CBI head calls for GCSEs to be scrapped – BBC News
What do we think of this – the CBI splitting with the government and calling for vocational qualifications to have equal status with academic GCSEs?
The head of the CBI says a date must be set in the next five years to scrap GCSEs and introduce an exam system with equal status for vocational subjects.
John Cridland, director general of the employers’ group, says England’s exam system is narrow and out of date.
He proposes a system in which the most important exams would be A-levels, including both academic and vocational subjects, taken at the age of 18.
Ministers are pushing for all pupils to take a core group of academic GCSEs.
Source: CBI head calls for GCSEs to be scrapped – BBC News
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Said it several times before, the education system in the UK is not fit for purpose.
Too much political interference and targets for starters.
More should be spent on education than health in my view, it would bring billions in savings in the long term.
As an adult you have the prospect of 49 years at work as opposed to11 years at school should leave sufficient time to learn about work. School needs to be used to teach values and a rounded education, not just turning out factory fodder. Let’s have more academic focus and thereby develop more rounded people.
I don’t think he education system is here to provide worker ants for business. I can see the point of preparing kids for the adult world but that involves more than just worklife.
If the CBI want vocational qualifications to be equal with something it should be A levels and kids should be given the choice between the two at sixteen.
When I attended my red-brick grammar school through the 1960s, in the 3rd year we were split into two streams: the arts and academic studies and the other, science and engineering. Worked well without all that “targets” and other nonsense, and the system catered for the different mindsets between the “arty” and those who preferred the “hands-on” approach. The other difference is back then we actually had a manufacturing industry until Thatcher (spit) destroyed it. Needless to say, I’m an electronics engineer.