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Testing and Assessment

Clearly the Secretary of State's report card would say, "Shocking; could do better; should be kept back a year" or something along those lines, because his explanation today has not been very good. My hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) asked him what the major difference was between maths and English and science that meant they were being treated differently. I agree that there should be enhanced teacher assessment, although I rather hope that that is what good teachers would be doing in any event, because they would want to know where the deficiencies were with any of their youngsters, but we must still have the important external rigour and independence. Surely part of the problem, as my hon. Friend said, is the simplicity of some of the questions that youngsters are now being asked. They are hardly challenging. They cannot be, because even I could answer some of the questions that my hon. Friend read out—not all of them, but some, and I am not good at science. Surely we ought to be trying to enthuse our youngsters into being attracted to science not only in primary school but in secondary school and on to university. Sadly, over the past few years university science courses have shrunk, and—