- The Guardian, Thursday July 13 2000
Ministers were faced with the need to improve standards and change the school structure. They opted to concentrate on standards in their first term. They were right: gaps within the system as well as with outside systems were unacceptably wide. They were right to start with primary schools (more than half of all 11-year-olds were failing to reach expected standards); right to set bold and ambitious targets (75% to achieve the maths standards and 80% the literacy standard by 2002); and right to use tests to monitor progress. Schools are well on their way to achieving these targets, which is why ministers must start turning their attention to the structural faults documented by Nick Davies. Moreover, as yesterday's article highlighted, changing the structure can help raise standards. The best way of recapturing an interest in schools among the seriously disaffected is to make them more relevant. That means vocational education getting a huge increase in resources and esteem.
Our current system dates back to the start of the welfare state, but came with a hidden 1940s agenda: how would agriculture, mill towns and the coal industry attract the millions they needed if every child was offered a proper secondary education? This was one reason why Britain introduced a two-tier system, under which vocational education was starved of resources. Fifty years on, another Labour government, attuned to the need to ensure that all its citizens have skills, is ideally placed to make sure that a proper structure is now put in place. Vocational education on the continent (two-thirds of the British workforce lacks the vocational qualifications of Germany) was driven by fear of Britain's industrial revolution. Continental countries were only too ready to ensure that vocational and academic education achieved equal status. Economic survival depended on it.
Nick Davies described the Dutch system yesterday: a system in which students from 11 can move between academic and vocational pathways. Both are within the same school, but there is more money for vocational courses, given their higher costs. One London school which has copied this scheme - within the restricted limits of the current national curriculum - has seen significant improvement in standards. These columns have long argued against forcing all children through academic courses, but have suggested 14 - as in Italy and Germany - as a more appropriate age to introduce a dual track. By then, pupils are more aware of their interests and competence. Better still, this would move basis of the secondary system from parental to pupils' choice. Keeping both tracks within every comprehensive school would allow the change to be introduced far faster than having them in separate schools. And still more important, it offers a better chance of parity of esteem.
