Who said what to whom?
Matt Hancock, Skills Minister, informed Parliament by way of a written statement that the government was introducing two new types of technical qualifications for 14 to 19 year olds. From September 2015, new Technical Awards will sit alongside GCSEs for 14 to 16 year olds. At the same time, Substantial Vocational Qualifications will be introduced for students aged 16 to 19.
What does it mean?
The main objective of the new awards is for them to be more rigorous than what preceded them, e.g. the government has briefed that future woodwork courses will require students to measure, cut, joint and finish a piece of furniture rather than merely study how to do it. This should please anyone who thinks that teenagers have forgotten how to do things with their hands or that as a country we don’t make stuff anymore.
The low profile of the announcement is therefore surprising. Can we imagine a similarly ambitious reform of GCSEs or A Levels being announced with so little fanfare (or controversy)? Perhaps we have been spared the photo opportunity of David Cameron and Nick Clegg using a cross-cut saw together, but the level of scrutiny that these measures get may also be less than it might have been.
What could go wrong?
The new courses sound like they will be more time consuming than what went before and perhaps more likely to be delivered in colleges rather than schools. This may lead to more streaming at an earlier age, with academically minded 14 year olds being separated for practical purposes from those attempting technical qualifications. However, the government will point out that while students can take up to three of the new technical qualifications at 14, they also have to take a minimum of five core GCSEs including English and Maths.
There may be another risk in the degree of change. Never mind changing the set texts, these changes seem to be about dropping set texts entirely in favour of workshops. This may raise significant issues about whether schools and colleges have sufficient teaching staff who can provide the more practical types of instruction, or even whether they have the facilities.
When will we know?
Notably schools and colleges have until 2017 before results in the new qualifications start to be reported in performance tables. On the one hand, this seems to provide a sensible period of time for the transition to take place. But it may also mean that there is a lack of accountability about the quality of teaching and learning until that deadline kicks in. Just like today’s announcement on the introduction of these qualifications was under the news radar, the experience of rolling them out will be too.
Matt Hancock, Skills Minister, informed Parliament by way of a written statement that the government was introducing two new types of technical qualifications for 14 to 19 year olds. From September 2015, new Technical Awards will sit alongside GCSEs for 14 to 16 year olds. At the same time, Substantial Vocational Qualifications will be introduced for students aged 16 to 19.
What does it mean?
The main objective of the new awards is for them to be more rigorous than what preceded them, e.g. the government has briefed that future woodwork courses will require students to measure, cut, joint and finish a piece of furniture rather than merely study how to do it. This should please anyone who thinks that teenagers have forgotten how to do things with their hands or that as a country we don’t make stuff anymore.
The low profile of the announcement is therefore surprising. Can we imagine a similarly ambitious reform of GCSEs or A Levels being announced with so little fanfare (or controversy)? Perhaps we have been spared the photo opportunity of David Cameron and Nick Clegg using a cross-cut saw together, but the level of scrutiny that these measures get may also be less than it might have been.
What could go wrong?
The new courses sound like they will be more time consuming than what went before and perhaps more likely to be delivered in colleges rather than schools. This may lead to more streaming at an earlier age, with academically minded 14 year olds being separated for practical purposes from those attempting technical qualifications. However, the government will point out that while students can take up to three of the new technical qualifications at 14, they also have to take a minimum of five core GCSEs including English and Maths.
There may be another risk in the degree of change. Never mind changing the set texts, these changes seem to be about dropping set texts entirely in favour of workshops. This may raise significant issues about whether schools and colleges have sufficient teaching staff who can provide the more practical types of instruction, or even whether they have the facilities.
When will we know?
Notably schools and colleges have until 2017 before results in the new qualifications start to be reported in performance tables. On the one hand, this seems to provide a sensible period of time for the transition to take place. But it may also mean that there is a lack of accountability about the quality of teaching and learning until that deadline kicks in. Just like today’s announcement on the introduction of these qualifications was under the news radar, the experience of rolling them out will be too.
