Ken Clarke: 'Wait for reality on GCSE reform'
Plans to scrap GCSEs in England are still in development and will be considered by a committee chaired by Nick Clegg, Ken Clarke has said.
Mr Clarke and the deputy prime minister were among senior cabinet ministers taken by surprise when the policy was reported in the Daily Mail.
Education Secretary Michael Gove was summoned to the Commons to explain the proposal to bring back O-levels.
Mr Clegg then attacked the plan saying it would create a two-tier system.
The row threatens to split the coalition with Mr Clegg and fellow Lib Dem ministers determined to block it.
The deputy prime minister, speaking in Brazil, where he is attending a UN conference, said: "I am not in favour of anything that would lead to a two-tier system where children at quite a young age are somehow cast on a scrap heap."
'Not agreed'If the plan goes ahead, students would begin studying what the leaked document says will be "tougher" O-level style exams in English, maths and the sciences from September 2014. They would take their exams in 2016.
Less academic pupils would sit a different "more straightforward" exam, like the old CSE.
The ideas, if introduced, would amount to the biggest change to the exams system for a generation.
Mr Clegg said his Conservative colleague Michael Gove's plan was "self-evidently not policy that has been discussed or agreed within the coalition".
Speculation is rife at Westminster about the source of the leak, with some, including BBC This Week presenter Andrew Neil, suggesting it came from the education secretary himself.
Mr Clarke, speaking on BBC One's Question Time, suggested the leak could have come from within the educational department.
"If the secretary of state for education leaked it I would feel very strongly about it, but I don't think he did," said the justice secretary.
"This has been worked up in the Department for Education, as I understand it, and when it's finished it will then go to a cabinet committee, which actually the chairman is Nick Clegg and the deputy chairman is me and it will be considered collectively."
'Elitist'He backed some parts of the proposed policy, such as stopping exam boards competing against each other and giving apprenticeships "proper status".
But added: "What will happen is it will come to a committee which he chairs and I doubt it will come in exactly the form in the Daily Mail. It is a policy being worked up inside the department."
Andy Burnham, for Labour, criticised Mr Gove's proposal as "elitist" and accused him of wanting to turn the clock back to the 1950s.
The former shadow education secretary said: "This latest proposal is simply more evidence of a man with a plan for some schools and some children, not all schools and all children.
"He is feted by the right-wing press as the great reformer, but what I see when I look at him is an old-fashioned elitist."
Explaining his plan in the Commons on Thursday, Mr Gove said the current exams system needed to be improved.
"Children are working harder than ever but we are hearing that the system is not working for them. We want to tackle the culture of competitive dumbing down."
He said rigour needed to be restored to the system if England was to keep pace with educational improvements in some other countries.
The Education Minister for Wales, Leighton Andrews, has said Wales will not return to O-level-style exams.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18547842#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
cnn world news today law cnn world news ufo cnn world news video cnn world news videos cnn world news&local
No comments:
Post a Comment