Concern for pupils in Bristol in curriculum shake-up

HEAD teachers in Bristol are worried that Education Secretary Michael Gove's shake-up of vocational qualifications will have a negative impact on some pupils and schools.

They say the diverse curriculum they have been able to offer in recent years has helped engage young people and encouraged them to attend school, work hard and gain good results. And there are fears that if some teenagers are forced to study a strongly academic curriculum that they do not find relevant they will be turned off education, leading to increasing problems of truancy and disruptive behaviour.

Mr Gove announced this week that he was drastically reducing the number of vocational qualifications for 14 to 16-year-olds that would be counted as equivalent to GCSEs in school performance measures from 2014.

He said some schools had been encouraging students to take courses of little value, so that their results would help improve the school's position in the annual league tables.

The Department for Education said courses such as fish husbandry and nail technology were among those that counted as GCSE-equivalent.

No pupils at schools in the greater Bristol area are believed to have taken such courses.

Many schools offer Btecs, which remain on the Government's approved list, or the diplomas developed by the last Government, now known as principal learning, most of which are also still valued. The qualifications offered by the Bristol-based organisation Asdan are among the many that will no longer count towards a student's GCSE total.

Chief executive Marius Frank said he was disappointed, but believed that many schools would continue to offer the courses alongside the academic options because they had been proven to help motivate youngsters to achieve.

One of the most popular is the Asdan Certificate of Personal Effectiveness (Cope) award, which measures problem-solving, research and communication skills, among other abilities.

Mr Frank, the former head of Bedminster Down School, said the Government was wrong to focus solely on knowledge and content and to overlook personal and employability skills, which businesses were "crying out" for.

He said: "Will simply preparing our young people for two-hour written GCSE exams really give them the mindset, resilience, entrepreneurship and creativity to be world leaders in business and commerce? I don't think so.

"We have already had indications from many schools that they will continue to deploy our qualifications, because they make a difference. In fact, a study being conducted by UWE shows clearly that students do better in their GCSEs if an academic diet is supplemented by our skills-centred qualifications.

"Gove and (schools minister Nick) Gibb have apparently decided that the personal development of our young people is worthless: luckily, we have principled and forward-thinking school leaders who think otherwise."

Peggy Farrington, pictured, head of Hanham High School, said there was a danger of "throwing the baby out with the bath water" in the Government's changes to performance measures.

She pointed out that Mr Gove's favoured English Baccalaureate – achieving GCSEs at grade C or above in English, maths, science, a language and history or geography – was also only a performance measure, not a qualification.

"We need a broad and balanced curriculum that can be tailored to fit an individual's needs and aspirations," she said. "One size definitely does not fit all. We don't want to go back to the days when children become disengaged because they are strong-armed into choosing subjects that they do not find relevant or interesting."

Judy Stradling, vice principal of City of Bristol College, said the important thing for parents and pupils to consider if opting for a vocational course at 14 was whether it had a progression route to further study or employment.

"Vocational qualifications must be well delivered and appropriate, otherwise we do young people a disservice," she said.

Charlotte Leslie, Conservative MP for Bristol West and a member of the all-party Commons Education Committee, said too many vocational qualifications were not valued by employers.

"We have to be honest with young people. It is not fair on them if they are offered a qualification that they think will be their passport to the future and then they find that passport is invalid."