Make up your mind when you are young
Category:
15 / 09 / 2009 | Author: dnorris
Make your mind up at 14.
In 2004 you could have built a mountain out of all the qualifications that it was possible to obtain at school and college. Many of them were low level qualifications that took just sixty hours of study. Some took even less. Many were of little value and all were a direct consequence of the way schools and colleges obtained their funding. The more qualifications an institute obtained the more money they received.
Quite understandably things had to change, so in 2008 the government set out its intention to make gradual and managed changes to a more streamlined set of qualifications for young people. The target date for completion was 2013.
What they have come up with is a quartet of qualifications. They are apprenticeships, Diplomas, Foundation Learning Qualifications and General Qualifications., and the one creating the biggest debate is the Diploma.
There is of course a hidden agenda and that is that the school leaving age is set to rise to 17 by 2013 and 18 by 2015. What is more, the Diplomas are targeted at at children who would be most likely to have left school at the earliest opportunity.
Times are never easy for young people but they are set to become a whole lot more complicated. The Diplomas are targeted at children aged 14 – 19. They are very much aimed at offering a mix of classroom based study and hands on experience in up to ten job categories. So the emphasis is placed upon young people to decide what kind of training they would like to take up in readiness for when then they leave school.
When all are implemented the choices will include; business administration and finance, Construction and the built environment, creative studies, engineering, land based studies, hospitality, information technology, manufacturing and project design, public services, retail services, health, sport, and tourism.
That is quite a daunting list for a 14 year old to choose from and significantly not particularly open to a change of mind.
The diplomas themselves have degrees of difficulty. A Foundation Diploma will be geared to being the equivalent of 5 GCSE’s at grades D-G.
A Higher Diploma will be equivalent to seven GCSE’s at grades A-C and the Advanced Diploma will be the same as 3.5 A levels.
The differentials are very very wide so not surprisingly pupils will fill in the differences with other GCSE’s which calls into question the whole reason for equating them to GCSE’s in the first place. If they are equivalent to GCSE’s then why not take GCSE’s . Given that many courses have a points value when applying for Further Education courses in Colleges and Universities there is a very high onus put on responsible Advice and Guidance, be it to the children or their parents.
To parents who take little interest in their children’s education the permutations will seem bewildering and the routes complex. For parents who do take an interest in the progress of their offspring their routes seem much simpler by comparison. For them all they need to do is focus on good A level results.
This to me seems to be the wrong way round. Those with the highest I.Q. have the simplest choices. The educational system shouldn’t be skewed this way – but it is.
