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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, as the country’s schools return this week, all is not well in the classroom. Two free schools have been abandoned altogether and another is said to be half empty and head teachers could take exam boards to court over those GCSE English results. I’m joined now by Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary, Stephen Twigg, good to talk to you Mr Twigg. Let’s talk about that Ofqual and the GCSE English results, the solution as Ofqual sees it seems to be now to allow those who feel they weren’t given the right results a resit under the same conditions, do you think that’s fair?

STEPHEN TWIGG: It’s not good enough really because one of the problems with this is that young people are making their choices now about where they’ll go in a week or two’s time, which sixth form will they go to, will they go on an apprenticeship and they need the grades for then, so I don't think that resits really solves the problem and I’m very disappointed with the response that we’ve had from Ofqual.

DM: And disappointed therefore with the response you’ve had from the Education Secretary? When the House returns you want to hear what he’s going to do.

ST: Well we’ve not really heard from the Education Secretary. He spoke briefly on the day when the results came out but I don't think he’s said anything since then. Now Parliament comes back tomorrow and we expect him to come to Parliament and to set out what’s going to happen because there is a basic unfairness here. If you were assessed in January you could get a grade C, the same quality of work – maybe even slightly better work – assessed in May would get a D. That cannot be right. I am all in favour of rigour, I am in favour of making sure that these are tough exams but you can’t change the boundaries in the middle of the year.

DM: No, and the other point being that even if you are allowed a resit, shouldn’t it be under the conditions that pre-existed when you started that curriculum and indeed it bites into the time you should be devoting to your AS and A levels.

ST: That’s the crucial point I think and again there is a disadvantage then simply by virtue of when you were entered for the assessment so I think we need to look again at all of this. I think we also need a much fuller inquiry into what went wrong, we need to make sure this doesn’t happen again next year which is why I’m suggested that the Select Committee on Education should take a detailed look at that but before then, we need to avert there being legal action. I totally understand head teachers considering legal action but let’s try to resolve this in the next few days. I think the Secretary of State, Michael Gove, should be calling Ofqual and the exam boards in to try to sort this out so that these young people aren’t at a disadvantage.

DM: Well the easy way of doing that, you are skirting around the issue, say it out loud, the easy way of doing that is saying that, okay we’ll remark those papers under the old rules.

ST: Precisely, precisely. They need to remarked or regarded according to the rules that applied earlier in the year. There should be consistency within the year and if we’re going to change the boundaries for grades you do that between years, not within the year. The only way to get fairness is to do that.

DM: But what about what lay behind what happened there? It may have been a ham-fisted way of doing it but it was trying to deal with this issue of grade inflation and grade inflation that took place year after year under the Labour government.

ST: I’ve acknowledged that there is an issue of grade inflation although I don't think that we should detract from the very real improvements there have been in the standards of teaching as well. We have actually addressed grade inflation in science this year, three years ago there was a recognition that there was a bit of an issue with GCSE science, changes were made and actually the GCSE science results went down a bit as well. There is no controversy about that because the change was done properly. Part of the problem is there is a kind of incompetence here from Michael Gove because there is a determination to do everything incredibly quickly, riding roughshod over normal ways of doing things, so you end up switching grade boundaries in the middle of a school year and creating this injustice and unfairness so I think, yes, it is a consequence of trying to deal with grade inflation but actually it is a completely separate issue of unfairness and incompetence.

DM: It’s interesting that you talk about the hurry Mr Gove is in and some would say you only get one chance to go to school and that every year that passes is another generation, is another year that’s wasted in unreformed schools. Do you not applaud in a way some of his speed and decision making?

ST: Look, I think if you can make speedy decisions that are right then that makes a great deal of sense but we’ve got a major crisis at the moment in primary school places in many parts of the country, there aren’t enough primary school places and that needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency and yet one of the first things that Michael Gove conceded to George Osborne two years ago was a very, very big cut in the budget for school buildings. Across government there is a big cut as we know, the cut across government in buildings is 30%, in education it’s almost double that when we need more schools and more school buildings.

DM: We have got a lot to address and I wanted to get on to free schools in a minute but I can’t let that pass without saying that if you look at those statistics, one of the reasons for that big bulge in primary school places is what happened again with Labour, with migration into this country particularly from Eastern Europe and we’ve seen that bulge because of your policies.

ST: It is partly about migration. I was in Barking and Dagenham just before the summer where they have perhaps the biggest crisis in primary school places but we had a programme for expanding and refurbishing primary schools which Michael Gove cancelled when he became Secretary of State. We were alive to this issue and I don't think it is being given anything like the priority it deserves.

DM: What’s your feeling then about free schools? I talked there in the introduction about a couple of them, which isn’t really that many, a couple of them having to be cancelled. Good ideas they may have thought at the time but the pupils and the parents didn’t come. Do you feel a slight air of triumph about this?

ST: Well yes because I think what we’ve seen is again a Secretary of State in a rush. This is his pet project, this is the thing that he really champions. The school in Bradford, the closure was announced last week, there were 30 pupils, many of whom had already bought their school uniforms expecting to go to this new school next week and the government pulled the plug. The school in Newham that was cancelled was just before the summer, Beccles in Suffolk is massively undersubscribed. Now some of the new free schools that are opening are fully subscribed, they will be brilliant successful schools and I wish them well. A number of local authorities have recognised that the only way you can get money from this government for a new school is to have a free school so they are going down that route. You have got innovative teachers and head teachers opening free schools and I applaud all of that but the problem that we’ve got is the government puts all of its eggs in the basket of free schools so when they fail it is a waste of public money and we’re not getting value for money.

DM: Well it doesn’t put all eggs in the basket, come on, it’s an extra option and it is never, ever going to take over the entirety of secondary education is it?

ST: No, but the extra money, if you want to open a new school now it is almost impossible to do that other than as a free school and yet the programme is not being tailored to those parts of the country that most desperately need additional school places. I’ve said this before, I think the most important role for a Secretary of State is to make sure that every child has a school place and if that isn’t happening, that is a basic failure and yet some of the free schools are opening in areas with massive surplus places. Areas where parents don’t want a new school, as evidenced by the examples in Newham and Beccles, and yet there are schools down the road that are falling apart and aren’t getting the money from government that they need.

DM: So much to get through, last word on Sir Michael Wilshaw from Ofsted talking about getting rid of the ‘satisfactory’ schools, they are just not good enough, satisfactory has been a cover up for bog standard, to use another phrase.

ST: I think it’s really important that we challenge all schools to be good, to do their very, very best. We’ve actually got, as Michael Wilshaw said in an earlier interview today, two-thirds of schools are good or better, that is significant progress over the last ten to fifteen years but we want all schools to improve because every child, every parent, should be able to expect to have a good local school to go to.

DM: Stephen Twigg, thank you very much indeed, the Shadow Education Secretary there, Stephen Twigg.