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Home > All site sections > Blogs > Editors' blog

Diplomas in distress

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Lucy Phillips

12 Aug 2008 | 15:48

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Am I alone in feeling sorry for the kids caught up in the middle of all this debate surrounding the new 14 to 19 diplomas?

As a thirteen-year-old I remember the difficulty I had in choosing my GCSE options, even though the school had conveniently already decided most of them for me. I was presented with the same quagmire again two years later for my A-levels, but at least for me they were the only qualifications on offer. Now added to that choice are Pre-Us, the IB, IGCSEs and of course, from September, the new diplomas.

If they were simply a vocational route, or a single overarching diploma that replaced everything as recommended by the Tomlinson review, the problems over their value would not have occurred and they would not pose such a risk to the young people who choose them.

Tomlinson’s motives were noble – putting an end to claims that vocational qualifications were inferior to academic ones, and at the same time creating better routes from the classroom to the workplace. But in an attempt to preserve the ‘gold standard’ of A-levels the government has delivered a half baked version, and diploma students will have to hope that they are not left out in the cold by both universities and employers. Worse still, whichever route they take, they will be judged against those taking GSCEs and A-levels. In a society that is so biased towards traditional education, can they really be given a fair trial?

It’s just another case of the government asking for expert advice – Sir Mike was the former chief inspector of schools – and then not having the guts to go through with it. But this time innocent teenagers, alongside bewildered parents and teachers, are caught in the middle.

For the sake of the kids I hope that the new diplomas prove valuable and I urge employers to give them a chance. Given the bad press, one skill that all of the 20,000 teenagers who sit the qualifications in September will have is balls, and in the workplace that’s not something to be ignored.

Comments

1. At 15:58 on 18 Aug 2008, Rosie Sherry wrote:

Yup, I feel sorry for them.

It's not just diplomas though. Increasingly I feel there is unnecessary pressure to stay on in formal education for longer than in necessary. School used to be enough, then it had to be college, then a degree, now it's masters and PHDs.

So much so that you only experience the real world at around the age of 25 when it dawns on you that you've spent much of your life studying for something that you don't really want to do anymore.
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2. At 15:07 on 21 Aug 2008, Tim Smedley wrote:

In response to Rosie's comment, "what is necessary" in education terms is open to a fair bit of debate. You might think that entering the real world at 25 is a sign of things going too far - but in Germany, the average graduate age is around 28 (and has been for some time), and that's Europe's largest economy. Not that they're necessarily in the right, but certainly food for thought.

What's more worrying, back to Lucy's point, is the thought of people leaving school with diplomas and having nothing to fall back on if they are shunned by employers. Let's hope that doesn't happen.
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