or a baccalaureate, I am very concerned that students are driven to select a very narrow range of subjects at 16, and I can’t see how Gove’s reforms will prevent this happening.

  3. Newsbot9

    Unfortunately for that premise, both the real and the perceived need for degrees is only rising. The UK has actually had a slowly falling % going to university after Labour’s big hikes…and it’s now falling sharply! This will only cost us, long-term.

    We also still have far too little vocational training…

  4. Newsbot9

    Well yea, unless they revert to ancient creeky qualifications which are even worse than today’s, you might not try and push centralist policy that far back in other areas? Heh.

  5. David Lindsay

    Worse than today’s? How, exactly?

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