The vast number of approved GCSE or GCSE-equivalent qualifications has been reduced by 96% to just 125, and these fulfil tough criteria ensuring they lead to meaningful further study or employment, says Alison Wolf
Young people all over Europe face a daunting labour market, and school qualifications are critically important to their job prospects. An education system that ignores labour market realities is failing in its duty. In the review of vocational education that I carried out for the government last year, I concluded England was doing exactly that.
Of course, no one set out to achieve anything so terrible. But we created a system in which the self-interest of schools and the interests of young people had diverged. My recommendations, which have been the catalyst for the league-table changes the government is announcing, were designed to reverse that state of affairs.
Institutions are under great pressure to do well in league tables. In recent years, they were able, and strongly encouraged, to do so by piling up GCSE and GCSE-equivalent "points", with more and more qualifications added to the approved list. There are 3,175 that currently count in the tables. The temptation for a school was to behave as if the more the better, regardless of whether or not the qualifications were of any value in the world outside.
Today, this vast number of approved qualifications has been reduced by 96% to 125. These have fulfilled tough criteria ensuring that they lead to meaningful further study or employment. Key stage 4 pupils will no longer be offered qualifications without labour market or progression value, solely in order to help a school rack up league-table points.
I have met students who told me they were "getting 15 GCSEs" when they were doing no such thing. Colleges complained to me about growing numbers of young people applying for courses in the belief that they had the necessary entry qualifications, when they did not.
Employers could not care less about "points" and "equivalences" and how many of them a young person has. Many of them have only just got used to GCSEs, as opposed to O-levels. They look instead at whether young people have got certain, specific qualifications: ones which they recognise and value.
English and maths GCSE (at C or above) are top of this list; and it is very good news that these subjects will soon be compulsory for all 16- to 18-year-olds who have not yet achieved them. But employers also recognise and value some of the traditional school subjects, both for their content and because they signal general abilities, such as being able to analyse, write coherently, think quantitatively, and, indeed, work hard at something difficult. And educational gatekeepers – colleges and universities – are the same.
There is no reason whatsoever why some vocational courses could not be included in the list of qualifications that are highly respected. On the contrary, they can and should. Vocational subjects can develop all the skills I listed above, and other important ones as well.
But if you proclaim that everything is valuable, and that everything is worth the same, no one will believe you. If you encourage schools to offer qualifications that were never designed for school settings you compound the problem. When people don't know which are worthwhile and which are not, they simply disregard them all.
Our 14- to 16-year-olds need qualifications that are respected, that develop general skills and help progression. I believe that in the next few years, some vocational awards will earn general recognition for their excellence. But, first, we need to stop hampering young people with half-truths that serve them ill in the real world.
• Alison Wolf is the Sir Roy Griffiths professor of public sector management at King's College London. In 2011, she carried out the Wolf Review of Vocational Education