Time to end historical betrayal of school children
Sarah Teather, Lib Dem shadow education secretary
Monday, 11, Jun 2007 12:00
Sarah Teather, the Liberal democrat education spokesman, argues England needs to reform its education system to provide young people with the skills necessary for the 21st century.
Alan Johnson recently grabbed headlines when he announced his decision to raise the school learning age to 18. Taken by surprise, education groups were quick to criticise this as heavy handed and warned that thousands of teenagers would resist the change. However, now that the dust has settled, I on the whole welcome this decision, which the Liberal Democrats intend to support.
There is no doubt that in many areas our secondary school system is in dire straits, with failing schools, large numbers of students leaving at 16 with fewer than five A-C GCSE passes, high truancy rates, and chronic underachievement. In an increasingly global and service-based economy, where the number of unskilled jobs is falling fast, it is clear that something has to change if we are not to be left with large numbers of unemployed young people with none of the skills needed to hold down a job in the 21st Century.
Keeping teenagers in education or training, whether academic or work-based through apprenticeships, will go a long way towards addressing this. However, bold as this move is, I feel that an opportunity is being missed. We cannot address the problem of secondary school leaving rates only by making education and training compulsory to 18; we must also address the reasons why teenagers leave school at 16 in the first place. We must accept that for many students the secondary curriculum is old fashioned, uninteresting, and doesn’t respond to their needs, while employers and universities alike complain that school leavers do not come equipped with the skills they need. Many young people have mentally switched off long before they get to 16.
The solution, therefore, would be to couple a rise in the school learning age with a comprehensive reform of the national curriculum and the replacement of GCSEs and A-Levels with a modern British Diploma system. Students should be able to mix vocational courses with academic learning in a way that would make the learning experience relevant to all teenagers, not only those who seek an academic education to prepare them for university.
We would introduce real choice into the education system, not only between different types of institution as proposed by the current government – but also in what is studied and how. I believe now is the time for the government to enact the proposals of the Tomlinson Report. This would end the historical betrayal of children at both ends of the academic spectrum, where the brightest are not stretched and many others are completely disenfranchised. It would also encourage students to stay in education by empowering them and allowing them to have real control over what they study.
We believe that this would keep teenagers in education, not because they are forced to sit through another two years of it, but because they will gain a meaningful qualification that will benefit them in their future lives.