Wales and England divide on exams

29 January 2013 Last updated at 17:31 GMT By Sean Coughlan BBC News education correspondent Changes in England's exam system could see a deepening divide with Wales and Northern Ireland The UK's exam system faces greater fragmentation - with the Welsh government rejecting changes planned for GCSEs in England.

Jeff Cuthbert, deputy minister for skills, pledged the "best for students" in Wales, even if it meant "diverging from England and the rest of the UK".

GCSEs will be retained in Wales while there are plans for them to be replaced in key subjects in England.

Northern Ireland is carrying out its own review of GCSEs and A-levels.

The decision marks a significant split between the qualifications systems in England and Wales, which have so far shared a common system of A-levels and GCSEs.

Scotland has its own exam system and Northern Ireland is carrying out its own review, raising the prospect of qualifications across the UK following separate paths.

'Untenable'

The announcement on Tuesday will see teenagers in Wales continuing with GCSEs, while pupils in England are set to move to English Baccalaureate Certificates in key subjects such as English and maths.

In Wales there will also be new GCSEs in English Language, Welsh First Language and maths.

This will be part of a Welsh Baccalaureate which will be taught from September 2015. At the same time, the English Baccalaureate Certificates will be introduced for core subjects.

"We will retain GCSEs and A-levels. Where necessary we will strengthen and amend these, but ultimately we have confidence in these well-established qualifications, which are recognised around the world," said Mr Cuthbert.

Changes have also been announced for A-levels in England by Education Secretary Michael Gove - but the Welsh government did not suggest that it would follow.

"We will consider the implications for Wales of Michael Gove's recent unilateral announcement on A and AS levels, which was not shared with us in advance, as we would have hoped under our concordat with DfE. On the face of it, the proposal for England has little appeal," said Mr Cuthbert.

Head teachers in Wales welcomed the decision to reject the changes proposed for England.

"There is no reason why Welsh students should be disadvantaged, as long as the qualifications are implemented properly and are of a high quality. English universities have been taking Scottish and overseas students for years and they manage the transition well," said ASCL Cymru's Gareth Jones.

For university admissions, GCSEs and A-levels in England and Wales are currently seen as the same, but they now seem set to become different qualifications.

Speaking earlier this month in the National Assembly, the education minister Leighton Andrews said he recognised the importance of the "portability" of shared qualifications, but warned the "current arrangements and structures are becoming untenable".

"Unilateral announcements from Westminster about our shared qualifications undermine the three-country arrangements," said Mr Andrews.

There are already changes approved for education in Wales, such as the creation of Qualification Wales, which will become a separate exams watchdog.

Northern Ireland faces a similar decision on whether to follow the changes announced in England or to maintain the existing system or to develop another.

Education Minister John O'Dowd announced a "fundamental review" of A-levels and GCSEs, which is expected to be completed by June 2013.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: "The Welsh education system is a matter for them.

"We are solely concerned with doing what is best for English students. That is why we are transforming the education system to raise standards in this country to prepare pupils to compete in a global jobs market."

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Church of England faces being wiped out, report warns - Telegraph.co.uk

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has acknowledged that the Church must devote more energy to increasing the number of regular worshippers over the next five years Photo: PA(router,verizon wireless,wireless network,wireless internet,i phone,i phone verizon,my verizon wireless,wireless adapter,att wireless)

In the last 40 years the number of adult churchgoers has fallen by half while the number of children regularly worshipping in public declined by 80 per cent, the study says.(router,verizon wireless,wireless network,wireless internet,i phone,i phone verizon,my verizon wireless,wireless adapter,att wireless)

The Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham, the Rt Rev Paul Butler, will present findings to the Church's national assembly, the General Synod, in York on Saturday.
Synod members will be urged to vote for a new national drive to recruit more members.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has acknowledged that the Church must devote more energy to increasing the number of regular worshippers over the next five years.
The report, Mission Action Planning in the Church of England, states that the "sharp" fall in churchgoing since 1970 poses a significant threat.
"This decline in membership, and the accompanying rise in average age, means that fewer people are becoming disciples of Jesus Christ, and that the Church is able to have less impact and influence in the public realm, both nationally and in the transformation of local communities," it says.
"We are faced with a stark and urgent choice: do we spend the next few years managing decline, or do we go for growth?
"In other words, do we accept the continual numerical decline of the Church of England as inevitable, or do we dare to believe a different future, that God might want his Church to grow, in holiness and in numbers?"
According to official figures, the number of worshippers attending church each week fell by 30,000 between 2007 and 2009, to 1.13 million.
Church of England officials argue that the decline partly reflects the nature of modern society, in which many kinds of membership organisation - including political parties - have lost supporters.
The House of Bishops is expected to oppose Bishop Butler's motion calling for a "national mission action plan" to help parishes grow. His critics argue that recruitment is most effective at a local level.
The General Synod will also hear a call for an emergency debate on homosexuality. Church officials will be accused of "woeful" failure to protect the institution of marriage from erosion by the rise of civil partnerships and Coalition plans to allow same-sex couples to register their partnerships in religious settings.
A lay member of Synod, Andrea Minichiello Williams, will urge the Archbishops of Canterbury and York to calls an "emergency" debate to discuss Church's stance on marriage reforms.
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Church of England General Synod live blog - The Guardian (blog)

2.05pm: I am momentarily stepping away from the Church of England's cunning plan to dominate, sorry "position itself even more centrally in the education system of England and Wales" to bring you reaction to the Equality and Human Rights Commission application to intervene in the case of four Christians.
Ben Summerskill, from Stonewall, has issued this response:(router,verizon wireless,wireless network,wireless internet,i phone,i phone verizon,my verizon wireless,wireless adapter,att wireless)

Stonewall is deeply disturbed at the EHRC's statement announcing applications to intervene in European Court cases of claimed discrimination against Christians in the workplace. The case features two individuals, Lillian Ladele and Gary McFarlane, who have refused to provide public services to gay people.(router,verizon wireless,wireless network,wireless internet,i phone,i phone verizon,my verizon wireless,wireless adapter,att wireless)

The Commission should be crystal clear that if it seeks to defend the claimed right of any public servant to turn away any user of a public service, it will face strong opposition. Gay taxpayers currently contribute £40 billion a year to the cost of Britain's public services and no lesbian and gay person should ever be deprived of access to them.
The EHRC's announcement, which has apparently been made by officers without consulting its board, confuses a settled legal situation that is currently clear. If employees are allowed to discriminate against gay people in the delivery of publicly-funded services, using the cloak of religion as justification, then we risk seeing a situation where Muslims may start refusing to treat alcoholics in hospital or social workers might decline to assist single mothers.
Recent research has demonstrated that the majority of religious people in Britain are proud of our progress toward gay equality. They understand that religious beliefs do not mean individuals have a right to treat lesbian, gay and bisexual people unfairly. We regret that the EHRC does not appear to support this sentiment. We hope it will now offer an unambiguous clarification of its position.

The National Secular Society has a statement on its website:

The cases that have been referred to Europe are not as straightforward as we are led to believe by the campaigners running them. Some of them have been tested in court and repeatedly found to be groundless (for example, Nadia Eweida, the BA employee) and the others have been settled by employment tribunals or through workplace negotiation. The fact that in every case where they have been brought to court they have been dismissed illustrates the emptiness of the claims being made by the likes of the Christian Legal Centre.
Mr Phillips should realise that by encouraging these worthless cases he is putting at risk the rights of gay people and others to live free from discrimination and injustice. For every privilege granted to religious people, someone else's rights are diminished. The fight for equality for gays has been long and hard, and now we see this campaign putting them at risk as religious believers fight for the right to legally enforce their prejudices against LGBT people.

The British Humanist Association is also joining the fray:

All reasonable people will agree both that equality law in this area must be clear and also that there is scope in a secular democracy for reasonable accommodation of religious beliefs when that accommodation does not affect the rights and freedoms of others. But it is one thing to make the case for reasonable accommodation in matters such as religious holidays, and quite another if the accommodation sought is to allow the believer to discriminate against others in the provision of a service.
In spite of our own work on the government steering group that first established it, ever since the EHRC opened for business our attempts to work with it have run aground on the constant priority it gives to religion. The EHRC has covered itself with shame on "religion or belief" issues since its doors first opened and this latest action is wholly disproportionate.

1.31pm: Here are some extracts from the opening speech of the bishop of Oxford about education. Audio for the debate can be found here and audio files for the whole of Synod - I know I spoil you - are also available for the Church of England website.

The changes are just tumbling out of government at a bewildering pace and the whole educational world is scrambling to keep up.
[The 200th anniversary of the National Society] has given us the opportunity to revisit those core values and ask the crucial question about the purpose of church schools at the start of the 21st century. The question is being asked quite sharply of us by the increasingly vociferous band of secularists. It is important we are clear about the purpose, the rationale, the justification for our church schools. We need to stay on the front foot and be confident in the importance of these church schools in the mixed educational economy.
Seismic movements are afoot in education. We've focused on three - academies, RE and admissions. The educational marketplace is opening up, free of local authority control. Local education authorities make out for very little in this context having few roles and fewer funds. Independent service providers will be needed for school improvement, HR, legal expertise and so on. Who's going to provide that experience skill and knowledge now that the LEA has withered on the vine? Enter the Church. This is a great opportunity for diocesan boards of education if we can hold our nerve and be quick on our feet.
Non-church schools will be looking for experienced, wise, skilled friends who they can trust. We've been in the business a long time and we can provide or broker or benchmark the services they need.
The second major concern is about RE. All is still not lost although it's a close run thing. Discussions continue at a very high level. Can we all do our bit to commend the idea of RE teaching as Christian vocation?
The third issue is admissions, this isn't one of the googlies bowled to us by government. Not much has changed. Out of nearly 5000 schools only a very small number allocate more than half their places to Christian families. There's no tension between serving the whole community and nurturing the faith of children from Christian families.
We could lose much of what we have built up over the last 200 years if governors, bishops, clergy don't rise to the challenge of a new era. The changes are momentous the opportunities are huge.

12.20pm: More on the Church of England's stake in News Corporation. First Estates Church Commissioner Andreas Whittam Smith has warned (there's a lot of that going on) this morning against a premature purge of the Church of England's £3.76m News Corporation investment as it was possible that Murdoch might dump his British papers leading to a rise in share price. Canny.
He told Synod:

I feel that a premature sale of News Corp and BSkyB might just be simply very bad timing.
I don't argue with anything that anybody is saying about them but I think it must be possible that News Corp will get rid of its entire British holdings, of newspapers that is, and that if it is to do so, first of all the problem would have vanished if you like from the point of view of the parent company and for us as investors, and the shares will certainly bounce up again, and so it is a ticklish area.
I do wish them the best of luck in talking to Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch and Rebekah wotsit, it won't be easy, and I do not volunteer to be part of the team.

11.53am: Morning all! Welcome to the final General Synod live blog.
This morning is about education, education, education. There has been lots of coverage about this debate - with a leading bishop warning the Church of England must act now to secure its role amid policy change; the same bishop warning that church schools are under threat and again that middle-class parents will lose their monopoly on school places.
The advice on admissions and comment from the leading bishop in question - John Pritchard - can be found here.
While the debate is going on I'll do a round-up of news and blogs emerging from yesterday's business.
The Daily Telegraph has a story on how Christians should learn how to be a minority from Muslims, drawn from comments made by the bishop of Bradford, Nick Baines. Baines has written about race and the Church of England on his own blog:

One of the major challenges facing Muslims in this country is how to be a minority community and faith. Islam assumes majority status, so the learning is not an easy exercise. Where Christians find themselves a minority presence in a parish here, it has to ask what sort of a community it should be, how it should shape its life, how it can best witness to Jesus Christ, what sort of language it needs to enable its voice to be heard and its life to be understood.
We could pretend that the situation didn't exist. We might wish the situation were different. But that would simply be to 'do a Daily Mail' and live with a rather unpleasant fantasy. It is always better to live in the real world and embrace the questions and challenges we might otherwise ignore.

The Telegraph also has a story about the curious incident involving the bishop of Dover and the chair of the business committee. The bishop of Dover was due to be confirmed as that position holder, but whisperings and grumblings meant he chose not to take on the role. It led to the archbishop of Canterbury's intervention, a blog post from another bishop and mildly feverish activity on Twitter.
A transcript of the bishop's statement (Dover, not Willesden) is here (via Titus One Nine) and it's rather astonishing.

Trevor Willmott, Bishop of Dover, number 45 – Chairman, I am grateful for this unusual opportunity to speak. I ask Synod's forgiveness if what I am about to say strikes hard. It is not intended to do so. Throughout my time on Synod in many different ways, I have tried to be of assistance to our working, and I will continue so to act in the future.
I understand however, that there are some who question the appropriateness of a member of the House of Bishops chairing the Business Committee of this Synod and perhaps, dare I say, even this bishop in particular.
I want to say it is a role which I have not sought. I will not speculate on the reasoning behind these views, partly because I am ashamed to say, many of them have been spoken in the darkness!
I just want to say that I am deeply saddened at the thought that a member of any house of this Synod is somehow disqualified from holding a particular office, merely because he or she belongs to that particular house. Even more so, the thought that somehow belonging to that house, cuts across personal integrity and the loyalty to carry forward a shared task.
Members of Synod, I do not intend to embarrass you any further this morning. I therefore ask the Archbishops' Council, not to consider me for nomination as Chairman of the Business Committee. If such a nomination cannot gain the consent and confidence of the Synod, I do not believe that this office or any office is worth holding. I would suggest however, that very urgent consideration now be given to the amending of the standing orders of this Synod, so as to find a better and more transparent way of appointing the Chair of the Business Committee, and somehow preventing others finding themselves in that unenviable place in which I now find myself.

Hmm.
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