Education and Skills Bill

I must confess that, from these Benches, we have less sympathy for this batch of amendments. We agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton, that it is extremely important that vocational qualifications should have equivalence: in fact, between them the QCA and the QAA accord a degree of equivalence between qualifications. This is no easy issue and, as the noble Baroness mentioned, the work done by Durham University in looking at the equivalence between different types of A-level has revealed differences, contrary to work done earlier by the QAA for Her Majesty’s Government, in the relative difficulty between what are sometimes regarded as the hard science A-levels—of physics, chemistry and, indeed, mathematics—and some others. The Government need to begin to take this issue seriously and consider how best to accommodate it within the university entrance system. What worries me about introducing to the Bill mention of the Cambridge Pre-U, the IGCSE, and so forth is that they have their equivalents, but it will be very unfortunate if the divide between private and state education in this country is increased by the two sectors taking different types of examination. The more credence that we give to those alternative forms of examination, the more likely it is that the two sectors will separate. It is very important that we try to have a coherent set of school leaving examinations, if you like. From these Benches, we take the view that young people are required to go through too many tests and examinations. In the Finnish system, they stay at school until they are 18 and there is only one school leaving examination at 18. In some senses, that is a very sensible system. We agree with Amendment No. 24 on equivalent qualifications, but we have great reservations about introducing to the Bill acknowledgement of the Cambridge Pre-U or the IGCSE.