Education secretary announces plan after report criticising number of pupils leaving school without basic grasp of English or maths
Thousands of pupils who fail to achieve a good GCSE in English and maths will be made to study the subjects for another two years or take high-quality alternative qualifications until they leave school at 18, the education secretary has said..
Michael Gove was responding to a government-commissioned review of vocational qualifications, published in March, which criticised the number of pupils leaving school without a basic grasp of English or maths.
Last summer, 45% of 16-year-olds missed a C grade in the subjects.
From 2015, teenagers will have to stay in education or training until they reach 18
The review, conducted by Professor Alison Wolf, an expert in public policy at King's College London, also found that up to 400,000 teenagers were wasting their time on college courses that did not lead to jobs or further training.
Gove said the government wanted to ensure that all young people studied maths and English until they got a good qualification. Ideally, that would be a C or better at GCSE, but high-quality alternatives will be identified following a consultation this summer
He also told MPs a host of vocational courses would no longer count in league tables in order to dissuade schools from entering pupils for courses that were not of a high quality.
"For too long, the vocational education system has been devalued by attempts to pretend that all qualifications are intrinsically the same," he said. "Young people have taken courses that have led nowhere.
"We will reform league tables, the funding system and regulation so children are given honest information and take the right courses. We will make sure that employers are more involved in the system. We will encourage them to offer more high-quality apprenticeships."
The government will consult with employers, schools, colleges and universities to define what criteria the best vocational courses must meet, the education secretary said.
The number of vocational qualifications has boomed over the last decade, and many fear that some courses are of poor quality.
One of the biggest exam boards, Edexcel, said the number of students studying its vocational courses had risen from 66,000 in 2003 to more than 700,000.
However, Andy Burnham, the shadow education secretary, told MPs that the introduction of the English baccalaureate into school league tables devalued vocational courses .
The bac measures the proportion of pupils achieving at least a C grade in English, maths, two sciences, a humanities and a modern or ancient language.
Mary Bousted, the general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said the bac would "isolate and demoralise" less academic students.
Brian Lightman, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the key to improving qualifications was not to scrap some, but to provide young people with better careers advice.
Meanwhile, a survey by the public sector union Unison has found almost all local authorities in England are going to make cuts to their career services this year.
The survey of 85 local authorities shows some Connexions services, such as in East Sussex and Lewisham in south London, will close completely. Overall, at least 8,000 advisers will lose their jobs.