Ofsted chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw dealt a well-documented body blow to the further education sector last month when he suggested that 16- to 19-year-olds would be better off in schools.

When quizzed on his comments to the Commons Education Select Committee, he cited students’ poor performance in GCSE English and maths retakes as a key indicator of the sector’s failings. Young people who don’t do well in these subjects at 16 rarely improve two years later, he complained.

If schools have failed to prepare these young people for GCSE success in 11 years, why are colleges being criticised for failing to reverse their fortunes in just two?

Last summer, the thinktank Policy Exchange published a report on the matter, Crossing the Line, which suggested that schools should be required to pay a levy to colleges where pupils joined having failed to secure good English and maths grades.

The levy, the report argued, would help to ease colleges’ growing budget pressures over what could be seen as “passing the buck” of under-performance.

The pressures are great and, with an even larger number of students aged 17 and over expected to resit their English and maths GCSEs this summer, only going to get greater.

Paying for resits

As TES reported last week, some colleges are being forced to pay out tens of thousands of pounds to cover the costs associated with providing resit opportunities for more and more students.

While many in the sector are still reeling from Sir Michael’s comments on further education, engaging in the blame game isn’t really going to help anyone.

No one doubts that English and maths are vital life and employability skills but, for me, the question is whether GCSEs are the right indicator of success at all. If a young person has struggled with English and maths at school, simply asking them to repeat the same exercise for another two years is only likely to reinforce failure.

Our emotions are the biggest barrier to effective learning and our emotional roadblocks are immediately raised when we are presented with a situation that we have failed in before. To break a habit, we need to do things differently.

We have seen a clear difference in our colleges where English and maths is embedded in the vocational curriculum. A student in hospitality and catering may struggle to see the relevance of writing an essay about their summer holiday, but can appreciate the need to present a clear list of ingredients and explain a menu’s nutritional value.

This approach serves to demonstrate the value and impact of English in a vocational context. Students see the relevance and immediately feel motivated to put in the effort required to achieve.

While I absolutely disagree with Sir Michael’s comments about further education, what I hope it provokes is a further debate about how we teach and measure English and maths.

We need to stop being lazy in the way that we make judgements about student attainment, and instead understand the literacy and numeracy skills that are required for success in employment and in life.

Sally Dicketts is chief executive of Activate Learning @SallyDicketts

This is an article from the 8 April edition of TES. This week’s TES magazine is available in all good newsagents. To download the digital edition, Android users can click here and iOS users can click here

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