The education secretary, Nicky Morgan, has attacked the quality of educational qualifications before 2010, accusing policymakers of deceiving young people through grade inflation and “worthless certificates” instead of giving children access to high quality education.
In her first major policy speech since the election, Morgan denounced previous governments as “driven by tacit snobbery” in designing courses they would never consider for their ownchildren.
“Rather than giving children from poor families access to great education, they instead created a new cadre of pseudo qualifications, which claimed to be equivalent to academic qualifications,” Morgan said, in barbs aimed at the raft of changes and qualifications created under the last Labour government.
“Teenagers got more certificates, and school results seemed to improve. But the qualifications weren’t credible in the jobs market – they weren’t real. They were, to be frank, a fraud on the young people taking them.”
Morgan accused policymakers in the decade before 2010 of downgrading “gold-standard qualifications” and of creating softer alternatives aimed at children from poorer families. “Nothing exposes that snobbery more than the fact that these politicians and policymakers were never thinking about their own children,” she said.
“They weren’t going to allow their 14-year-olds to settle for qualifications in study skills or nail technology; they weren’t going to let them narrow their scope at age 14 by filling their school timetable with NVQs and worthless ‘certificates’.”
Morgan’s remarks came as she announced a set of policy consultations, including a possible return to national tests for seven-year-olds in order to measure progress, as well as an effort to push schools towards the government’s favoured English baccalaureate courses at GCSE.
In response, the shadow education secretary, Lucy Powell, said Morgan’s remarks were inappropriate and used the careers of young people for political point-scoring. “Nicky Morgan does herself a disservice as she does all those young people who have worked hard to gain qualifications. At a stroke she has described their efforts as worthless,” she said.
“She has overseen a period of chaos and confusion in assessment which has caused great disruption. She has also overseen a crisis in teacher numbers and school places. Perhaps before she next throws some stones she should take a look inside her own glass house.”
Labour’s defenders were quick to argue thatthe party rebuilt the education system through initiatives that the Conservatives have since retained, as well as building 1,000 schools.
In 1997, half of state secondaries had fewer than 30% of pupils gaining five good GCSE passes, including in English and maths. By 2010 the number had fallen to just a handful of schools.
“That government also led the London Challenge, started sponsored academies and made sure they worked, transformed teacher recruitment with Teach First, transformed school leadership with the best programme in the OECD and brought in free nursery education for three-year-olds,” said a former special adviser to Labour ministers.
“We also revolutionised data use in schools and started floor targets which [Michael] Gove continued with success. In higher education we started access programmes that are bearing fruit narrowing admission gaps.”
The adviser admitted that some of Labour’s efforts were less rigorous than it had intended: “The vocational qualifications were an effort to address a gap in the system but were overvalued in the league tables.”
In her speech to the Policy Exchange thinktank, Morgan outlined a consultation on efforts to reform assessment at key stage one and defended the possibility of national tests for seven-year-olds after they were abolished in 2004.
“Tests at seven are not exams, they are tests. Schools need to manage this in a non- stressful way,” Morgan said, noting that her own son had been through his key stage one assessment without even noticing it had taken place. “I don’t want to see after-test parties,” she said.
The move was criticised by teaching unions, with the general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, Chris Keates, accusing the government of “muddled thinking”.
Labour also rejected Morgan’s claims of improvements in standards under the Conservatives. “Despite the Tories’ warm words on raising standards, their record speaks volumes – the attainment gap between poorer pupils and their peers is widening, after narrowing year on year under Labour, and there are chronic shortages of teachers in our schools, harming our children’s education,” Powell said.
