From education to employment

Diplomas: Green Light or Red Risk?

Noticing a local advert for a 16-year old to join an accountancy firm, “must have 5 O Levels including Maths and English” made me think, not only of which 16-year old thawed from 20-odd years of cryogenic suspension would want to be an accountant, but of how long some initiatives can take to catch on. Although, admirably, many of our former colonies still offer O Levels and find them as popular as ever, we have moved on – a quarter of a century already of GCSEs, whatever they are.

Noticing a local advert for a 16-year old to join an accountancy firm, “must have 5 O Levels including Maths and English” made me think, not only of which 16-year old thawed from 20-odd years of cryogenic suspension would want to be an accountant, but of how long some initiatives can take to catch on. Although, admirably, many of our former colonies still offer O Levels and find them as popular as ever, we have moved on – a quarter of a century already of GCSEs, whatever they are.

Moved on that is, apart from A Levels, the gold standard. A Levels hurriedly devised in a period of post war austerity as a means of denying access to University for the many, are still with us. The days when they were targeted at 5% of the population have long gone; there’s no need, as half a century’s expansion of HE has created, together with the introduction of student fees, a surplus of supply over demand. Marketplace techniques of awarding an implausible number of top A star plus grades, paying kids to stay on at school and even raising the school leaving age are not going to fill a vacuum made worse by 25% of undergraduates not completing their courses because they don’t ‘get’ university learning.

Now we have Diplomas to save the day. A programme flagged at QCA as ‘red risk’ the highest of their four risk categories. Ken Boston is worried that Diplomas just haven’t been communicated. He says they need to be “stripped down to the chassis” if there is to be any hope of them being understood, let alone working.

Employers, like the one penning an advert asking for 5 ‘O’ levels, will, I suspect, be slow to understand just what Diplomas deliver. Employers annoyingly speak as they find. Employers know that very little school learning apart from reading, writing and arithmetic are any use to them. Employers are genuinely astounded that those entering the world of work invariably don’t know their times tables and can’t take a message. The snag with delivering vocational Diplomas in schools is that hardly any teacher in the country has any vocational experience other than teaching. A further snag for schools is that they already have a log jam of major reforms to turn into reality besides finding a zillion work experience placements for Diploma followers e.g. a revised Key Stage 3 curriculum and new Functional Maths and English syllabuses.

The real test for Diplomas, as Michael Gove, Shadow Secretary for Children, put it “is not what the Government says they’re worth but what employers think they’re worth.”

Lawrence Miles, Chief officer, IVA


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