Page:The Wolf Report.djvu/9

Review of Vocational Education – The Wolf Report  * English and Maths GCSE (at grades A*-C) are fundamental to young people’s employment and education prospects.Yet less than 50% of students have both at the end of Key Stage 4 (age 15/16); and at age 18 the figure is still below 50%. Only 4% of the cohort achieve this key credential during their 16-18 education.Worse, the funding and accountability systems established by government create perverse incentives to steer 16+ students into inferior alternative qualifications.

The result is that many of England’s 14-19 year olds do not, at present, progress successfully into either secure employment or higher-level education and training. Many of them leave education without the skills that will enable them to progress at a later date. The Review received many hundred submissions from individuals and groups with extensive knowledge of our vocational education system. Many highlighted its strengths and achievements. But none wanted to leave things as they are; nor did they believe that minor changes were enough.This is surely correct.

What we want to achieve

Our society believes in equality of opportunity for all its citizens.That means equipping young people for a world in which their education makes a critical difference to their future lives, and for an economy undergoing constant and largely unpredictable change. We need to make sure that vocational education for 14-19 year olds really does serve the purpose of creating and maintaining opportunities for all young people.

This review makes a number of detailed recommendations to that end. Underlying them are three very clear organising principles for reform.

First, our system has no business tracking and steering 14 year olds, or 16 year olds, into programmes which are effectively dead-end. Any young person’s programme of study, whether ‘academic’ or ‘vocational’, should provide for labour market and educational progress on a wide front, whether immediately or later in life.

Second, we should tell citizens the truth. That means providing people with accurate and useful information, so that they can make decisions accordingly. Good information becomes more critical the more important the decisions. For young people, which vocational course, qualification or institution they choose really can be life- determining. 14-19 education is funded and provided for their sakes, not for the sake of the institutions who provide it. This may be a truism; but it is one which policy too often seems to ignore.

In recent years, both academic and vocational education in England have been bedevilled by well-meaning attempts to pretend that everything is worth the same as everything else. Students and families all know this is nonsense. But they are not all equally well placed to 8