---

Sutherland Inquiry

I am happy to put on the record my thanks to Ken Boston. I worked with him over the past year and a half and thought that he delivered the key stage 3 reforms, which have been widely welcomed in schools, extremely well. We never had a difficult word, but I regret, as does Ken Boston now, that when he gave me reassurances in face-to-face meetings that things were on track that turned out not to be the case. I am very sorry about what has happened today, but we are where we are and we have to move forward. I know that the Select Committee is doing its review and I will ensure that my more detailed response is provided to my hon. Friend so that we can give evidence to that Select Committee. I hope that by then the Opposition members of the Committee will have had a chance to study it, because that might mean that they will be rather more informed in their barracking in the Committee. I do not accept the point about the shadow authority, but I accept the point about too many cooks spoiling the broth. The NAA was a division of QCA, with no separate independent function. The QCA chief executive was responsible to the board for the delivery of tests, not the NAA, although the NAA was a member of the executive board. The QCA has today taken the step of removing the NAA label, which, I believe, got in the way. Sutherland makes it very clear that that label confused accountabilities and allowed Ken Boston to manage things at arm's length, which was not the right thing to do. My hon. Friend is right on that point. Sutherland makes it clear that it was a problem when the regulator was within the QCA and not a distinct organisation. The appointment of an independent regulator in the form of Ofqual represented a significant step forward, and Sutherland says that that has made things better. They will be better still when we finally have the necessary legislation on the statute book. We can do certain things now to implement Sutherland's recommendations, but there is no evidence in the report that the establishment of Ofqual in shadow form made things worse. In fact, the Sutherland report shows that it made things better over the past few months.