Q9 Mr. Ian Mearns (Gateshead): Good morning, Professor Wolf. Your report focuses very strongly on reform of existing qualifications. Do you believe that that is where the solution to vocational education lies? Or, from your perspective, is there a more deep-rooted set of problems with the status and nature of vocational education?

Professor Wolf: I think the answer is the second, not the former. I think that we do have a problem with the nature of vocational qualifications, partly because we have time and time again tried to drive the system by fiddling with the qualifications. Unfortunately, that also means that if the Government accept my recommendations then they are likely to change again, because I have argued for far less central specification of every detail. However, I think that, in a sense, this was a mis-specification of the problem in that, because we are a country that uses qualifications so much, we think that whenever anything is wrong the answer is to fiddle with the qualifications. I actually don't think that that is the case.

In fact, there is a slight back-to-the-future thing in that actually I think that vocational qualifications worked rather better before we started nationalising them, trying to tidy them up and trying to set every single nature of the clause in stone. I think that the basic problem has been that we have tried to specify far too much from the centre. We thought that we could actually say exactly which qualification should be offered. We haven't allowed for enough bottom-up development, and we have tried to do too much quality control through the qualification structure.

Again, I said that, like everybody else, I tend to get influenced by anecdotes, and one of the most interesting and useful things that I did during the course of this was that I had the opportunity to go to Denmark, which was not a country that I knew before. Mostly in this country, when we go and look at vocational education, we go and look at Germany, but I went to Denmark, which has a very fine system and which is where, post-16, a lot of young people go into apprenticeship-type programmes. When talking to the people who are running some of these, as opposed to people in the Ministry, one thing they kept saying time and time again is, "These programmes work to the degree that our local employers are happy. Our quality assurance comes from our local employers. Our local employers are in here doing the examining, and that's why this system is working."

I think that we have tried to do far too much quality control and far too much through what is, at the end of the day, a set of specifications on a piece of paper. Sometimes it's an exam, and sometimes it's a set of requirements about how you assess, but that's only a very small part of the process, and I think we have overweighted it.

Q10 Mr. Ian Mearns (Gateshead): For some young people, being in education is a struggle. There's no doubt about that. Do you think that, for those youngsters who quite often struggle in education, your recommendations will provide a situation where they can succeed in something, as opposed to fail at everything?

Professor Wolf: I hope so. I have said quite explicitly that I think schools, colleges and training providers should be much freer to offer what they want. They know the students that they have. I think there are some things where-and this is why I keep going back to English and maths-there are standards, and I actually believe very strongly that, although some people take longer to get there, there is no reason why they can't. Again, the Government may not listen, but I'm slightly unpersuadable on that one. In other respects, however, I think you are absolutely right.

One thing that I hope very much-again, without having any idea whether this would be the case-is that, 10 years from now, it will be much easier for people to go in and out of education with an entitlement. So, when people are ready to come back and they have had some work experience, they have got themselves a bit of confidence and they can see the point of it, they can come back and take the things that they want. Kids do struggle, yes. Part of the problem is that a lot of them find life very difficult when they are 16 and 17. It would be wonderful to wave a wand and make that not the case, but we are asking these life-determining things of them at a time when a lot of them are finding life really tough.

Q11 Mr. Ian Mearns (Gateshead): From your perspective, isn't part of the problem the fact that the institutions are paid by results, so they have to get these youngsters qualifications in something?

Professor Wolf: Yes.

Q12 Mr. Ian Mearns (Gateshead): Do you regard that as part of the problem? Recommendations 2 and 12 in your report stand rather at odds with your desire to rid the system of its meaningless qualifications? Why would a college or employer ever offer a qualification that hadn't been approved by somebody higher up at some time?

Professor Wolf: Recommendations 2 and 12 are about not having the system we have at the moment, where you can only offer something that has gone though this enormous, supposed quality-assurance process, which is basically paper-based and, in my view, largely pointless. My own feeling is that there are things that are really important and then, around that, you should leave it to the providers, the young people, and the local labour market. That's what those are about.

As you say, there is also the problem that, at the moment, we have this system whereby you get paid by results, and if you are running a college, you basically can't afford to have people fail. That's a really bad situation to be in. We have it to some degree in universities, but not to the extent that colleges do. Actually, it's utterly destructive. Nobody wants kids to fail. I can't imagine any situation in which somebody who is running a college would want that, and this is a competitive situation, in which you want to have a good reputation. You want people to want to come to you, and you want people to send their kids to you, so you are not going to intentionally put everybody in for things that they can fail. However, that's very different from having a situation where you are effectively forced to only put people in for things that you're sure they can pass.

Again, I have absolutely no idea whether something will happen, but I think that for reasons that are historical-and I understand how we got there-we have a funding system that is really bad for standards. It is not just bad for standards, however. It is bad for the guidance we give to kids and it stops people from thinking in terms of coherent policies. I've actually hated it for years, so this was a chance to sound off about it. I totally agree with you that it is a major part of the problem.

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Q25 Mr. Ian Mearns (Gateshead): There is a stated aim that all teachers in schools would have a minimum 2.1 degree, isn't that the case?

Chair: 2.2.

Professor Wolf: 2.2. Again, you would have to ask the Secretary of State about this, because it is nothing to do with me. [Laughter.] That should not be read either way; it is literally nothing. I suppose this goes back to the issue of what people are teaching, and what people are being recruited to train for. Clearly, if you are teaching something in a school which is not a subject for which the normal professional training is degree-linked then presumably you have equivalences.

I spend my whole life looking into equivalences, because if you recruit to an English university these days you have applicants from all over the world and you are constantly having to make these judgments more or less effectively, you make them. If there is a country that does not do bachelor degrees, you figure out what the rough equivalence is.

Q26 Mr. Ian Mearns (Gateshead): Incidentally, since you are conducting this review of vocational education, did the Government consult you at all about the EBac before its introduction?

Professor Wolf: No.

This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee. Neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record. The transcript is not yet an approved formal record of these proceedings.

The full transcript may be read here.

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