Pupils will end academic study at 14 to enter vocational schools
Thousands of London pupils will be able to opt out of academic study at the age of 14 and join vocational schools, it was revealed today.
Up to 70 of the schools will open across the country, including in Hackney and Southwark. They will focus on engineering and vocational skills, and will be modelled on old technical schools.
They will take up to 800 pupils aged between 14 and 19 and will be sponsored by a university or further education college.
Lord Baker, the former education secretary, is behind the proposal and spoke about the plans today. The Government has pledged to open the schools, to be known as university technical colleges, in 12 cities, but Lord Baker predicted there would be many more.
He said: "By the end of the Parliament we will be well into 50, 60, 70. This is a movement, not just a few experimental schools." Each college will focus on engineering and another practical specialism such as construction.
Pupils at the schools will also study GCSEs in English, maths and science.
One of the new schools has already opened in Staffordshire sponsored by plant machinery company JCB.
Lord Baker said: "If we are going to have high-speed rail, the fastest broadband in the world, new nuclear power stations, we are going to need technicians. We simply don't have enough technically orientated people coming through."
Alan Smithers, director of the centre for education and employment research at the University of Buckingham, said: "Fourteen is the right age for this. If education has worked, by then they should know what they are good at, what they like and what they want to do with their lives.
"Eleven is too young. They will have covered only the basics of literacy and numeracy and dipped into the humanities and sciences. Sixteen is a bit too late because you are holding people together across a wide range of subjects and restricting their future courses to two years."
It comes after the former education secretary Estelle Morris said children should take GCSEs at the age of 14 instead of 16.
Speaking at the North of England education conference in Blackpool yesterday she said if children took exams at 14 they could then choose to study practical courses and would be less likely to drop out of school as a result.
She said: "We have been trying for over a decade not to get children to leave school at 16. So why are we still running a leaving exam at 16?"
By 2013 all pupils in England will have to stay in education or training until the end of the school year in which they turn 17. By 2015 they will have to stay on until they are 18.
