Ministers have been accused of treating vocational qualifications as an “after-thought”, after announcing a major overhaul of courses and proposing to downgrade their importance in performance league tables.
According to the plans, teenagers in England will be offered three new courses in construction and four in engineering, developed by a committee of employers, exam boards, representatives from colleges and universities, and professional bodies.
The move is reminiscent of the Diploma, which was effectively scrapped by the coalition three years ago after it withdrew funding and support for an expansion of the programme in 2010.
At the same time, the government launched a consultation over plans to exclude up to 90 per cent of vocational qualifications from post-16 league tables, because ministers claim they fail to progress youngsters into employment or higher education.
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