I think there's a growing realisation that secondary schools, key stage 4, is driven overly by performance indicators, and, whatever performance indicator you come up with, there will be unintended consequences. So, it's not, I think, useful to keep changing the performance indicators and think that you will get to a point where you solve the problem. That's not likely to happen. What needs to be done is to have a different approach to accountability that doesn't put so much attention on these performance indicators, because what you're doing is you're just moving the problem around by changing the performance indicators. Some of these vocational courses that I mentioned are a good example of this. So, I think the previous performance indicators encouraged schools to enter, for example, whole cohorts to do BTEC science, and that's not a good idea because the GCSE sciences are better preparation to go on to A-level science, for example. So, you're cutting out the possibility of progression for those pupils. On the other hand, by discouraging—the new performance indicators discourage BTEC and now people are saying, 'We're not offering BTEC at all', and it is suitable for a certain cohort of pupils. So, it's very difficult to get the performance indicators absolutely right if you put so much pressure on schools to actually achieve those performance indicators.
Michelle, I'd just like to bring in Darren at this point.
I share some of your concern around the unavailability now of BTEC in some schools. It strikes me that the decision to discourage the availability of BTEC, which is what the performance measures do, really is sending a message about vocational qualifications that is not helpful, actually, to many young people for whom vocational qualifications may be perfectly suitable. Is that something with which you concur?
I think it's one of the unintended consequences, and what I'm trying to say is that, almost inevitably, there will be unintended consequences. So, you can sympathise with the original decision to change the performance indicators in such a way that it encouraged more pupils to do GCSEs, for example, but it does have that unintended consequence. In theory, there's nothing stopping a school entering pupils now for those qualifications.