Report on college governance calls for diversity assessments

A review of college governance by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has called for yearly diversity assessments.

The Review of Further Education and Sixth Form College Governance recommends that assessments of governing board composition, size and diversity feature in colleges’ annual reports.

It calls for such assessments to also look at the development of governing boards; and further, suggests annual reports should contain information on board recruitment and succession planning.

The Association of Colleges (AoC) has been tasked with providing good practice examples of such reports for the country’s 8,000 further education and sixth form college governors.

“College chairs and clerks are encouraged by BIS to discuss the findings and recommendations with their boards,” said an AoC spokesperson.

They added: “The review is expected to feed into the one being conducted by Dr Susan Pember on behalf of the AoC governors’ council.”

The BIS review looks at recruitment and succession planning, including the make-up of governing bodies; recognising the status and importance of governors, including through non-financial incentives; and, remuneration for governors, taking account of current practice in other sectors and the Charity Commission’s views.

The review also provides guidance, co-authored by the Charity Commission, on paying college governors.

It said: “Governors have strategic oversight of their college; they lead the drive for improved standards in teaching and learning, holding principals to account.

“Governors are also the guardians of public money, with responsibility for ensuring effective and efficient use of college resources.

“This report recognises the commitment, energy and dedication governors bring to their role. It also recognises the special responsibilities and demands that come with assuming the role of chair of governors.

“The report accordingly sets out a series of recommendations which challenge the status quo, and which seek to support stronger governance and improved standards.”

Christine Doubleday, deputy executive director of the 157 Group, said: “We certainly support the drive for ever greater diversity on governing bodies together with ensuring the board has an appropriate mix of the necessary skills and experience to fulfil its role effectively.

“Our colleges thrive in the mixed communities they serve and will always support clear approaches to promoting diversity and to recruitment and succession planning.”

She added: “Our colleges tell us governors do not take on the role for reward and remuneration, rather from a sense of civic duty and pride in their communities.

“However, the recommendation on this matter in the report is more about providing clear guidance to colleges. We welcome clarity on technical issues that will free colleges to make the best decisions for their boards and their communities.”

A spokesperson for the Sixth Form Colleges’ Association said: “[Skills Minister] Matthew Hancock should be applauded for commissioning this review and we are pleased that sixth form colleges were included in the scope of the project.

“Good governance has been key to the success of our sector, but it is important to explore how governance could and should evolve as we enter an era of greater autonomy.

“We look forward to working with the AoC and government to help implement the recommendations in the report.”

Union votes in favour of strike action at Lesoco

A London college has been added to the ranks of those facing industrial action as staff up and down the country react to the threat of hundreds of job losses.

Members of the University and College Union (UCU) at Lesoco — a merger of Lewisham College and Southwark College with campuses in Lewisham, Deptford (pictured), Waterloo, Bermondsey and Camberwell — have voted in favour of strike action in a row over cuts to courses and, FE Week understands, the threat of 35 job losses.

The union has ongoing disputes at colleges in Sheffield, Chesterfield, Kirklees, Grimsby Institute, Croydon and Lambeth.

And the first protest at Lesoco is due to take place Wednesday, July 17, from 1pm-2.45pm.

More than four out of five (86 per cent) UCU members who took part in the ballot voted in favour of strike action, with 96 per cent voting in favour of other forms of industrial action that would not include wholesale walk-outs.

The union said staff were angry at proposals to close the college’s award-winning floristry department.

Staff and students from the floristry department have won gold and bronze medals at the Chelsea Flower Show, created floral displays for Gordon Ramsay’s London restaurants and taught floristry to teams on the BBC’s Young Apprentice programme.

The science department is also at risk, according to the union, as is the college’s Access to Higher Education department, which runs courses aimed at people considering education or training later in life face cuts and job losses.

Meanwhile, the college has shut down two nurseries used by students with young children, and sacked staff, according to the union.

UCU London regional official Chris Powell said: “The ballot result reflects the deep anger and disillusionment among staff at Lesoco.

“Just twelve months ago, it was a very different picture when staff were full of optimism that the newly merged college was going to be an exciting place to work that helped and supported our local communities.

“Instead the college is ignoring the voices of staff and students and closing down educational opportunities for the very people who need them most.”

UCU accused the college of having failed to carry out a proper consultation on the proposals and, following Wednesday’s protest, the union will consider the possibility of further industrial action.

Principal Maxine Room CBE said: “We are committed to providing education to enable local people to get into work, employment and further education.

“The courses we provide are based on demand from the local community, the skills employers want and need, and the quality of what we do.

“We continually review our provision on this basis to ensure that our offer remains fit for purpose which can lead, as in this case, to changes to provision.”

FE mergers and acquisitions are logical steps towards increasing educational sophistication

Forget egos and government indecision: mergers and acquisitions are logical steps towards increasing educational sophistication, says David Sherlock.

I’ve come at merger from all ends. As a college principal I fought off an inappropriate merger and ended chairing a subject-based consortium.

As head of Central Saint Martin’s I was part of a federation that seemed to have pulled off the unenviable trick of creating a whole that was less than the sum of the parts.

In 10 years as chief inspector of the Adult Learning Inspectorate I saw more than my share of thriving and busted mergers, and absorbed the sobering lesson in  the University of Warwick’s classic study: most mergers fail to satisfy the hopes of those who promote them.

And I have spent a rewarding day during the Lingfield review of staff professionalism listening to Jackie Fisher and her staff talking about the scope for learning from the good practice found in every new organisation acquired by a £200m turnover outfit such as the Newcastle College Group.

That doesn’t make me an expert but it does mean that my views are seasoned by personal experience.

The motives for combining organisations range from an inability to compete with a more powerful neighbour in breadth of curricula, to inherited financial or academic weakness, to inability to build capital from the diminishing margins available from government funding to keep buildings and plant up-to-date, to the kind of vanity projects sponsored by vainglorious chief executives or funding body managers that Phil Frier, interim principal of K College, mentioned in his FE Week Expert piece of Monday, June 24 [edition 71].

The structures that might save the business are just as various. They include developing vertically integrated services from nursery school through University Technical College to university on a single campus; formal or informal consortia that give the members access to anything from a limited number of shared, efficiently procured, services, to a common contract with Education Funding Agency and the Skills Funding Agency; to retained operational independence within a local plan developed with other providers, a local enterprise partnership, local employers and the local authority, as Richard and Heseltine might recommend; to corporate merger.

The mistake is to wait until market forces propel one organisation so close to collapse that a rescue has to be cobbled together in haste.”

The varied reputation of merger in FE rests on a piece of public-sector doublespeak. The distinction between Type A and Type B ‘mergers’ is not, as Mr Frier suggests, meaningless bureaucracy associated with the Treasury’s evaluation model.

It is the difference between acquisition of one organisation by another, resulting in total absorption, and the willing combination of equals to form something new and better.

If we talked openly about mergers and acquisitions in FE, instead of just mergers, we would gain a clearer understanding of both the process and its social dynamics.

Most of the ‘mergers’ in FE are, in fact, the acquisition of an organisation teetering on the brink of failure by another that is healthier, usually prompted by a government agency anxious to avoid embarrassment.

There are good reasons for sensible merger. The mistake is to wait until market forces propel one organisation so close to collapse that a rescue has to be cobbled together in haste.

Make no mistake, the ‘terms of trade’ change when you create fewer, bigger, providers. If you admire the example of Australian TAFE (technical and further education), rationalise English FE so that each college serves a similar proportion of the national population as does a TAFE institute and you would end up with around 120 to 150 FE colleges, each with sufficient turnover to sustain its own needs for capital formation.

In the past 40 years, mergers and acquisitions have taken universities from an average of 5,000 students to more than 20,000. They are controversial in FE only because of their entanglement with individual ego and governmental indecision.

David Sherlock, director of Beyond Standards Ltd

Apprenticeship funding should be rerouted through the tax system

Highly-skilled jobs needn’t be the reserve of graduates, says Michael Davis. For him, a change in apprenticeships funding might allow them to solve the country’s youth unemployment problem.

For the past 18 months, the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) has been working on proposals to change the way public and private investment in skills align to produce better jobs and growth outcomes.

It’s a big challenge, and there’s no magic solution, but one way of helping is to change the way public funding flows around the apprenticeship system.

By routing the government’s contribution to apprenticeships directly through employers we can make them the system’s true customers; carrying the responsibility and reward for ensuring they invest wisely in the skills needed for business success.

The background is this — youth unemployment is serious, but the challenging economic circumstances of the last six years are not the sole cause. The labour market has seen a long-term decline in the number of entry level jobs, and, critically, there are too few good jobs for young people.

It’s not that the jobs aren’t there. Employment in highly-skilled, technical, managerial and professional roles has grown by more than 900,000 over the course of the recession and recovery and this growth is set to continue.

In the decade from 2010, growth in these jobs will stand at 1.9m — more than 13 times greater than the 140,000 growth forecast for the sales and elementary occupations that young people rely on for their first jobs.

But the employers who specialise in highly-skill roles are the least likely to recruit young people and, where they do, they tend to rely on graduates.

Employers should be able to claim tax relief via Pay As You Earn (PAYE) when they commit to employing an apprentice.”

Creating more non-graduate routes into technical, professional and managerial jobs would offer opportunity and feed employers young talent. Apprenticeships are a proven way of delivering highly productive, well trained and loyal staff, access to a successful career for young people and strong benefits for the exchequer and the economy as a whole.

Yet only 15 per cent of UK employers offer them.

The commission’s perspective is that we must return apprenticeships to their founding principle — a contract between the apprentice and the employer.

They should be funded accordingly — paid for, and valued by, the employer.

Our simple proposal is that employers should be able to claim tax relief via Pay As You Earn (PAYE) when they commit to employing an apprentice, provided the apprenticeship meets quality standards, including decent pay and conditions, high quality training and the opportunity to progress.

This is a fundamental difference that positions employers as purchasers of services from colleges and training providers, while also placing the responsibility for the success of that investment with them.

Our proposal is completely consistent with Doug Richard’s recommendations in his review of apprenticeships, which the commission supported.

Led by Scott Johnson, a successful small business entrepreneur, and one of our commissioners, UKCES has had constructive discussions with employers, employer groups, college and trade union leaders on thinking through how such a model could work.

Clearly there is more detail to be considered as changes to the tax system are not made lightly.

But it is encouraging that the Chancellor’s, in the recent Spending Review, announced there would be a consultation on options for major reform of apprenticeship funding, including use of HMRC’s PAYE system.

The current system has delivered results — apprenticeships are now available in more sectors of the economy and to more people than ever before.

However, they are yet to be embedded as the new norm.

To achieve this, we need to continue to raise standards and engage more employers, especially small businesses, in providing high quality apprenticeships.

Michael Davis, chief executive of the UK Commission for Employment and Skills

WorldSkills 2013 souvenir edition

Download your free copy of the FE Week 24-page WorldSkills 2013 souvenir edition, sponsored by NCFE.

Click here to download (20mb)

Introduction

It seems nigh on impossible to truly replicate the highs and lows of WorldSkills Leipzig 2013 and Team UK’s journey to two golds.

From the grandeur of the opening ceremony and, before that, Team UK’s visit to a nearby German primary school, to the tense competition arenas and the nervous wait for results — there can be no substitute for having been there to experience it all.

So, for those who made it to Leipzig, this souvenir edition of FE Week will be a reminder of a treasured experience.

For those who weren’t there, it will be a faithful portrayal of the emotions, the tensions and the successes of WorldSkills 2013.

Around 1,000 young people, aged 18 to 25, from across the globe competed for medals in more than 40 different skills — from electrical installation to hairdressing; from mechanical engineering to stonemasonry; from welding to cooking.

And Team UK competed in most of these skills categories.

But before outlining the contents of our WorldSkills Leipzig 2013 souvenir, it would be right to first thank those who helped to make it possible.

And there are simply too many to mention, including every Team UK competitor, but particular mention must be made of photographer Ellis O’Brien and, from the Skills Funding Agency, Jaine Bolton, Nikki Shuttleworth and Harry Smith.

Finally, a big thank you must also go to our sponsors, awarding organisation NCFE.

Nevertheless, we begin with the opening ceremony on page 3, before a write-up of competition from the first and second days on pages 4 and 5, featuring an interview with WorldSkills International president Simon Bartley.

Events from the third and last days of competition, plus an interview with Team UK alumni and pastry chef Will Torrent, are on pages 6 and 7.

The closing ceremony is on page 8 with the medals table on the following page.

A picture pinboard sits across pages 10 and 11, before coverage restarts on page 14 with Team UK’s pre-competition visit to a German primary school.

Pages 15 to 22 give a competitor’s eye view of the competition with comments from every single member of Team UK along with descriptions of their WorldSkills 2013 tasks.

The final page is given over to Team UK’s supporting staff — the impassioned training managers who make the difficult transition to impartial experts when competition gets under way and the performance coaches who keep the team performing at their best.

————————————————————————————————————————-

FE Week on location in Leipzig

 

Team UK’s golden duo

A bricklayer from Warrington and a cabinet maker from Chichester proved to be golden for the UK as they were honoured as the best young tradesmen in the world.

Twenty one-year-olds Ashley Terron and George Callow took top spots at the WorldSkills Leipzig 2013 closing ceremony.

A visibly moved Ashley told FE Week just moments after learning of his success: “I’m so happy. I saw my mum and my dad when my gold was announced and they were going crazy.

“I’ve lived WorldSkills for the past two years, but I wasn’t expecting to win anything.

“It means everything to me. It will change my life – I’m the world’s best young bricklayer now.”

George, who also scored highest among Team UK to claim the best in nation award, said: “I knew I’d done well in the tasks, but thought there was really little in it.

“I tried my best, but when I saw other countries winning golds I thought ‘maybe it’s not our year’.

“But I’m ecstatic. All the hard work I’ve put in has paid off.”

A silver medal added to Team UK’s awards haul thanks to the stonemasonry efforts of Somerset 21-year-old Robert Broomsgrove. Three bronzes came Team UK’s way, too, courtesy of 22-year-olds Matthew Quinn, from Northern Ireland, in autobody repair; Benjamin Tullett, from Hampshire, in aircraft maintenance; and, Matthew Crane, from Bristol, in electrical installations.

Prime Minister David Cameron said: “British ambition and ingenuity has once again taken on and beaten the best in the world and I extend my congratulations to Team UK.

“As we compete in the global race, this government is on the side of ambitious young people who want to work hard and get on and we will continue in our efforts to build the biggest and best apprenticeship programme.”

There were also 17 medallions for excellence dished out among Team UK members who hit world class scores in their skill.

Business Secretary Vince Cable said: “Congratulations to Team UK who brought home six medals and 17 medallions for excellence.

“They have demonstrated that when it comes to skills Britain has world class ability.

“Vocational skills are important to the success of every business. That’s why in these difficult times I have prioritised apprenticeship funding, so that employers can access the country’s talent to help build a stronger economy.”

Skills Minister Matthew Hancock said: “Congratulations to Team UK on their fantastic achievements at WorldSkills.

“They have played a hugely important role in promoting the importance and value of vocational skills and practical learning to young people, their parents and employers.”

 

Team UK Medals

Skill Name Medal
Bricklaying Ashley Terron Gold
Cabinet making George Callow Gold
Stonemasonry Robert Broomsgrove Silver
Autobody repair Matthew Quinn Bronze
Aircraft maintenance Benjamin Tullett Bronze
Electrical installations Matthew Crane Bronze
Beauty therapy Katie Wright Medallion For Excellence
Confectioner / Pastry chef Stephen Smith Medallion For Excellence
Cooking Louisa May Matthews Medallion For Excellence
Car painting Gary Greer Medallion For Excellence
Refrigeration and airconditioning Stephen Burge Medallion For Excellence
IT network systems administration Nehmaan Ahmed Medallion For Excellence
Manufacturing team challenege Daniel Gebhard, Andrew Maguire and George Moffat Medallion For Excellence
Mechatronics David Cargill and James Overend Medallion For Excellence
Mechanical engineering CAD Andrew Craig Medallion For Excellence
Welding Alastair Wilson Medallion For Excellence
Wall and floor tiling Mark Wood Medallion For Excellence
Plumbing and heating Ashley Bainbridge Medallion For Excellence
Plastering and dry wall systems Kenneth Wilson Medallion For Excellence
Painting and decorating Kirk Croft Medallion For Excellence
Joinery David Beattie Medallion For Excellence
Floristry Chloe Woolf Medallion For Excellence
Hairdressing Hannah Clague Medallion For Excellence

Local Enterprise Partnerships to get college co-operation sweeteners

Business Secretary Vince Cable has named three local enterprise partnerships to pilot a sweetener scheme aimed at improving relationships between colleges and local enterprise partnerships.

Partnerships in the North East, Stoke and Staffordshire, and also the West of England have been chosen for the Skills Funding Agency-backed trial to incentivise co-operation.

“I can announce an initiative that will design clear incentives for skills providers and partnerships to forge active partnerships, so people acquire the skills required to get local jobs,” said Dr Cable in a speech at the annual Local Government Association conference in Manchester yesterday.

“We have already set out the important role that partnerships must play in setting strategic plans for skills which reflect local priorities.

“Now, in the pilots we’re about to run, I will ask the agency to put in place powerful incentives to encourage partnerships to work with FE colleges to deliver the courses that the local labour market demands.”

The move follows a report from the Association of Colleges in September called Local Enterprise Partnerships and Colleges that revealed “patchy” engagement between the two.

Julian Gravatt, association assistant chief executive, said at the time: “Successful partnerships understand the importance of skills and the role of colleges but, disappointingly, the majority still have work to do to tap into this fantastic resource.”

However, Dr Cable said the incentive scheme showed central government was “acting”.

And the North East partnership had been “particularly supportive” of the scheme, he said.

“It has the potential to give partnerhips real teeth,” added Dr Cable.

“It’s a solid example of central government listening to what localities are saying and then acting on innovative ideas.”

Andrew Hodgson, North East partnership board member, welcomed the pilot.

“We have put the focus firmly on skills from the outset, and this model will be hugely important in helping to develop skills at every level, essential to the development of individual people, as well as economic performance,” he said.

“Effective skills and training programmes tailored to fit our area’s key sectors, for all ages of workers, answer the immediate needs of employers as well as the future demands of our local economy.”

Stoke-on-Trent City Council leader Mohammed Pervez said: “For some time, councils, businesses, colleges and universities across the area have been pioneering work to match workforce skills with business needs both now and in the years ahead.

“Our perseverance and commitment to work together to address this problem has clearly paid off and we welcome this financial show of support to accelerate the work we are doing.”

No one from the West of England partnership was available for comment.

A government spokesperson told FE Week that timescales and further details of he scheme were “yet to be finalised”.

The move follows the creation of a single pot of cash, in response to Lord Heseltine’s review No Stone Unturned, to support investment and stimulate growth across local areas.

In last week’s Spending Review, £2bn a-year was pledged to partnerships through the new Single Local Growth Fund announced by Chancellor George Osborne.

WorldSkills VIPs speak to FE Week

As WorldSkills UK media partner, FE Week has been granted one-on-one time with some pretty heavyweight people in Leipzig 2013.

Among them have been WorldSkills International president Simon Bartley and chef-turned-author — and WorldSkills UK ambassador — Will Torrent, who at Japan WorldSkills 2007 became the first Team UK pastry chef to win a medallion of excellence.

Here are snippets of their interviews that will feature in our Leipzig WorldSkills supplement, due out very soon.

Simon Bartley (pictured below)

What lessons have been learned from the organisation of previous WorldSkills events?

WorldSkills learns lessons from every competition it’s involved in. The learning experience actually started back in 2005 when I think WorldSkills realised this competition was becoming such a large thing that it was an event and not a competition.

With 1,000 competitors, up to 8,000 people at the opening ceremony, delegations and ministers from nearly 100 countries, it can’t be run by the people who run the national organisation.

That was first worked out around 2005 for the following WorldSkills events which were run by people brought in with experience of running events.

That has advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that you have people who can pull it off.

The disadvantage is they don’t have WorldSkills embedded in them — no one in the German organising team, I think, comes from a skills background; they were the best for logistics, communications or whatever, and it was the same in London.

That means there’s a huge learning curve for a country as they seek to host an event.

Were any lessons learned from WorldSkills London 2011?

What I think Germany learned was that they needed to start earlier than London did.

From a technical point of view you need your shopmasters to have done a competition before they come here.

I think WorldSkills learned that and encouraged Germany to do that — or try to do more, earlier. That’s one lesson learned from London.

I think Germany and WorldSkills also learned from London that our conference programme outside the skills competitions didn’t work — there were too many small sessions.

Here, there’s seven or eight really quite big conferences which have attracted some pretty big players — we’ve had two commissioners, we’ve had a past Brazilian president we’ve had people from Unesco [United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation], Unido [United Nations Industrial Development Organisation], the ILO [International Labour Organisation] and World Bank.

What we’ve learned is that if you can have those come to a conference they then go and have a look at the competition and will go back as converts.

Will Torrent (pictured below)

What sector-specific knowledge did you develop through WorldSkills?

When I was competing in Japan, and they walked the pastry competition — they were absolutely superb — but the way they work, and this might sound weird, it’s almost like watching dance. It’s just so elegant.

I might have frantically moved from one place to another, but they would just glide. It’s about perception and that duck scenario of paddling like crazy below, but people only see the calm on top. I picked that up a lot from Japan and we try to build that into the training.

It’s something I hope to have been able to give our current confectioner/pastry chef competitor, Stephen Smith, as part of Yolande’s [Yolande Stanley, training manager and WorldSkills chief expert] training team — the psychological thing that you’re on show against the rest of the world. I don’t want to see a mate — and we are all mates — frantically rushing around with mess everywhere.

A mess is one thing inside, but on show you’re representing the UK and we want to see that you’re calm, collected and you know what you’re doing because that will set your tone among the judges. Plus it comes through in the final product. One thing Yolande used to say to me — because she trained me, too — and I’ve got to take out a certain word in this, was something like, work in a mess, dish is a mess.

Why might a provider want to get involved in WorldSkills?

It’s an obvious way of promoting yourself if your student gets through, but more than that it encourages deeper learning and not just skirting around the subject.

When I was training at University of West London, I learned all the basics, but for me as WorldSkills competitor I went deeper to learn more, because when I come to competition I knew I would need all the skills to back it up. It also promotes a perception of excellence because it is the highest level.

It should also encourage teachers and lecturers to further their skills. It upsets me when I see college lecturers, or university lecturers for that matter, who have been out of the trade for years and they don’t have any connection with the current trade and the trends in it.

I think if these lecturers are giving all their skills over to the next generation, then they’re not teaching the up-to-date and modern skills of that industry.

I’d love to see more lecturers and principals coming to WorldSkills and even at the Skills Show to go and see the new skills.

I don’t know all the skills, but I will constantly want to learn and I can give that onto someone else.

Another key thing it does is enforce the international value of vocational skills — you can go anywhere in the world and get a skilled job if you train properly.

Vocational skills to get their own ‘unashamedly aspirational’ A-level

A new ‘Tech-level’ qualification for vocational education was announced by the government today to sit alongside the A-level academic route.

They will run from next year and were described by Skills Minister Matthew Hancock as “unashamedly aspirational” — aimed at raising the status of vocational education in England.

Local employers will be asked to support Tech-levels either through work experience or by helping to design courses.

They will count towards the TechBacc, which measures the achievements of students taking vocational courses.

“With Tech-levels we will support the best technical qualifications, endorsed by employers, to help young people into the occupation of their choice,” he said.

“Tech-levels will recognise rigorous and responsive technical education. High-quality rigorous vocational education is essential to future prosperity, and the life chances of millions.”

He added: “These reforms are unashamedly aspirational and will ensure Tech-levels help people into apprenticeships and jobs.”

Meanwhile, the government announced the launch of “applied general qualifications” — vocational qualifications not directly linked to an occupation, but providing broader study of a vocational area which will need the backing of three universities.

The Association of Colleges said its research supported endorsement of qualifications by businesses and universities.

Gill Clipson, deputy chief executive of the association, said: “We support this call for endorsement, which will inevitably lead to changes in the way the system works.

“Exam boards will need to make sure that employer involvement in qualification development includes representation from national employers as well as from those representing small and medium-sized enterprises — without making exams more expensive for colleges and their students.”

The two new schemes are part of the government’s response to its consultation on the vocational qualifications which will continue to count in performance tables for colleges and school sixth forms.

Only those level three, or advanced, qualifications which have the support of businesses or universities will be included in new-look 16 to 19 performance tables from 2016, for young people taking courses from September next year.

The changes will mean that at least 80 per cent of the 5,000 current vocational qualifications will be scrapped from league tables, according to the government.

However, Shadow Junior Education Minister Tristram Hunt said the government was simply “playing catch-up” after “downgrading” the vocational pathway.

“After three years of the government downgrading vocational education, there are almost a million young people unemployed — it’s no surprise that David Cameron and Michael Gove are now desperately playing catch-up while Labour sets the agenda on skills,” he said.

“It is right that pupils have a choice of taking new vocational courses, but Mr Gove needs to reassure parents that it will be a gold standard to sit alongside A-levels and not an afterthought.”

The announcement follows Professor Alison Wolf’s report into vocational education which said that, “at least 350,000 young people in a given 16 to 19 cohort are poorly served by current arrangements. Their programmes and experiences fail to promote progression into either stable, paid employment or higher level education and training in a consistent or an effective way.”