- achieve a wider range of courses and qualifications enabling the development of practical skills for life and work
- further encourage innovative collaboration to meet all learners' needs,
- allow for more manageable assessment
- provide a more unified award framework.
These aims will undoubtedly impact on the way learning provider organisations are structured and led. Their success will depend on developing collaborative partnerships across a range of formal institutions, employers and other providers of informal learning, for example youth work.
The reforms will need to be built on a shared understanding of terminology and goals. Effective consultation with young people is crucial as is the chance for youth workers, employers, teachers and other learning providers to engage in debate.
Ensuring the unified award framework reflects the broader range of learning means developing a greater parity of esteem between formal qualifications and informal awards and recognition of learning wherever it takes place.
Co-ordination is required of work already undertaken nationally and locally on attitudes and skills required for life and work, drawing on what is known about successful learning environments for those who may have dropped out of the formal system.
Transformation of the 14 to 19 curriculum will mean innovation that is both incremental and radical, designed and co-ordinated in a disciplined way and shared; a learning system that is co-ordinated in design and implementation and develops the intellectual, social and organisational capital of organisations.
Success of the curriculum will be judged by higher levels of participation and attainment, whether young people are at the centre of the agenda and whether provision is more varied and of consistent high quality. We owe it to young people to meet this challenge.
