Clarke seeks to build consensus on education reform
The Education Secretary, Charles Clarke, has told the House of Commons that he hopes the Tomlinson report will be the start of a “broad consensus” on the way forward.
In a statement to MPs on today’s report into 14-19 examination and education reform, Mr Clarke said that a White Paper on education reform would be published in early 2005.
Saying that the plans laid out by Mike Tomlinson amounted to the “biggest single reform of qualifications in any of our lifetimes”, the Secretary of State said that the White Paper would include an evaluation of the degree to which the Tomlinson proposals met the Government’s stated criteria on excellence, vocational education, employability, assessment and disengagement.
He went on to confirm to MPs that Ministers would work with their Welsh and Northern Irish counterparts on the proposed reform as well as with the QCA. He looked forward to a 10-year period of reform, with the onus on “consensus, evolution, careful planning and the rigorous piloting of any change.”
As for the need to safeguard public confidence in qualifications, he said that GCSEs and A-levels would be the “building blocks” of the proposed new diploma system and that, while consideration would be given to the “number and nature of exams”, there would be no end to the national publication of results.
The Secretary of State had begun by welcoming the report of the Tomlinson working group, which presented a “challenging and compelling vision of the future,” laying the basis for a broad consensus.
Tomlinson’s work had been based on the premise that “doing nothing is not an option” and that “too many drop entirely out of education or training” before obtaining core skills or achieving their ambitions. Similarly, some were “not stretched enough.”
The key was to motivate young people to stay on alongside moves to reduce the burden of assessment. The proposals made by Tomlinson today had “far-reaching implications,” he told the House – core skills assessment, direct employer involvement in vocational route development, the replacement of coursework with a single extended project and more stretching methods of assessment.
The goal was the development a diploma that would overtime come to encompass all qualifications in a single framework, ensuring that all qualifications were coherent and understood and allowing for greater personalisation, he concluded.
