The Languages Company

The Wolf report on Vocational Education was published on March 3, 2011. It considers how vocational education for 14- to 19-year-olds can be improved in order to promote successful progression into the labour market and into higher level education and training routes.

Key recommendations in the report include:

• incentivising young people to take the most valuable vocational qualifications pre-16, while removing incentives to take large numbers of vocational qualifications to the detriment of core academic study
• introducing principles to guide study programmes for young people on vocational routes post-16 to ensure they are gaining skills which will lead to progression into a variety of jobs or further learning, in particular, to ensure that those who have not secured a good pass in English and mathematics GCSE continue to study those subjects
• evaluating the delivery structure and content of apprenticeships to ensure they deliver the right skills for the workplace
• making sure the regulatory framework moves quickly away from accrediting individual qualifications to regulating awarding organisations
• removing the requirement that all qualifications offered to 14- to 19-year-olds fit within the Qualifications and Credit Framework, which has had a detrimental effect on their appropriateness and has left gaps in the market
• enabling FE lecturers and professionals to teach in schools, ensuring young people are being taught by those best suited.

The full report is available here
http://www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/publicationDetail/Page1/DFE-00031-2011