Government accepts Wolf review recommendations
Lauren Higgs
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Pupils who fall short of obtaining a grade C or above in GCSE English and maths will be required to study the subjects until they reach age 18, the government has announced.
The measure was among those proposed by Professor Alison Wolf in her review of vocational education earlier this year.
The government has now responded to the review, accepting Wolf’s recommendations in full, in a bid to raise the profile of vocational qualifications and boost the skills of the young people who take them.
Education Secretary Michael Gove also outlined plans to reform league tables and funding rules to remove "the perverse incentives" that "devalue" vocational education.
Meanwhile, a performance measure will be introduced to assess the progress of both higher- and lower-attaining pupils. This is intended to stop schools and colleges from focusing their efforts on improving the grades of pupils on the C/D grade borderline at GCSE.
On apprenticeships, the government has promised to consider paying businesses that take young people onto high-quality placements.
Gove said the Wolf reforms will make sure that vocational education is given the high status it deserves.
"For too long the vocational education system has been devalued by attempts to pretend that all qualifications are intrinsically the same," he said. "Young people have taken courses that have led nowhere."
"Good qualifications in English and maths are what employers demand before all others. Young people must be able to demonstrate their understanding of these subjects."
But Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT, accused Gove of peddling the myth that current vocational qualifications are easy and valueless.
"This government inherited a coherent approach to vocational education which ensured that all learners would receive a broad and balanced offer," she said.
"Rather than letting this bed in, ministers then invented a problem and came up with a review designed to reach the conclusions the coalition government wanted. The system wasn’t broken when the coalition came into office but they are well on the way to ensuring it will be by the time they have finished."
Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, added: "Yet again we hear the tired old assertion that vocational courses presently offered are the easy option for schools and students. This is simply not the case."
She warned that the proposals on league tables are divisive.
"It is extremely disappointing that Michael Gove proposes to introduce yet more measures to feed into league tables by assessing the performance of both higher and lower attaining pupils," Blower explained.
"No amount of tweaking alters the fact that league tables have a distorting effect on pupils’ learning. We need to move away from this unnecessary and ineffective way of measuring a school’s progress, not add to it."