21.11.13
Skills Commission calls for one system for education and training
Educational reforms have failed to provide a coherent system, the Skills Commission has warned.
In a new report, One System, Many Pathways, it calls for the DfE to undertake a full review of the available support for education and training.
The current system fails to put individual learners’ needs at the centre of policy making and provision, the report states, and highlights a lack of information, advice and guidance, especially for those looking for less academic pathways.
The report recommends a new ‘Values Consensus’ framework to guide policy and decision making. This would include ensuring fairness and quality across the whole system and real choice for young people.
Employers must engage more fully with education providers and create ‘associate governors’ to link local employers to schools and education providers more systematically, it states.
Speaking ahead of the launch, inquiry co-chair Sir Mike Tomlinson said: “Our vision for learners is of one, encompassing, coherent system of education and training that is characterised by a diversity of pathways, with clear routes of progression to employment, further training or higher education – whatever is right for the learner.
“Rigorous academic pathways into higher education is vital. But we must be mindful that recent reforms’ focus on academic rigour does not come at the expense of other pathways to employment, further training and, indeed, higher education.”
Fellow inquiry co-chair, Ian Ferguson CBE, said: “The question we have asked throughout this inquiry – and the question the sector must ask of itself – is: is this policy, programme, qualification, institution contributing positively towards creating a system that is in the best interests of all learners from the age of 14 to 19?”
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