Daily Mail, September 27 2002

Over the past couple of weeks, as the A-level results degenerated into chaos and scandal, there have been many black days for education. But none, surely, plumbed quite the depths reached yesterday – and today might be little better.

Indeed, for a while it seemed as if the report of the Tomlinson inquiry into the A-level débâcle – to be published this morning -- was never going to see the light of day, due to a last-minute attempt to derail it by the man widely expected to take the blame.

Sir William Stubbs, the chairman of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), yesterday accused Education Secretary Estelle Morris of pre-empting the inquiry by discussing with the exam boards two days ago the re-grading of all A-level results. Miss Morris insists she was merely laying down contingency plans.

By claiming she had prejudiced the inquiry, Stubbs was trying to destroy its credibility and prevent himself from becoming its fall-guy. In fact, correspondence he has released shows that the QCA was indeed instrumental in the scandal.

But crucially, it also reveals that during the marking process, both Miss Morris and the Schools Minister David Miliband were told there was a crisis over an explosion of A-level successes which would need to be dealt with.

It is inconceivable that they or their officials played no part in discussing how this crisis was to be resolved. And the way it was eventually tackled was to cheat thousands of pupils out of their rightful grades.

But while this scandal is essentially about the dashed hopes of these young people, those who should be taking responsibility are mounting instead an unedifying fight for their own survival.

The charge is that the exam boards were pressured into arbitrarily and unfairly slashing the A-level results to avoid the accusation of grade inflation.

Justice would require these papers to be regraded according to the standards that had been set before the goalposts were moved. This is what Miss Morris got her officials to discuss with the boards.

In doing so, she displayed quite staggering ineptitude. Not only did she hand Stubbs ammunition to undermine the inquiry she had set up. At a stroke, she also demolished her own protestation of clean hands in the scandal.

The government has insisted that it would have been quite improper for ministers to be involved in grade-setting in any way. Yet this is precisely what Miss Morris’s officials were doing this week.

It’s no use saying they were only doing so because a crisis needed to be addressed. After all, if they are involved in moving grade boundaries now in response to a crisis, they might have done the same thing when the problem emerged.

For thanks to what Stubbs has made public, we now know that he told ministers during the marking process that a crisis was looming over the leap in the results. To understand the panic this would have instilled, it is necessary to understand why soaring grades create such a problem.

AS level, introduced last year, is easier than A-level but nevertheless forms half of the A-level exam. This led to claims that A-level was being devalued. The government, desperate to maintain the fiction that it was raising education standards, insisted that the ‘gold standard’ of A-level would be upheld.

But it knew that a huge, implausible upsurge in good results would finally prove that the A-level had been compromised. This is exactly what happened.

It was political dynamite. So Stubbs duly warned Miss Morris of what was looming. On July 29, he told her there had been a sharp rise in A-level pass rates, and suggested that an inquiry would be needed to reassure everyone that standards had not slipped.

On August 6, Stubbs being on holiday, his deputy Beverly Evans wrote to Schools Minister Miliband to warn him that the results were even higher than Stubbs had first indicated.

Neither minister replied. But given the acute political embarrassment in the offing, it is unimaginable that the Education Department would have done nothing. This is not to say ministers would have told the QCA to tell the exam boards to doctor the grades. That’s not the way Whitehall works.

However it was to be achieved, ministers and officials would have agreed that this summer’s A-level results had to be broadly comparable to the previous year’s. And the only way to achieve that – although the words may not have sullied their lips -- was to doctor the grades.

Moreover, Miliband met Stubbs several times during this period. The minister has strenuously denied leaning on the QCA. But he didn’t have to. Stubbs had already sounded the alarm. Are we really supposed to believe that Miliband did not ask him what he intended to do about the crisis he had identified? And that Miliband did not discuss this urgent problem with Miss Morris?

The exam boards protested that Stubbs was pressuring them into doctoring the grades. He told them he was alarmed they had received this impression. Nevertheless, he added: ‘I do expect last year’s A-level results to provide a very strong guide to this year’s outcomes’.

He appears to believe this clears him of any wrongdoing. But in fact, it surely points the gun at his own head. For since he had effectively told the boards the results had to be comparable, and since they patently were not, the only way his requirement could be met was indeed by doctoring them.

Stubbs should be sacked. But Miss Morris and David Miliband are also in an unsustainable position. Thousands of pupils have had their career expectations dashed by a fraud to which these ministers were at the very least silently acquiescent.

Indeed, this may even go higher than Estelle Morris. For in this most centralised of governments, little moves in education without the Downing Street policy unit being involved.

For the moment, the buck stops with her, and she should go. From the moment she was appointed, she has appeared to be out of her depth. It is a depressing fact that minister after minister in this government appears to be thoroughly incompetent.

It is not just an issue of grey matter; after all, Miliband is reputed to boast a brain the size of a planet. It is more that by a mysterious reverse alchemy, incompetence appears to rise to the top in the British political system.

If Stubbs alone takes the rap today, the Tomlinson inquiry will have lived up to fears of a whitewash. The rot beneath this scandal is very deep, and goes all the way to the top.

Posted by admin at September 27, 2002