HC Deb 26 October 1988 vol 139 cc427-36

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Fallon.]

11.41 pm
Mr. Nicholas Bennett (Pembroke)

I am delighted to have this opportunity to speak about the concern that has been expressed by teachers and parents about the GCSE history examination.

I welcome my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department of Education and Science to the debate. I remember with affection when we were both councillors attending the Association of Metropolitan Authorities conference in Liverpool in 1980. There were a total of four Conservatives at that conference and we made sure that the Conservative viewpoint was made known during every debate. I also welcome the Minister's private parliamentary secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Stamford and Spalding (Mr. Davies) to his first Adjournment debate in his new capacity.

I must make it clear at the outset that I am not opposed to the reform of the exam system. In some ways the GCSE is an improvement on the O-level examination. The traditional O-level was not perfect. It could be dull and success was often possible by repetition of the facts without necessarily understanding them. The GCSE has brought about improvements in teaching method through a wider use of documents and sources and it has increased pupil interest. I believe that it was right to widen the scope and type of question and to evaluate more fully the skills used in history.

The GCSE history examination, however, has fatal flaws. It has lost the best of the O-level examination and gained some of the worst attributes of the CSE. My interest in this examination goes back to my time as a schoolteacher, when I taught CSE and O and A-levels, although I left teaching before the GCSE came into operation.

I believe that history is valuable for its intrinsic merit. It is a subject that should be taught to children because it has an interest separate from anything else. It is also essential that pupils should know the past if they are to understand the present. Two weeks ago, at the Conservative party conference at Brighton, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science said that a sense of history is essential to the well-being of any nation. We are right to insist in the GCSE that national identity and national history are at the forefront of the objectives set for examination groups.

There has also been some debate and concern about the divide between skills and content. I believe that that division is a false dichotomy. Without the content as a basis for study, there can be no historical skills. Equally, without some skills—for instance, the ability to analyse evidence or appreciate the context of historical data of the society being studied—we can only truly speak of pupils knowing historical facts. We cannot say that they understand. It is important that they understand the context as well as knowing the facts.

The argument that skills and content can be divided is a false one. It is important that we should have both. That point was made by R. G. Collingwood, perhaps the leading philosopher of history this century, in his seminal work, "The Idea of History" in which he wrote:

The enlargement of historical knowledge comes about mainly through finding how to use as evidence this or that kind of perceived fact which historians have hitherto thought useless to them". That leads me to the major concern expressed by critics of the examination, which professional historians have taken up recently, the so-called empathy questions. An HMI document "History in the Primary and Secondary Years" published in 1985 defines empathy as: Simply a word used to describe the imagination working on evidence, attempting to enter into a past experience while at the same time remaining outside it. The HMI definition, which concentrates on the evaluation of evidence while resisting direct and emotional involvement in the events, is very valid. G. R. Elton in "The Practice of History" went further. He said: Understanding what the evidence really says and understanding how it fits together is of crucial importance for the historian … Imagination controlled by learning and scholarship, learning and scholarship rendered meaningful by imagination—these are the tools of enquiry possessed by the historian. It is the use of imagination based on the facts as known to understand the actions of participants from where the evidence is missing or imprecise to make informed supposition as to what may have happened. That is a far cry from the empathy of the GCSE. Macaulay's statement that a perfect historian must possess an imagination sufficiently powerful to make his narrative affecting and picturesque", has been corrupted into fiction writing.

Questions such as "Imagine if" and "Explain the feelings of" litter the GCSE papers. They are nothing but historical fiction. Here are examples from the Southern Examining Group on a question of the United States of America 1898 to 1968: Show how a democratic newspaper might have replied to these criticisms of Republican comment about the new deal. A question on Japan and China 1890–1960 says:

As a Japanese general at the time, explain your country's reasons for involvement in Chinese affairs in the 1930s. A question on Britain and Europe 1945–1985 states: Explain the feelings and reactions of each of the following to the economic condition of Britain at the end of the Second World War: the owner of a pottery works; the manager of a shop selling pottery; a customer in that shop. Those are the kind of questions that pupils are asked to answer in history examinations. There was a classic question on the welfare state 1942–1985: Explain the feelings and reactions of local education authorities to the issue of Circular 10/70. Explain the feelings and reactions of parents after the issue of Circular 10/65 —as if parents and local education authorities were some kind of cohesive block with one point of view. Those are false questions which one should not ask 16-year-old pupils to answer.

Questions were also asked about the partition of Pakistan and India in 1947. Pupils were asked to write about the reactions of a person living in that country at the time. However, the pupil was not told whether that person was Moslem or Hindu, or what community that person belonged to. It becomes very difficult for a 16-year-old to put himself in the position of a professional historian and answer that kind of question.

It goes against the whole idea of education and history to suggest that there is only one viewpoint and only one way of teaching it. We should not encourage that in the GCSE.

I have another example taken from a trial paper issued by one of the boards: Write an article from the point of view of a supporter of President Castro living in Havana in 1962 explaining the missile crisis and condemning American policy in the earlier Bay of Pigs episode. That is an open invitation to fiction writing. It may be good fiction writing, but it is not history.

Moreover, such questions are politically dangerous. They give a teacher with a political point of view to put across the opportunity for biased work within the class course work, and they can lead to indoctrination.

Indeed, some of the trial papers from the exam groups are outrageous. One said: Draft a speech to be made by a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. This speech will justify these actions: the hijacking of aircraft to Jordan in 1970, the shootings at Tel Aviv airport and the attack on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic games. GCSE empathy is a parody of the real thing.

What was Her Majesty's inspectorate's view on the issue? The interim report, which came out in March, contained no comments on the concern that by that time had already been expressed. I think of the case of the dog that barked in the night. The remarkable thing was, of course that the HMI dog did not hark. In the latest report, issued only last week, the question of empathy received three lines. The dog is now whimpering but it is still not addressing the concerns that have been occupying the national press and teachers for some six or seven months.

Some of the empathy questions, especially on world history, are concerned with recent issues, which, in some cases, are still current. Indeed, one exam group stresses the need for pupils to read the newspapers for the purposes of the examination. We as politicians are aware of the fact that what seems urgent and relevant one week does not merit a footnote in the next. The problem with recent or current events is that they lack the perspective that history offers. Should we be devoting history lessons and examinations to the study of current affairs? By all means, let pupils learn about current affairs, but should the history lesson and examination be used for such purposes?

I want to deal briefly with other worries about the examination. First, there is too much project work. That is of special concern to pupils because every GCSE examination involves project work. Bright young children taking eight or nine subjects have eight or nine projects to do. That weight of work is counter-productive. My experience from teaching the certificate of secondary education is that they are rarely done well and almost never contain any original or individual research.

Leaving aside empathy questions, the structure of questions is debatable. Little exam history appears to be taught within a chronological framework. Nor is it thematic, except in a small number of cases. For instance, questions on the evolution of parliamentary democracy concern themselves with only the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Therefore, the pupil has no idea, unless he was taught it earlier in the school, of 1215 and 1265 and the development of Parliament over the centuries. It creates a ragbag of disconnected topics.

The level of questions rarely stretches the bright child. There are few extended essay questions, unlike on the old O-level papers where a student could be forced to analyse, think logically and write coherently. The level of questions rarely stretches a child at all and is often facile in the extreme. Indeed, the questions can insult the intelligence of the child of average ability.

Let me give some examples. The Northern Examining Association shows a cartoon by Low of Hitler with a smoking gun. The questions include: Name the person, shown in source A, holding a smoking gun. That is given one mark. How did the cartoonist in source A indicate that this person was a Nazi? The answer is that he has a swastika on his arm. That earns another mark.

The Midland Examining Group had a question about the European Economic Community. It consists of two paragraphs with some missing words. They are at the bottom of the page. Anybody of average intelligence with a smattering of general knowledge could guess where the missing words go. That may be an English exercise, but it is not a proper history exercise.

Some questions are confusing. A question on one paper talks about Zimbabwe and the fight for national independence. The question asks how the student knows it was a British colony. There is nothing in the extract to say that it is a British colony. It could belong to Germany or elsewhere. Therefore, the question does not follow on from the source material in the question. That is true of many questions.

Sometimes the terminology is not suitable for the time and place being referred to and could be confusing to the pupil. An example from another board starts off: "Hey Dad, this plebiscite—or whatever it is called—about staying in the Common Market." The 1975 referendum was not, to my knowledge, ever called a plebiscite. That was a word from the 1930s. It is historically out of place, and anybody being taught about the European referendum will wonder what on earth was the plebiscite. It appears that the exam boards are not thinking clearly before phrasing the questions, and about how ambiguous some of them are.

Turning to the evidence questions, many of them require no historical knowledge but are merely comprehension questions more suited to an English paper. They raise serious questions in themselves. In many cases the pictures and cartoons shown are irrelevant and would only confuse. I have one such example taken from the Southern Examining Group paper of summer 1988. It shows Disraeli carrying a Turk. The paper states: Study the cartoon below and then attempt all parts of the question which follows. The three questions have no relevance to the cartoon; they are about the Eastern question, but otherwise they are irrelevant. It appears that, often, examining boards have stuck in cartoons to make the exam paper look pretty or interesting, but they do not help the student answer the questions.

Another famous cartoon from 1878 shows Gladstone and Disraeli covered in mud, accompanied by three questions. They refer to the cartoon, but the cartoon itself does not help one to answer them. I do not know who it is in the examination board who has the copyright on Punch, but its cartoons appear almost without fail in virtually every examination board paper.

In some cases—and I have studied many examples—the primary source material is not what it claims to be. I have another good example taken from the Southern Examining Group paper. I do not want to he seen to be getting at that group, but it seems to have the worst empathy questions of them all; it actually puts the empathy into the examination paper. It concerns a cartoon of the 1921 triple alliance—a very famous Punch cartoon. If one compares it, as I did, with the original in the issue of Punch for 20 August 1921—as an eccentric, I have a very large collection of Punch magazines—one finds that key words have been omitted from the cartoon, as it is reproduced in the exam paper. The title has been left out. The whole purpose of the cartoon has been totally changed. If one wants to teach children about historical material, it ought to be reproduced as it originally appeared.

I am sure that there is scope for an enterprising university student to write a thesis on how extensively source material has been altered to suit the requirements of exam groups. There is scope for evidence questions, but the answers need to be obtainable from the source, they need to be relevant, and some thought needs to be given to them by the student—for instance, as to how they cohere with other material he might have.

My final point concerns marking of the examination. Sir Keith Joseph, as he then was, as Secretary of State for Education, called for criterion referencing—that is, that marks should be based on an accepted criterion that remains constant from year to year, in order that comparisons can be made. The previous system of norm referencing, whereby exam grades were fixed in accordance with a particular cohort being examined, was to go. Her Majesty's inspectorate claimed: There has been a move away from norm referencing towards criterion referencing. According to Her Majesty's inspectorate, that is giving credit for positive achievements, or what pupils know, understand or can do according to predetermined assessment criteria. That is from the "Introduction to the GCSE in schools 1986–88" published last week.

A report in the Daily Telegraph on 3 August called "History in the marking", which concerned the London and East Anglia Group shows that it is in the business of fixing grade boundaries: Our two chief examiners disagree on the minimum mark required: one says 12, the other says 15 … 'Oh this is no good,' somebody mutters. 'I've got a 10 and a four here. Anyone got two sevens? That exercise, as I said, is called fixing grade boundaries; in other words, translating marks into grades. That is a classic example of norm referencing. Certainly is not criterion referencing, when the grades move around according to the marks and to the numbers of pupils who have achieved certain numbers of marks. I thought that the GCSE was trying to get away from that, but it seems that bad habits die hard among some of the exam groups.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister can give an assurance that those points will be examined. In conclusion, I shall make a number of suggestions. First, the empathy questions be transferred from assessment to the general aims section. Secondly, "imagine" style questions should be abolished, and that longer primary source extracts be used. Next, traditional, unstructured essay questions of the sort that ask the entrant to describe an account be reintroduced. Also, there should be a great variety and diversity of types of GCSE paper, with different historical approaches, so that teachers are not faced with solid uniformity. If need be, let us divide the history paper, as we do the maths paper, into two overlapping ability papers. If we do that we shall eliminate some of the major problems that have been faced during the past few years.

Finally, we must ensure that English comprehension is no longer part of the history paper. We must return to finding out what the students know about history rather than testing their English—something that should properly remain within the English papers.

12 midnight

The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Mrs. Angela Rumbold)

I wish to pay the usual courtesies to my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke (Mr. Bennett) and congratulate him on securing this debate. I certainly welcome the opportunity to discuss aspects of the new GCSE examination, especially his points about the teaching and examining of history. It is an appropriate time for such a debate as the dust begins to settle after the first GCSE examinations.

As my hon. Friend mentioned, we also have a report from Her Majesty's inspectors who have studied the introduction of the GCSE in our secondary schools. I shall draw a little on the report as the basis for assessing the early progress of GCSE. It attempts to identify the issues that must be addressed. Although my hon. Friend does not think that it deals sufficiently with empathy, the work as a whole is professional and is the result of close monitoring over the past two years. I wish to put on record my gratitude to HMI for producing the document.

The report confirms that, overall, the GCSE is off to a good start. I think that we would all agree with that. It concludes that the examination has achieved many of the objectives set for it. In particular, it has led to improvements in learning across a range of subjects; it has succeeded in raising pupils' motivation and enthusiasm. The vast majority of those involved with the exam like it, which is a change; it has helped teachers to improve their teaching approaches and raised their expectations of what pupils can achieve.

The inspectors found that, overall, there was a significant increase in the number of lessons where effective learning was taking place. They judged that about four out of five fourth and fifth-year lessons were satisfactory or better. As we know, the results are encouraging. Early analysis of the first results shows that more candidates achieved higher GCSE grades—A to C—than with the equivalent O-level and CSE grades in previous years. Fewer candidates were left without anything to show for their years in school and their hard work during the GCSE courses. That should not in any way be taken, as some might mischievously take it, as meaning that the GCSE is an easier exam than the two exams that it has replaced.

I noted with interest my hon. Friend's clear critique when he dealt with history papers and set out for the House the individual exam questions. The Department does not believe, and nor do HMI, that at this stage we should be complacent. There have been some well publicised teething troubles, which have arisen in part because some of the independent examining boards did not get their act together as well as we had hoped. I have been known to criticise those bodies, and my hon. Friend has graphically illustrated the problems when reading out some of the questions. There have been difficulties with questions, and the examining boards are only too well aware of some of the shortcomings that have caused disappointment and frustration for teachers, pupils and parents alike.

The HMI report makes it extremely clear that, although overall the GCSE has been successfully implemented, many improvements are still required. Everyone who is involved with the exam must study the HMI report and make sure that the GCSE is better next year, and that certainly applies most particularly to independent exam boards.

I now turn to the points that my hon. Friend raised in relation to his concern about history and the examination that youngsters have taken over the past two years. The assessment of work done during the GCSE course—it includes but is not limited to extended project work—is a central element of the concept of GCSE. At least 20 per cent. of marks in virtually all syllabuses must be allocated to course work. An element of assessed course work provides a better assessment of achievement than a system based only on the old end-of-course exams. Course work has certainly helped to make GCSE results a fairer and more accurate reflection of achievement by the individual pupil. It certainly enables teachers to tailor work more closely to individual needs and allows full credit to be given for a wider range of pupils' achievements. The HMI has seen course work of an exceptionally high quality—contrary to what my hon. Friend has said—from pupils of all abilities, and it has found that it has contributed in general to higher levels of performance.

I agree that there is a need for improvement in the way in which some course work is done. Certainly in some cases the work load on pupils has been excessive. Examining groups and the new statutory School Examinations and Assessment Council should look closely at some aspects of the assessment and moderation arrangements. I hope that my hon. Friend will welcome that statement. The GCSE examining groups are already urgently reviewing syllabuses and administrative procedures in the light of experience.

Schools and teachers too should build, as always, on their experience of the first GCSE course work. There is certainly room for improvement in school and classroom practice—for instance, in better integrating course work into normal classroom teaching. My hon. Friend's concerns about project work need to be addressed. The HMI has found many examples of good practice, but, as always, there is need for further improvement to bring the general standard of course work tasks set for pupils up to the level of the best.

Inspectors see a need also for a continuing programme of training for teachers, focused in particular on assessment of course work. I hope that that will be in relation to history just as much as to anything else. The Government have allocated about £40 million over three years for introductory training for the GCSE. In the current year, about £15 million of that is specifically intended to train teachers in the techniques of assessment. In 1989–90 and beyond, GCSE teachers will benefit from the national priority that will be given to training in the assessment requirements, which will be associated with the introduction of the national curriculum.

My hon. Friend's concerns about GCSE history are shared by others within and outside teaching. The issue of empathy has been picked up in the HMI report. Although he described it as a whimper, we all agree that we must closely examine the issue.

In broad terms, "empathy" is shorthand for teaching techniques that are designed to help pupils to understand different viewpoints in history by encouraging them to look through the eyes of a contemporary observer. My hon. Friend has given many illustrations of how that is done. As my hon. Friend said, the merits of the empathy approach are the subject of current debate within the teaching profession in the context of history teaching generally, not just in the context of GCSE courses and examinations.

Of course, many of the aims of the empathy approach are welcome. As my hon. Friend said, empathy is one of a range of skills expected of a good historian. History teachers have long sought to find ways of making their subject rather more interesting, if I may say so as an ex-history teacher. They need also to look for ways of stimulating a wider range of pupils.

In my office this morning, I took a straw poll of officials. It confirmed my general impression that, by and large, O-level history has not done justice to what should have been an attractive and exciting subject. For example, one senior official barely scraped through O-level history because his teacher generated enthusiasm by teaching only the topics that enthused him, which, unfortunately, bore little relation to the syllabus. My private secretary's teacher never covered part of the syllabus because she believed that study of the Renaissance was unsuitable for a 14-year-old girl. Perhaps a proper use of empathy techniques can not only make history more attractive, but help children to develop genuine historical understanding.

There is also a danger that teaching that relies too much on a crude approach to empathy will result in superficial treatment of the subject, giving little benefit in terms of a proper understanding of historical events. I fear that there is a temptation to use empathy too much, particularly for the less able child, and that empathy may squeeze out knowledge and understanding rather than reinforce them. Empathy must not be a substitute for learning.

I sympathise with my hon. Friend's concern to see full criterion referencing in GCSE. This has long been central to the Government's education policy, and will come about when our plans for a national curriculum are implemented. Criterion referencing—the assessment of all candidates against clear attainment targets—is a central feature of the intended national curriculum assessment arrangements.

However, the GCSE is already a substantial improvement in this respect on O-level and CSE. The system of grade descriptions for the main GCSE subjects is a major step forward. The grade descriptions set out in general terms the types of performance expected at key grades. HMI confirms that the first GCSE exams have largely succeeded in the key aim of rewarding positive achievements.

A great deal of effort has gone into developing more thorough-going grade criteria to spell out in greater detail what these achievements are by grade and by subject, but this is a complex business that has not yet produced a workable system. The work must continue so that GCSE can become an integral part of criterion-referenced national curriculum assessment arrangements.

I note the many suggestions that my hon. Friend itemised at the end of his speech, but I must emphasise that GCSE has led to the start of many major improvements in the education of individual pupils—

The motion having been made after Ten o'clock on Wednesday evening, and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at eleven minutes past Twelve o'clock.