Morning:
14°c
A dozen new specialist schools offering advanced vocational skills for teenagers were pledged by the Tories today.
The Technical Schools would teach science and engineering to talented 14 to 19-year-olds who want to go to work rather than university.
Education spokesman Michael Gove is in talks with Boris Johnson about identifying a site in London for one of the colleges, which will be built in each of Britain's main cities at first, and expanding if they are a success.
“These will provide credible, high quality vocational education in each major city,” said Mr Gove.
He argued that Labour had failed to advance technical education and vocational skills, pointing to surveys that show businesses are unhappy with the qualifications of school-leavers and that eight in 10 teenagers say they are bored with school. In another move to show David Cameron's party's focus on youth unemployment, the number of young apprenticeship places would be tripled to 30,000.
A tough welfare policy billed as cracking down on the “sicknote culture” was also on today's agenda. Hundreds of thousands of people claiming incapacity benefit would have their payments slashed by a third.
Up to half a million people deemed fit to work would lose £25 a week in handouts after the introduction of new tests. All 2.6 million claimants would undergo tougher medical and work tests to see if they are capable of performing paid tasks within three years of the Tories taking over.
Private firms would then be paid “bounties” by the state to help claimants get into jobs. Those who fail to find jobs would be moved off incapacity benefit and on to Jobseeker's Allowance, freeing £600 million for back-to-work assistance schemes. The welfare reforms were being spelled out by Lord Freud, the former Government adviser who was appointed as welfare guru by the Tories when his radical ideas failed to gain support among Labour MPs.
Mr Cameron opened the party conference with a welfare debate to counter Labour taunts that they would return the country to the mass unemployment of the Eighties if elected. “Labour are now the party of unemployment,” he said. “I want the new Conservative Party to be the party of jobs and opportunity and at the heart of it is a big, bold and radical scheme to get millions of people back to work.”
Plans to create 10,000 new university places funded by offering students a discount for paying off loans early were also being announced.
Reader views (5)
Sounds like those would be the Polytechnics that the, um, Conservatives 'upgraded' to Universities under John Major? Which, coupled to the new GCSEs with grades down to x,y, z (also brought in by Major) lead to the huge spate in quasi-academic qualifications and totally snobbery against all artisan professions. At least they see the error of their ways!
- Roz, France
John Ex-Brat is right. There are FE Colleges that do technical subjects. Instead of re-inventing the wheel the Government should be getting behind them. My husband is very despondent, he works in Further Education and he is convinced that the Tories will privatise it. It sounds to me that they will do what they did with commercial education, hive it off into the private sector with myriads of small 'independent' training colleges. That way it's cheaper and also someone somewhere makes a pile of cash.
- Sue R, London
We used to have Technical Colleges which had courses for everything from car maintenance to Higher National Certificate. What happened to them?
An apprenticeship plus a "Tech" course ensured a good job on completion.
Some of the lecturers were from companies and therefor aware of what was happening in the real world.
Of course, you had to pay (or if you were lucky your employer paid) it was well worth the money.
Never mind the degrees in media studies, bring back the Tech Colleges.
- John Ex Brat, Buckley Wales
If we can have a technical school in every town to train the next generation of builders, plumbers, and other tradesmen, Mr Gove, why can't we have a grammar school too? Why is academic talent not to be given its own special treatment?
- Frank, London
Instead of grandiose schemes to parachute schools in like some bizarre air-mobile cavalry playing Flight of the Valkyries, why not simply increase the pay of Maths and Science teachers to at least parity with Arts teachers. That would be considerably cheaper, attract qualified people into a job that is seriously understaffed, (many maths teachers in the UK are not even science graduates, never mind maths) and benefit the whole country, not just those lucky enough to be in the catchment area.
- Threaded, Roskilde, Denmark
