Gove: schools more like workplace

UK – Teenagers will be expected to stay at school for nine hours a day in order to master basic English, maths and train for a trade or craft, The Telegraph reports.

Tens of thousands of pupils will be sent to colleges and a new breed of technical schools from the age of 14, where they will work “business hours” and attend classes for an extra two weeks a year. 

The proposal is intended to end the failure of state education and to ensure school-leavers are competent at reading, writing and mathematics.

More than half of 16 year-olds complete compulsory education in England without achieving a basic C grade in both English and maths.

Education Secretary, Michael Gove published plans which would see many work-related qualifications scrapped in favour of a new system in which employers play a much greater role. 

More professionals and business figures should be brought into mainstream comprehensives to help teach vocational courses, while companies could be paid to let their trainee staff attend lessons. 

New university technical colleges (UTCs), backed by businesses, are planned to train future generations of mechanics, bricklayers and plumbers. 

Pupils will begin studying at the UTCs at 14 and will be required to work nine-hour days for 40 weeks a year. This would be many more hours than is normal in secondary education in England. 

Mr Gove has already backed the idea that mainstream schools should open for longer, suggesting that 10-hour days and Saturday classes should be encouraged. 

The plans will be seen as marking a return to the principles of the system which operated in the 1950s and 1960s, when children attended schools geared to either academic or practical learning.