On Sunday 16 August Huw Edwards interviewed Michael Gove MP, Shadow Schools Minister Please note 'The Andrew Marr Show' must be credited if any part of this transcript is used. The Shadow Schools Secretary Michael Gove on Conservative plans to reform A-levels and league tables. HUW EDWARDS:  Michael Gove MP, Shadow Schools Minister |
Now in four days time thousands of A Level students in England and Wales will find out if all their hard work, their efforts have paid off. The omens are pretty good because, as the critics will tell you, the pass rate seems to be rising without fail every year. Critics pointing out that that's not altogether maybe a good thing. Now the Conservatives say the exam system has been dumbed down. They want to change the league table system in England with more points being awarded for subjects like Maths or Physics compared to subjects like Media Studies, for example. The Shadow Schools Secretary Michael Gove is with me this morning. Michael, good morning. MICHAEL GOVE: Good morning, Huw. Hi. HUW EDWARDS: Good to see you. Thank you very much for coming in. MICHAEL GOVE: Pleasure. HUW EDWARDS: Dumbed down in what way? MICHAEL GOVE: Well all I'm doing is reflecting what employers and what universities are telling us. I think it's important to recognise that young people are working harder than ever before and we should celebrate their achievements, but it's also the case that the exam system and the league tables need to work harder on their behalf. If you talk to universities, for example, the very best universities say that there are particular combinations of A Levels that they won't accept. In effect they're saying that there are some A Levels which are better than others, and yet the government's own system, the league table system awards equal value to every A Level. Well we want to have universities more involved in designing A Levels in order to ensure that we don't have the situation that we have at the moment where some students are guided towards softer subjects because that will inflate the schools' ranking but those softer subjects won't prepare them for the really good university courses which should be their destiny. That's one of the changes we'd like to make. HUW EDWARDS: How on earth do you go about distinguishing formally between these subjects - I mean saying to people very formally look if you do an A Level in Physics it is more valuable, it is more worthwhile, we value it more than let's say an A Level in Media Studies? How do you formalise that? MICHAEL GOVE: Well universities are already doing that. If you look at what universities like Oxford, Cambridge, LSE and the very best are doing at the moment, then they're already making those distinctions. If you look for example at Oxford, the number of students it's taking who've got Further Maths A Level is greater than the number who have a whole string of other softer A Levels combined. They're clearly already discriminating. And the problem that we have at the moment is not that the situation is perfect and that we shouldn't meddle with it. The situation that we have at the moment is flawed and it's a situation which leads students, particularly in weaker schools and particularly from poorer backgrounds, to be led into making choices which are not good for them. But there are other changes that we would like to make as well. We also want to change the league tables for GCSE's. At the moment schools are measured on the number, the percentage of students that they can get who can get 5 passes at C level or above. What that means is that there's a disproportionate focus on those students who are on the borderline between a D pass and a C pass. Get those students over the hurdle, get them to a C pass, and then your school is considered to be okay. But what that means is that the truly brighter students aren't being stretched because there's no emphasis on getting people from a B to an A or an A to an A*. And what's even worse in my view is that those weaker students, who could really benefit from extra care and attention, aren't focused on either. HUW EDWARDS: So what do you do? MICHAEL GOVE: Well we believe that it's right that you should have something closer to a points system, so that there are a set number of points for an A*, fewer for an A, and so on. So that the effort of all is rewarded and schools genuinely get credited and recognised for doing well. HUW EDWARDS: It's a big change. MICHAEL GOVE: They are big changes, but we believe it's important to make these changes because league tables themselves are important. They've been discredited under this government, but they do serve a very useful purpose. One of the things I've found as Education Spokesman is that the people who are most in favour of league tables are parents in poorer areas who want to know where the really good schools are; and also, crucially, head teachers and senior leaders in schools in poorer areas that are doing brilliantly. In the past, when we didn't have this information about performance, they would have been written off as sink schools because they were in those poor areas, but now their performance means that they can be hailed as beacons and we can learn from them. The truly important thing that we all need to do is to recognise that league tables have generated those benefits, but those benefits have been skewed and undermined by what's been happening in the last few years, by the corrosion of that system … HUW EDWARDS: (over) Understood, understood. MICHAEL GOVE: … so we need to reform it. HUW EDWARDS: Understood. So the points system you're talking about just for, there'll be lots of parents watching who are to say the least interested … MICHAEL GOVE: Yes. HUW EDWARDS: … you're going to do this. It's not just some kind of great scheme you're talking about, some plan. You're going to do this as a government if you get into power? MICHAEL GOVE: We need to make changes. And we're working with Professor Sir Richard Sykes, who was the Rector of Imperial College, one of Britain's best universities, and he's been very happy to work with us and we've been benefiting hugely from his insights on how we can transform both our exam system and also prepare people better for university. Because one of the things that both Richard and I are worried about is that well of course we're congratulating more and more people on doing better and better. The real question is not are we doing better than in the past? The real question is are we doing better than the rest and are we doing as well as the best in the world? And that's where the statistics tell a very worrying story … HUW EDWARDS: So … MICHAEL GOVE: because if you look … These facts are crucial, Huw. If you look at what's been happening over the last ten years, we've moved from being fourth in the world for Science to fourteenth; seventh in the world for Literacy to seventeenth; and eighth in the world for Mathematics to twenty-fourth. We've got to arrest that decline. HUW EDWARDS: Understood. I just want to make this absolutely clear. The points system is something you are committed to legislating to bring in? MICHAEL GOVE: We're going to change the way that league tables operate. This we believe … HUW EDWARDS: (over) With the points system? MICHAEL GOVE: This, we believe, is the best way of doing it. But the crucial … HUW EDWARDS: (over) So you're not totally committed to it? MICHAEL GOVE: Well the crucial thing, as ever, is that with all the proposals that we being forward, we want to work in partnership with parents and teachers, so we want to hear their views. I know that the current system isn't working. HUW EDWARDS: (over) That's the direction? MICHAEL GOVE: That's the direction in which we want to go, absolutely. HUW EDWARDS: I can't let you go, Michael, without asking about the NHS story, which is in some of the papers today … MICHAEL GOVE: Oh yes, yes. HUW EDWARDS: … suggesting that your links with Daniel Hannan, the MEP, and others suggest that you are paid up as someone who thinks the NHS is frankly not up to much. MICHAEL GOVE: Well that's complete nonsense. And I know Dan and he's been a friend of mine for many years, and I've enjoyed discussing all sorts of policies with him over the years, but one of the great things about Dan is that he generates some fantastic ideas and some ideas which I simply don't agree with. Dan has been a very strong advocate for making some of our democratic institutions more transparent and more accountable. He's been arguing for things like open primaries, and we've seen how successful those have been in Totnes. So in that respect, I value some of the insights that Dan has brought, but I emphatically don't agree with him on the NHS. I'm one of the people in the shadow cabinet who has been arguing that we should make health spending our number one commitment, and we've made a commitment to ringfence health spending which Labour haven't made. In a way this row is something that's been generated by Labour and the reason that they have generated it is that they know that David Cameron is a leader who's committed heart and soul to the NHS, and they also know that our specific commitment to ringfence spending on the NHS is a commitment that they can't make and won't make at the moment. HUW EDWARDS: Why do you find yourself in a position where you're linked to a group of people who are promoting this kind of policy? MICHAEL GOVE: Well Dan is a Conservative MEP … HUW EDWARDS: (over) Why the link? Why don't you just sever that? MICHAEL GOVE: (over) Well the explicit thing is that … Well he's a colleague of mine and my own view is that mature politics means that if you have colleagues whose views on some areas you find valuable but in other areas you disagree with, you don't send them off to Siberia. What you do is you, where you agree, make common cause; and where you disagree, make that clear and challenge them to change their views. HUW EDWARDS: (over) Because there are, you know because you do have colleagues who don't think much of the NHS. That's clear. MICHAEL GOVE: Well there are one or two colleagues who have a view on the NHS, which I don't share. But what's striking about David Cameron is the way in which he's made the Conservative party the party of the NHS in a way that we've never been before. And I think people understand both from David's life experience but also because of the sort of Conservative that he is, that the NHS isn't just safe in his hands; that he is passionately committed to improving it and he understands the spirit that animates health professionals. Anyone who's seen David speak about the NHS, anyone who's heard him at party conferences when he's expressed his passion and his support for NHS professionals and his anger at the way in which they've been denigrated by this government, anyone who's heard that can't be in any doubt. HUW EDWARDS: No, the stories aren't about him. They're about you. MICHAEL GOVE: No, well I'm one of the people who in the shadow cabinet have been anxious to ensure that David's desire to ensure that the NHS is at the heart of everything that we do in the next government is protected and enhanced and preserved. HUW EDWARDS: Michael, good to see you. Thank you very much. MICHAEL GOVE: Pleasure, Huw. INTERVIEW ENDS
Please note "The Andrew Marr Show" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.
NB: This transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script. Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy
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