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NIACE/NYA YALP response to the green paper:
'14-19: Extending Opportunities, Raising Standards'
Morris Major Reform: A Guarded Welcome
Two cheers for the Green Paper "14-19: Extending Opportunities, Raising Standards". It marks a serious attempt to raise the esteem of vocational pathways which in the UK have for too long been disregarded as sufficiently demanding and valid routes to 'employability and responsible citizenship'. Many commentators believe that our society's preference for the academic at the expense of the vocational has held the economy back, and we have consequently not grasped the opportunities for growth and development opened up by technological innovation.
The main reforms proposed in the Green Paper are:
 | GCSEs in vocational subjects from September 2002; and hybrid GCSEs that combine academic and vocational strands |
| Maths, English, Science and ICT to provide the core of the 14-16 compulsory curriculum, alongside citizenship, RE, PE, sex and health education and work-related learning (aka work experience). There will be a statutory entitlement for young people to choose a subject from within each of modern foreign languages, design and technology, and arts/humanities. |
| Matriculation diploma to be awarded at 19 either at three levels (intermediate, advanced, higher); or undifferentiated. There is to be consultation on its precise form. |
| A levels to have more demanding questions, giving the brightest learners the chance to get an A* |
| Brighter learners can take GCSEs early or skip them altogether and go straight to AS-levels. |
So what does the Young Adults Learning Partnership (YALP) think about this? We raise two cheers. One because Estelle Morris recognises how important it is to raise the credibility of the vocational route in everybody's eyes. There might now be some greater incentive for the less academically-directed to stay in learning for after 14. Two because the proposed matriculation diploma might well cover participation (and, one presumes, achievement) in wider activities outside school and college. As an aside, we must register our surprise at the re-emergence of the term 'matriculation'. Some civil servant seems to have dug deep into the archive to come up with something that resonates with provision made for the same age cohort three generations ago - hardly the stuff of a modern education system.
A third cheer would have been raised had the paper more fulsomely acknowledged that learning and achievement can be secured in other ways than through formal institutions. Interestingly, the paper proposes that 14-19 education should be delivered through 'integrated and innovative networks of collaborative providers achieving ambitious new goals". For many young people, school and college may not be appropriate; they just cannot cope with the routines and regulations required. But they still need and want to learn. Informal and community-based learning is as important for this age-group as it is for adults. At best it keeps young people in learning, at least it keeps them close to learning. Many of the skills for life are as well learned out of institutions as inside them. This is confirmed by much of the research work that the YALP has done recently, in particular on ways of catching the voice of the young adult learner.
It is right and proper that the Government recognises the need for flexibility with regard to curriculum and pace. Young people develop at different speeds consistent with their abilities and the chance to skip GCSE and start AS level programmes earlier is a good illustration. We welcome the proposed changes to targets and performance tables (though we rather wish the latter would disappear) in recognition of the different rates of progress made by 16 year-olds and the need to include vocational qualifications as well as GCSEs. We welcome too the promise to provide better advice and guidance and note the role of the flagship Connexions service in this respect. And we are pleased that the implementation of any changes will be gradual (obviously the lesson of the rushing the A Level reforms has been learned) and follow widespread consultation, since there is much still to be sorted, including knotty problems of funding.
Overall, we think there is much to be said for the extension of opportunities heralded here. But the good sense contrasts with an ingenuousness too. The aspirations of this policy seem miles away from the lived experiences of so many of the young people we have come across who find that learning has little to offer. Flexing the curriculum will not be sufficient. There have to be real incentives that make learning as attractive a proposition as the money in hand that can be secured from casual work, sometimes in the informal economy, and a lifestyle that offers more stimulating experiences. These reforms seem to have been devised with little regard to the exigencies of the youth labour market which, for many, remains a major pull factor.
And young people achieve status and self-esteem in many other ways than through learning. The creative and cultural industries, new media and technologies, the whole hinterland of youth culture are conspicuous by their absence in the Green Paper. Educational reforms are unlikely to have the desired impact unless greater recognition is paid to young people's experience outside the established education and training system.
Recognising soft outcomes and using targets other than the ubiquitous Level 2 would help considerably those young people who cannot cope with the conventional curriculum, pedagogy and assessment arrangements. If public service reform - which forms the heartbeat of this Government's policy ambitions- is about anything, it should be about imagining and testing out alternatives, if for many young people, whose lives are characterised by turbulence, the existing provision is not working.
Bryan Merton
