Consultation document here: http://goo.gl/UHAES I'm going to read the consultation document and produce a response, I think. My younger daughter will just miss the coming shambles, so I'm a disinterested observer whose children are deep in the current process. And Gove will be leaving a nasty mess on the doorstep for an incoming Labour (please, God, make it true) administration in May 2015, as the idea is first teaching September 2015. But at first glance, you have to say that all the expensive education the minister and his civil servants have had at our top institutions does seem to have been rather wasted. "1.1 This consultation sets out the Government’s plans to restore rigour...to our examination system at age 16". "3.4 ... The public recognise [the claim that there has been a lessening over time in how demanding GCSE qualifications are] to be true. 60% of those surveyed in a recent YouGov poll believe that GCSEs have got easier, while only 6% think that they have got harder." Oh yes, a _really_ rigorous way to establish facts about complex educational issues is to use a poll amongst people who have no direct knowledge of the topic, and therefore can only rely on anecdote and media coverage. "3.3 ... Employers, universities and colleges are dissatisfied with school leavers’ literacy and numeracy, with 42% of employers needing to organise additional training for at least some young people joining them from school or college". That's an AS Level "Critical Thinking" fail, because it doesn't tell us how many of those young people actually had a C in GCSE Language (to cite the current hotspot), and therefore tells us nothing about the qualifications. And conflating universities with undifferentiated employers is hardly helpful, either. "4.1. The first of our aims is to reverse the long term decline in standards". It's lovely to be able to use the phrase "begging the question" correctly for a change. Where's the evidence there is a long term decline in standards? And then on page six, after unevidenced hand-waving, we get to the first important consultation questions: what should be the name of the new qualifications? Not "do you agree standards have fallen?" --- that's a given. Objection your honour! Leading the witness! Asking someone what colour they would like their new car in, or when would be convenient to fit the new carpet, is a classic salesman's close: they're assuming you're buying. Similar, "what name should our new qualification have?" It's shockingly badly written, too. There is a rich irony in "grammar" and "punctuation" appearing in a sentence as rambling as "Ofqual has acted to tighten controls over GCSEs, tackling resits, modularisation and spelling, punctuation and grammar, and demanding evidence that improvements in grades are matched by real improvements in performance." Isn't this what primary teachers call "comma-splicing"? They try to get their KS2 pupils to avoid it for fear of being marked down in SATs. There are stray sub-headings in the consultation response template which entirely alter the meaning of questions from the consultation document (for example, "6 Are there particular approaches to examinations which might be needed to make this possible for some subjects?" is headed "Teaching to the Test", which I suspect isn't the intent). Ah well. Our new masters. ian