A report from the House of Lords demands radical change to schooling to create a 14 to 19 transition to work phase and finally close academic-vocational divide. Pete Henshaw reports

The national curriculum should stop at age 14 in order to create a more coherent phase of transition from 14 to 19.

The suggestion is made in a new report that says the current system for helping young people to move from school to work is failing.

Entitled Overlooked and Left Behind, the report says that despite years of work to close the divide between vocational and academic education, government policies, funding and incentives still support a focus on academic routes above vocational ones.

The wide-ranging report was published last week after an investigation led by peers on the House of Lords’ Select Committee on Social Mobility. It concludes that the
53 per cent of young people who do not follow the traditional academic route into work are “significantly overlooked in their transition for work by the education system”.

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