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Half of pupils fail to get basic standards in three Rs
Last updated at 07:07am on 24.08.07Half of teenagers face a "bleak future" because they are failing to achieve basic standards in the three Rs, a business leader warned.
Despite rising GCSE performance, around 50 per cent of 16-year-olds failed to achieve five passes at A* to C, including English and maths - the Government benchmark for secondary school achievement.
David Frost, director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said thousands of school-leavers are being consigned to the job scrapheap because grades are not improving quickly enough.
They will find it "almost impossible" to gain employment unless they return to school or training to brush up their skills, he added.
'The world has changed dramatically,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"There are no longer opportunities for unskilled work in factories. We are a service economy and that requires skills including English and maths.
"Unless we improve the performance in schools, the future for those half leaving without qualifications is quite frankly pretty bleak."
Bosses are now choosing to hire workers from Poland and other countries because immigrants are better prepared for work than home-grown school-leavers, he added.
"Employers are employing them in vast numbers because they have better skills than school-leavers and actually want to work," he said.
"Employers want recruits with strong communication and team-working skills as well as mastery of the three Rs."
Recent figures show 27 per cent of 16 and 17-year-olds are unemployed, while 500,000 under-24s are jobless. The number of Neets - "not in education, employment or training" - also rose from 153,500 in 1997 to 206,000 last year.
Mr Frost's warning came as a GCSE maths examiner revealed pupils are being awarded D grades without demonstrating they have a grasp of the basics.
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Jane Roper, an examiner with seven years' experience, said some candidates are unable to add, subtract, multiply and divide - skills they should have mastered at primary school.
Many were relying on calculators to help them with awkward sums in one of two maths papers, she added.
When asked if pupils needed to be fluent in basic skills, she replied: "Do you have to be able to add, take, times and divide (to get a D)? Not necessarily, is the answer to the question.
"On one of those papers you will have a calculator with you that will do those calculations for you, provided you know how to input them."
But some students were so affected by exam pressure they were even unable to use a calculator correctly, she admitted.
"They would presumably know how to do it, but might not be able to get an accurate answer."
Susan Anderson, of the Confederation of British Industry, said: "These young people risk being sidelined as the UK sheds many of its lower-skilled jobs and creates jobs with more demanding skills.
"We have to focus on getting these basics right, and avoid the perils to the UK of an underskilled workforce.
"And economics aside, to spend a lifetime unfulfilled by work is a personal tragedy too."
