Labour calls for schools to teach ‘route into work’

Andy Burnham says secondary schools should give pupils more vocational opportunities Any secondary school pupils not planning to go to university would be given a clearer “route into work” under Labour party plans for a new education contract between the individual and the state. Andy Burnham, the shadow education secretary, will this week reveal plans which would aim to give every secondary school pupil a path to employment if they met a set of required standards under a revamped curriculum more geared to the world of work. The idea, one of the first to emerge from Labour’s policy commissions, reflects its view that current thinking is geared too much to those heading to university and leaves the “forgotten half” languishing with little hope, having studied subjects that are too often ill-suited to modern working life. Burnham’s idea would involve a radical reshaping of the curriculum so that it offered a much wider choice of subjects than those included in education secretary Michael Gove’s English baccalaureate. More vocational subjects would be included, such as engineering, business studies and information and communications technology. “Latin is in and engineering is out [of the baccalaureate]. Why? It is the thinking of the 1950s,” Burnham said. “I want to give a clear message of hope to every young person that says: if you work hard and get up to the required standard, you can go on to something of value.” While stressing the ideas were still in the planning stage, he made clear that a further expansion of apprenticeships in the public and private sectors would be needed if the government was to meet its obligations under the contract. “The NHS, with a workforce of 1.3

Posted by on July 9, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.