Lord Young, who served as secretary of state for employment and for trade and industry in the 1980s, suggested as many as a third of school-leavers continue to leave secondary unable to read and write properly and “convinced they were failing” – the same as three decades ago.
Speaking to a conference of teachers and business people at the University of Buckingham last week, Lord Young said that politicians and civil servants believed a purely academic education was the “main route” because it had suited them, but that this was not appropriate for everyone.
Lord Young chaired the Manpower Services Commission which launched the Youth Training Scheme (YTS) to help alleviate mass youth unemployment in the 1980s.
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