Department for Children, Schools and Families
The Department for Education and Skills - Five Year Strategy for Children and Learners

The Department for Education and Skills - Five Year Strategy for Children and Learners

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Departmental Strategy


Five Year Strategy for Children and Learners


Chapter 6: 14-19 Education and Training

Goal: Every young person to be well-equipped for adulthood, skilled work and further learning

1. At the age of 14, young people begin to make educational choices that shape their future. We need to make sure that whatever choices they make, they are prepared as well as possible for adult life - and in particular, forsuccess in skilled employment, in further learning, and - for those who want it and have the potential - in university.

2. Part of our aim must be effectively to raisethe age at which young people leave education or training - so that within a generation it is exceptional for a young person under 18 not to be in some form of education or training. And we must do better for disadvantaged young people. To achieve this, we must introduce a more stimulating and stretching curriculum for all young people, andenable schools, colleges and work-based learning providers to work together to offer aricher mix of opportunities.

3. This chapter looks at the distinct experience of young people aged between 14 and 19, which depends both on the reforms set out in Chapter 5, on secondary schools, and in the next, on adult skills and further education.

4. We are already improving post-16 participation in education and training. In 2003 the number of 16-18 year-olds in full-time education increased by 25,000 over the previous year.

5. Results for this age group are also improving. Half of all 16 year-olds now get five good GCSEs, at grades A*-C. And in 2002-03, 90 percent of 16-18 year-olds taking A-levels got at least two passes.

6. Strong new partnerships are providing over 90,000 14-16 year-olds with the chance to study vocational subjects for part of the week in colleges or with training providers. New GCSEs in vocational subjects are proving popular, and 255,000 young people are currently doing apprenticeships.

Issues and Challenges

7. But it is in this age-range that our international weakness - and our failure to do justice to our young people - becomes starkly apparent.

8. The most important challenges we face are:

9. In meeting these challenges, our offer to young people and employers is:

Offer to young people and employers

A transformed 14-19 phase, which offers:

What this means in practice

A vision for a reformed and personalised system

10. Whatever their talents and aspirations, allyoung people should have choices that interest them from 14, should be equipped with the skills critical for success in employment, should have a realistic, stretching goal to aim for by the age of 18, and should have the advice and support to enable them to achieve it. We need carefully planned and far-reaching reform if we are really to give young people the personalised opportunities and choices that will make this a reality.

11. A significant contribution to this vision should come from the work of the independent group led by Mike Tomlinson which is due to report in the Autumn. We have asked the group to look at the fundamentals of the curriculum and at the qualifications that support it. We have said that we will assess the recommendations of the Tomlinson review on the basis of five key tests:

12. These tests will help us shape our response to the Tomlinson Review and our strategy for going forward. But we are already clear on the direction in which we need to travel.

A world class curriculum offer for all

Academic excellence

13. We will provide a world class academic offer which prepares young people well for university and for work, and to engage as active members of the community. The academically able have been well served by the traditional A-level route, but we need to review whether itis still fit for purpose in a world which requires ever higher levels of performance, underpinned by a broad range of skills.

14. Our goal is to build on recent changes to A-levels and the introduction of AS-levels to introduce greater breadth in the curriculum, while maintaining the quality and rigour of the A-level examination, and continue to support the modernisation of the exam system. A-level and the Advanced Extension Award must offer stretch and challenge to young people and ensure that we can identify the brightest among them.

15. We will also do more to recognise and incentivise the early achievement of qualifications - both academic and vocational - for example, by counting early AS-levels and other level 3 qualifications in performance tables for 16 year-olds.

16. The growing number of specialist schools will also help to bring more choice at 14, with schools offering a wider and more imaginative range of courses, particularly focused on their specialism. Depending on the specialism, these will support both academic and vocational routes.

A wider choice of stronger vocational routes

17. We aim to extend vocational options across all schools as part of our commitment to strengthening choice and the personalisation of the curriculum. This means giving pupils a wide range of opportunities to suit their diverse needs, abilities and interests, and ensuring that schools respond more effectively to employers' needs and encourage better employer involvement. As well as helping to raise attainment across the board, these developments will also motivate pupils and lead to greater participation in education and training post-16. They must be able to provide as strong a basis for higher education and good employment as the traditional academic routes.

18. To support this, we:

19. Apprenticeships have a key role in narrowing the skills gap at technician and craft level, and provide a high quality work based route for those young people that want it. The new re-launched Apprenticeships programme will deliver a stronger 'ladder of opportunity' beginning at age 14 and continuing into adulthood. It supports and encourages progression from the Young Apprenticeship for 14-16 year-olds into vocational or work-based learning leading to skilled employment, and also provides avenues into Higher Education though the Advanced Apprenticeship and Foundation Degree. By 2008, the numbers completing apprenticeships will have risen bythree-quarters.

Employability and a stronger partnership with employers

20. We will build employers much more closely into the process of designing and delivering education and training. Employers tell us they need young people above all to have well developed skills in communicating (including writing well), using numbers and using ICT. Butthey need much more than this. To succeed in the contemporary work environment, young people must be able to handle uncertainty and respond positively to change, to create and implement new ideas, tohave the capacity to solve problems and make sound decisions on the basis of evidence, and to be self-reliant and motivated. Wemust ensure that our offer to young people gives them the right opportunities to develop these skills, and we need the help of employers to make this a reality.

21. Employer involvement will not just be important for those doing vocational subjects. All young people need to be equipped to enter the world of work. We want employers to become more closely involved in helping schools and colleges to give every young person the skills they need for employability. Once Tomlinson has reported, we will involve employers closely in discussions about how to make sure all young people continue to build their skills in communication, application of number and ICT throughout the 14-19 phase ina way that really meets employers' needs.

22. All young people should undertake somework related learning as an essential preparation for adult life and employment. Theold-fashioned week of work experience isnot good enough. From autumn this year, work-related learning will become a statutory requirement for all pupils. Schools will be encouraged to use the full range of opportunities inside and outside the formal curriculum to bring out the relevance of what students are learning to the world of work, and to develop the skills needed for employment and enterprise.

23. Our Apprenticeships, including Young Apprenticeships, will clearly involve employers in delivery; and, through the Sector Skills Councils, which act as the training advocates and commissioners for groups of employers in each sector of industry, we will also involve employers more closely in the design and delivery of other qualifications and courses - including, for example, GCSEs in vocational subjects.

24. It will also be important for teachers, lecturers and trainers in schools and colleges who are delivering vocational courses to have recent experience in industry, and continuing close contact with the workplace. In the next chapter, on Adult Skills, we set out more about the reforms to further education which will help make sure that this happens.

A new, integrated youth offer

25. Greater choice, including a wider array ofplaces to study, will bring real benefits to young people. But we should not stop there. We want to offer more young people more things to do and places to go in their communities - chances to get involved, and simply places to be and enjoy themselves. Weknow that for some young people these extra opportunities are taken for granted; but for others - particularly those in deprived areas - there is a real lack of interesting, accessible and affordable things to do.

26. We also need to make sure that young people are equipped and supported to make the right choices, both to manage more complicated and self-directed patterns of learning and to seize the opportunities available outside formal learning. We want to drive up the standard of careers education and guidance, making it more tailored to the needs of the young person and relevant to today's world of work. Both of these ought to give particular support to young people vulnerable to disengagement from education, training or employment, or at risk of substance abuse, teenage pregnancy or involvement in crime.

27. A new offer for young people should address risks like these but also promote personal development and active citizenship. Itshould draw on the experience and knowledge of Connexions and other existingprogrammes by bringing together:

28. We will use Children's Trusts to bring together those who are currently working withyoung people across the statutory and voluntary sectors in developing this offer for teenagers. Too much support for young people is fragmented at present, with different schemes with worthwhile but overlapping aims, and too many separate funding streams. It is important that we build on the principles and success of the multi-disciplinary and collaborative working introduced by Connexions to put in place an even morepowerful offer in every area.

29. This breadth of ambition requires careful thinking and consultation. We will work together across Government with the Home Office, the Department of Health, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Social Exclusion Unit and the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit, and propose to publish a Green Paper on Youth this autumn to develop our thinking in partnership with all those who will be involved, and especially with young people and parents.

Young people leaving care

30. All of this work comes together to help prepare young people for adulthood. For most children, the transition is a relatively staged one, with support from parents that changes over time. For young people leaving care, there is the risk that there is not enough preparation for adulthood, and that the transition is sudden, insufficiently planned anddamaging.

31. There have been improvements in recent years, resulting from the Children (Leaving Care) Act, so that young people are better equipped to deal with the transition. But we willnow:

Changing the system to underpin our offer

Partnership between schools, colleges andworkplaces

32. A key driver of our 14-19 reforms will be to strengthen the relationships between schools, colleges and training providers so that, wherever they are based, young people have the widest possible choice of routes. Ofsted's report on the 'Increased Flexibility for 14-16 year-olds' programme has praised the quality of collaboration it brought about between over 2,000 schools, almost 300 colleges and many work-based providers for the benefit of over 90,000 14-19 year olds.

33. Increasingly, we expect to see specialist schools, colleges and training providers forming partnerships to deliver a broad and flexible choice of courses across education and training. Young people will be based in one institution, which will have responsibility for their pastoral care and for managing their learning; but they may do the learning in a variety of places. The 39 pathfinders that have been running in different areas of the country have demonstrated how this can be done successfully through good staff training, identifying champions to lead collaboration, and learning from best practice, as well as good co-ordinated ICT systems for sharing information.

Case Study

Engineering at Brumby School

Brumby school is one of four educational establishments serving a mixed catchment area in the centre of Scunthorpe. As part of a 14-19 pathfinder, a GCSE in Engineering was launched, which depended on successful collaboration between the school, college and local industry - particularly CORUS.

Effective partnership between schools allowed teaching material to be prepared and shared by the schools, and all three schools block timetable on the same day for engineering.

Time is set aside with college staff for specialist inputs (for example, pneumatics, or use of engineering workshop facilities). Where school staff's experience in electronics was limited, the college provided support and development. The 14-19 Pathfinder also helped contribute towards the costs associated with travel for pupils to and from college and to CORUS and other employers.

34. We are also committed to eliminating any needless barriers to collaboration that arise from planning or funding systems. We need totake the lessons from our pathfinders and ensure that funding systems make joining up easier rather than more difficult; that planning is focused on ensuring that there is a wide offer and that no young person falls down the cracks between different institutions; and that a group of providers share responsibility and accountability for all the young people in theirarea.

35. The reforms that we outlined in the last chapter, and those that we outline in the next, for supporting standards and quality of provision in both schools and further education colleges will be central in underpinning our ability to make agood 14-19 offer. We need secondary school, FE colleges (including sixth-form colleges), and work-based providers of the very highest quality in order to make this a reality.

Choice of place to learn

36. We need to make sure that young people have a good variety of types of opportunity in every local area. Young people should not have to travel unreasonable distances to get access to the type of provision they want; and they should not be barred from having a particular type of provision because it does not currently exist in their local area.

37. High quality partnership between providers is the key to giving a better range of opportunities to motivate more young people to stay on and get the skills they need, and better collaboration between schools, colleges and employers is essential to widen the range of vocational opportunities. With the number of 16-19 year-olds increasing, and the aspiration that many more stay in learning, weestimate that over the next five years we will need around 100,000 extra places. That means we will need more school and college sixth forms and more apprenticeships and other vocational opportunities to give young people more choice.

38. There are areas where there is not a good enough choice of successful school sixth forms. Schools without a sixth form already have the right to submit proposals to create one. We will strengthen the presumption in favour of agreeing such proposals, in the following way. In areas where fewer than 20percent of schools have sixth forms, high-performing specialist schools that want sixth forms will be able to make proposals to local decision-makers either for free-standing sixth forms or for collaborative provision - for example, new sixth form colleges in which schools have a direct stake in the teaching andmanagement. Such proposals will be considered on a fast-track basis, with a strong presumption that they are approved unless there are exceptional circumstances, and we will set up a single capital budget for new 16-19 provision.

39. We will also make this strong presumption for approval where participation or achievement at 16-19 is low in an area, even if there is no particular shortage of sixth form provision, on the grounds that 11-16 schools that are already popular and successful are also likely to make a good quality sixth form offer.

40. It is important that new sixth form provision is part of good partnerships to make sure that young people are getting a wide and rounded offer. 11-18 schools with a specialism are already required to show how they will make their specialist expertise available to young people in other schools and colleges post-16. Collaborative working also means we can give 11-16 specialist schools a stake in sixth form provision, by encouraging them to offer teaching in their specialism as part of a local 14-19 partnership.

41. In areas where a great deal of new provision is required, we will legislate to hold competitions to improve choice and bring in new providers - including good specialist schools and colleges. We will also require that all new provision is distinctly designed for 16-19 year-olds. In further education, this will mean sixth form colleges or centres with clear management arrangements and appropriate tutorial and pastoral care - sothat young people are nurtured and supported through this phase of their life.

42. In London, we are already seeing the benefits of increasing choice. Joint work between the Department, the Learning and Skills Council and London Local Education Authorities means that more than 15 new sixth forms and sixth form colleges will have opened in the three years from the launch in 2003 of the London Challenge Strategy. The new provision will be through a mixture of schools, colleges and Academies, to ensure choice and diversity.

Financial incentives - the Education Maintenance Allowance

43. We know that in the past young people have chosen not to continue in education or training because of the opportunity to start work and begin to earn. We also know that inthe past financial incentives in the benefit system have sometimes been distorting, anddid not encourage young people to takeup work-based training. These financial disincentives have acted as a barrier to participation; we are now dismantling that barrier.

44. We are now beginning to roll-out Education Maintenance Allowances across England. These give young people from less well-off families £30 each week while they study, conditional on good attendance. They will be fully introduced nationally for 16 year-olds from September 2004. The pilot schemes project anoverall increase in participation of 3.8 percentage points in Year 12, with a particularly strong impact for young people from the lowest socio-economic groups, and for boys.

45. The joint Treasury, Department for Education and Skills and Department for Workand Pensions review, Supporting young people to achieve: towards a new deal for skills, was published alongside the Spring 2004 budget. It proposes a radical long-term vision for a single, coherent system of financial support for 16-19 year-olds. It will provide a stable stream of support which does not vary by activity and so will not distort choices, and will improve incentives to participate in learning by removing some of theperverse effects of the current system.

Building workforce capacity

46. The development of a broad and flexible choice of learning options across education and training for 14-19 year-olds poses new challenges for teachers and trainers in schools, colleges and work-based training providers. Experience from our pathfinders (described above) already illustrates the importance of good staff training. And Success for All (described in the next Chapter) is putting a stronger focus on staff and leadership development in the learning and skills sector. Once Mike Tomlinson and his working group have reported, there will need to be a carefully planned programme of work to train those who work with 14-19 year-olds to support their new role, building on the good practice from the pathfinders.

Timetable for Change

Taken together, our reforms mean that:

Now, in 2004:

By 2008:

Our Long Term Aim:

 

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