Last year’s riots proved that the schools in our most deprived areas need leaders with drive and high expectations

Those who took part in the riots last August were overwhelmingly young and from disadvantaged backgrounds. Half of those who appeared in court were under 21, and three times more likely to be entitled to free meals when they were at school.

The sad truth is that these are the very young people most likely to attend a weak school and receive a substandard education. This is not acceptable any more. If we don’t give more of our young people a good education, then more will end up in jail, and more communities will fracture. If we don’t give our young people the skills they need for employment, their communities can’t thrive.

Let’s be honest. We don’t have a good enough schools system yet. Almost a third of the schools in England were not judged to be good by Ofsted at their last inspection. Three thousand schools, educating a million children, were judged “satisfactory” at both their last two inspections. Previous chief inspectors have identified the same problem of too much stubbornly satisfactory, mediocre provision, yet we haven’t made enough progress.

So what about some solutions? We need to do something different, which is brave and radical. That’s why I have made clear my intention to do away with the false label of “satisfactory” and replace it with a clear statement that a school “requires improvement”. There will be greater clarity about what the school needs to do to improve, and faster re-inspection to check on progress. I want to set a clear expectation that a school requiring improvement will do so rapidly, or find itself in special measures.

We know it can be done in the most difficult circumstances. My former school, Mossbourne Academy, has four in 10 children on free school meals; 30% on the special educational needs register; and 38% of children with English as a second language. It now achieves results much better than the national average and sends pupils to Oxbridge – not because of a bright new building, but because of good systems and structures, good teaching, and staff who work hard and make no excuses for failure. The school often acts as a surrogate parent, providing wraparound care, enrichment and support for pupils who don’t get enough of this at home. And I’m proud to say no pupil at Mossbourne, as far as I am aware, was caught up in last summer’s problems.

Of course, there are many schools like Mossbourne. But they all share some crucial features: a rigorous approach to improving the quality of teaching, and a relentlessness in the pursuit of improvement. They have leaders who drive up the performance of staff. They make no excuses, and they have high expectations of every single pupil. So shouldn’t we have high expectations of every single school? We know what works, for schools as well as pupils.

Last year alone 85 schools serving the most deprived communities in our society were judged to be providing outstanding education. If they can do it in these challenging circumstances there is absolutely no reason why other schools in more prosperous areas cannot. And before someone writes in to argue that supposedly “it’s all very well if you have the extra focus or resources of academy status”, let me be clear: the vast majority of these schools are not academies. They are simply schools with heads and staff focused on the right things, striving every day to provide the best possible education for their young people.

This is not about being provocative: it’s about doing the right thing for pupils. Every time heads and others make excuses for failure, it makes it harder to sustain the drive for improvement in the most challenging schools. Every time a substandard teacher is left unchallenged, the most vulnerable pupils have their life chances diminished.

Teaching and headship is now a much better paid profession that needs to remind itself of its core mission and sense of moral purpose. Unless we have this sense of vocation – a word we don’t hear enough of these days – we won’t drive up standards in the most difficult circumstances.

I’m really clear about my mission as chief inspector. I’m also aware that some of what we need to do to transform our education system will be uncomfortable. So be it: we need a step change. The prize is a significantly better education system: one that gives more young people the start they need and deserve, and ultimately creates stronger communities for all of us.

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Two-shift day and use of empty Woolworths stores among ideas to cope with surge in primary age pupils

A council in east London is drawing up plans to convert an empty Woolworths store into a classroom and teach children in two shifts, in emergency measures across Britain to cope with a dramatic increase in primary school age children.

More than 450,000 places in schools in England are needed by 2015, government figures show – partly the result of a baby boom in the past decade.

Schools have begun using every available space, including converting a caretaker’s hut into a classroom and a broom cupboard into an office, and moving into council-owned office space.

The problem is most acute in London. In Barking, the number of primary age children is predicted to rise from 19,000 to more than 27,000 by 2015. In addition to the empty Woolworths, the council is looking into leasing a vacant MFI building.

It is also looking at “split shift sessions”, where schools would take one group of pupils from 8am until 2pm and then a second from 2pm until 7pm. The shifts would double capacity although the council concedes parents would have great difficulty accomodating the shift patterns.

Rocky Gill, Barking and Dagenham council’s cabinet member for finance and education, said “detailed plans” for shifts were being drawn up. “In two years’ time we will have expanded all our primary schools. So we’re going to have no choice but to move into split shift education at both primary and secondary level.”

Gill feared the impact on families with children in different shifts could be “disastrous”.

The demographic pressure is particularly acute in London, due to inward migration and increasing numbers of people no longer leaving the capital when they have children.

Ripple primary school in Barkinghad 4.5 applications per place last year, and is growing from three forms to five in each year after expanding into a nearby council-owned office site. By 2015 it expects to have 1,200 pupils, making it one of the biggest primaries in the country.

Initially, the school shared the new space with office workers. The headteacher, Roger Mitchell, said: “It was interesting sharing the building – we were working in the very best way we possibly could.

“It didn’t really become my school until the end of February, beginning of March last year, when those people finally moved out to new accommodation. It’s nice just to have my school now.”

The school’s expansion originally has a budget of £4.4m, but this was halved when the coalition came to power. Mitchell is also seeking an extra £3.2m to fund a permanent solution for the original school site, so 120 reception-aged children will not have to be taught in outdoor huts.

“It’s not nice to have some of your youngest children taught in outside classrooms, they need a proper learning environment – one that’s not too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer,” he said.

While the council’s strategy has been to expand school building where possible, the authority has also been exploring the possibility of commercial space.

“We’ve got an empty MFI building and an empty Woolworths; we’re looking at speaking to those freeholders and purchasing that space or leasing it,” Gill said.

Focusing on the needs of individual children becomes a sharper challenge as schools get bigger. Thelma McGorrighan, headteacher of Manor infants’ school, which in September set up another three entry classes at a different site, Manor Longbridge, said: “You have to make your presence felt. Parents have to see you.

“First thing in the morning and at the end of the day, you’re out there with the children – greeting the children, dealing with issues outside, keeping the parents well informed.”

Parental campaigns are springing up against the expansion of existing primaries, driven by concern that standards will slip if schools become too big.

In Haringey, proposals to expand two schools, Belmont infants and Belmont junior, face resistance. School governors at the infants’ school argue that the plans are “likely to jeopardise a successful school”.

Victoria Harwood, a writer whose four-year-old son is a pupil at Belmont infants, said: “It’s a grade 1 Ofsted school. It does well because it’s so small. It’s a small, intimate community school. That would change if it expands. If they try and jam-pack more kids in, I’m convinced that standards would drop.”

The shortage of primary school places is a sore point for the government. Last November the education secretary, Michael Gove, confirmed that an extra £500m would be allocated to more than 100 local authorities experiencing “the most severe need”, while in the autumn statement the chancellor, George Osborne, announced a further £600m for local authorities with the greatest pressure on school places. He also announced an extra £600m for free schools.

This prompted Labour to accuse Gove of lavishing money on a “pet project” rather than spending the entire £1.2bn easing the pressure on primaries.

While London faces the greatest challenge, schools elsewhere are feeling the strain. In Manchester, which will see a predicted rise from just over 37,000 primary school pupils to more than 46,000 by 2015, a headteacher said her schools were “bursting at the seams”.

Lisa Vyas, headteacher of Ladybarn primary school and executive headteacher of Green End primary school, said: “Every single little space is used. We’ve even had to transform a little storage cupboard into the business manager’s office.

“At the moment, because of the knock on effect of the dinners taking longer to serve, I now can’t provide every child a gym and dance lesson because there’s not enough time in the hall.

“I can’t meet the PE curriculum needs because there’s not enough hours in the day.”

An education department spokesman said: “We’re creating thousands more places to deal with the impact of soaring birth rates on primary schools. We’re more than doubling targeted investment at areas facing the greatest pressure on numbers , more than £4bn in the next four years.”

“We are building free schools, and letting what are the most popular schools expand so they can meet demand from parents. We are intervening to drive up standards in the weakest schools, those with thousands of empty places nationally, so they can become places where parents actually want to send their children.”

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A new research project aims to uncover what matters to teachers

What are unions for – and what should they be for? Are they industrial lobbying groups, existing to advance the interests of their members, or professional associations driven to improve the quality of the services they provide?

The two goals can combine of course, but there’s often little acknowledgment of this.

Michael Gove has little hesitation in including the NUT among his “enemies of promise”, while the teaching unions have been guilty of a little hyperbole themselves.

It’s an echo of the angry debate in the US where Geoffrey Canada, of Harlem Children’s Zone, has accused the unions of being a brake on reform.

A project being carried out by Loic Menzies, a former teacher who now runs a consultancy, aims to uncover some answers.

Menzies draws attention to the work of Harvard academic Susan Moore Johnson, who writes of “industrial unionism” and “reform unionism” in education.

The first kind assumes that relations between workers and management are at odds – it’s a zero-sum game.

The second accepts that while union rules can protect teachers from arbitrary treatment, they can limit the freedom of school managements. This model allows both sides to collaborate on bespoke solutions to school problems.

She writes that there is “substantial evidence… in contrast to the notion that unions limit educational autonomy and professionalism, that teacher unions have led to many practices that not only permit but also promote local variety and reform.”

Menzies’s research project – commissioned by a social enterprise that is seeking to offer support services to teachers – is an attempt to identify what matters to teachers and therefore what should matter to Britain’s teaching unions. On the basis of early findings, he writes: “We might expect the focus amongst teachers to be on ‘reform’ rather than stagnation. Should this be the case, unions will need to make sure their behaviour is in line with teachers’ objectives by focusing on standards and quality as opposed to defensiveness.”

It is a project that will be of some interest to the unions themselves. One of Menzies’ early discoveries is that there appears to be a high degree of mobility among teachers: more than 40% of his initial respondents have swapped union.

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The dangers which Peter Wilby points out (Does Gove realise he is empowering future dictators?, 31 January) were recognised 70 years ago. Unfortunately secretaries of state know very little history. The Oxford historian Dr Marjorie Reeves, when invited to be on the Central Advisory Council For Education (England) in 1946, was told by the permanent secretary, John Redcliffe-Maud, that the main duty of council members was “to be prepared to die at the first ditch as soon as politicians try to get their hands on education”.

A war had been fought to prevent the consequences of such concentrated power. The 1944 Education Act, hammered out during the war years, created a “maintained system” of education as a balance of power between central government, local government responsibility, the voluntary bodies (mainly the churches) and the teachers. That balance is now disappearing fast, without the public debate it needs and with hardly a squeak from Labour. The existing education legislation refers to the fast-disappearing “maintained schools”, leaving academies and free schools exposed, without the protection of the law, to whatever whimsical ideas are dreamt up by the present or future secretaries of state, to whom they are contracted with minimal accountability to parliament.
Professor Richard Pring
Green Templeton College, Oxford

• The removal of 3,100 vocational subjects from the school performance tables from 2014 (Report, 31 January) has major implications. It is certainly the case that “perverse incentives” were created by the league tables to use soft options to boost school league table positions – the phenomenon known as gaming. However, the cull to 70 accepted vocational subjects, with 55 allowed on the margins, essentially destroys vocational and technical education. Given that the old basis is the one for the current (2012 and 2013) tables, a whole raft of students are on worthless courses.

The wider implication is that the government has no interest in vocational or technical education. However, there is a subtext that Mr Gove’s supporters may find less palatable. The schools that have used gaming most cynically have been academies. Indeed, take away 16-plus exam results and the academies are the least successful schools in the country – they had 7% of students gaining Ebacc last year against 13%of comprehensive students.
Trevor Fisher
Stafford

• While some courses don’t stand up to scrutiny, others have the potential to form the bedrock of future UK prosperity. The JCB Academy in Rocester is doing ground-breaking work inspiring young people from Derby and its environs to major in engineering and business skills. It was set up to provide future skilled employees for companies like Rolls-Royce, Toyota and, of course, JCB itself, as these companies have found that young people are not being given the necessary skills and experience in mainstream schools and colleges.

Is it too late for Michael Gove to recognise excellence where it exists, and stop tarring all non-mainstream courses with the same brush?
Lucy Care
Derby

• Let’s be clear about the pupils at Mossbourne Community Academy (Wilshaw’s rules, 24 January). Far from being “well-heeled”, 89% of the pupils – according to IDACI data from the 2011 school census – fall within the 20% most deprived in the country. Almost 40% of last year’s GCSE cohort were on free school meals, yet 76% of these disadvantaged pupils achieved five or more A*-C grades at GCSE including English and maths.

For too long commentators have implied that Mossbourne’s intake is predominantly of privileged, middle-class children. This is simply not true. The Pembury estate, next door to Mossbourne, is one of the capital’s most deprived housing estates.

Mossbourne is not alone in achieving outstanding results for a truly comprehensive intake. You need only look at neighbouring schools, like Bethnal Green technology college in Tower Hamlets, where results compare well.
Alan Wood
Director of children services, Hackney

• According to Susanna Rustin: “Even those community schools that have hung on to comprehensive status and stuck with their local authority rather than striking out as independents, have mostly reintroduced uniforms, streaming and head boys and girls” (Nostalgia for grammar schools is misplaced, 30 January). At Millom School, where I am chair of governors, we have very recently dispensed with the role of head boy and girl, never condoned streaming and remodelled our school uniform (no blazers, no ties, no braid) in the light of students’ preferences. We have also twice decided not to seek academy status. Neither nostalgia nor political opportunism has informed our decisions. We are not alone. Hopefully Susanna would approve?
Professor Colin Richards
Spark Bridge, Cumbria

• I am concerned about the decision to axe in excess of 3,000 GCSEs without appearing to consider the implications on the young people that benefit from such diversity of qualifications. Every child has the right to succeed. Success breeds success and consequently such a decision could affect people’s learning drive. One size does not fit all and I would ask the education minister to consult widely before making decisions that may backfire on our communities.

Firstly, and speaking as a principal of an academy whose attainment has grown over five consecutive years, it is important to recognise that a wide range of suitable qualifications are important to ensure we meet our learners’ needs. I think it is important to state that a good grade in a traditional GCSE should quite rightly remain a priority. However, it should also be recognised that passing an alternative vocational qualification is of a higher value to a young person than achieving a D or below in any GCSE. It is important therefore to get the right balance.

League tables simply drive behaviour based on wherever the emphasis is, but to date we have yet to find a way of securing accountability through league tables that also recognises the outstanding work that schools are doing to meet the needs of all of their learners.

Secondly, consider those returning to education of any age, which has been encouraged by successive governments. The eradication of so many GCSEs has the potential to create a chasm for people who are in this category. We cannot afford for this to happen as this is part of “building communities”.

Let us not wipe out these courses without widespread consultation with people whose feet are firmly on the ground, and who work at the coalface.
Kevin Rowlands
Principal, Oasis Academy, Immingham

• Alison Wolf suggests that “Institutions are under great pressure to do well in league tables” (Let’s end qualifications that have no value, 31 January) and Michael Gove has now reduced the number of vocational qualifications from over 3,000 to 135. The effects of this on pupils, teachers, employers and society will be extremely negative and confine pupils to courses for which they are not suited, frustrate teachers for having to offer courses that are not appropriate and deny employers future workers with job-related skills – and poor old society will have to pick up the tab for out-of-work, disillusioned young people.

An easier solution would have been to do away with league tables and let professionals do their work without government interference. Simple really.
Bob Dawson
Bury, Lancashire

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Because instead of talking about what they know, some people talk about the questions that they ponder

Remember last year’s online Google Science Fair? Well, hold on to your hats because they’re doing it again this year! In partnership with CERN, Lego, National Geographic and Scientific American, Google has announced their second online science fair. This is the largest global online science competition and it celebrates the curiosity and investigations of young scientists everywhere!

If you’re 13 to 18 years old, you can enter by submitting your entry by 1 April 2012 for your chance to win fantastic prizes. This video tells you a little more:

Visit GoogleScienceFair’s YouTube channel [video link].

Here’s a video detailing some of the competition rules:

Visit GoogleScienceFair’s YouTube channel [video link].

Everyone has a question. What’s yours?

.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..

Learn more about the Google Science Fair.

Here’s some information from last year’s Google Science Fair competition, and a story where I interviewed one of last year’s semi-finalists, a young British scientist, Georgia Bondy, about her Google Science Fair project.

.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..

twitter: @GrrlScientist
facebook: grrlscientist
evil google+: grrlscientist
email: grrlscientist@gmail.com

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Louder children can outperform quieter classmates and lift overall performance by encouraging others to become engaged

While it may be frustrating for a teacher attempting to control a class, researchers say blurting out the answers can be good for pupils.

Children who shout out the answer can be nearly nine months ahead in reading and maths when compared with quieter classmates, according to a study by academics at Durham University.

Research which looked at more than 12,000 children aged between four and five finds that, on the whole, pupils who act impulsively in school do less well than those who can control their behaviour.

But when the academics compared children with similar levels of inattentiveness, they found the louder ones did better.

Boys are much more likely to blurt out the answers than girls. But the researchers find that speaking out of turn can be equally beneficial for both sexes.

Prof Peter Tymms, head of the School of Education at Durham University and lead author of the report, said: “It’s quite useful for a classroom teacher to know that blurting out helps the individual.

“It might be a bit of a nuisance to the class, but what’s a disadvantage to some might be an advantage to others.

“These are little children who haven’t got the control others have, and can’t help it sometimes. If they talk something through out loud, they can understand it better.”

These children may also benefit from the extra attention and feedback they get from their teacher.

The study looked at children in more than 500 schools in England who were tested in English and maths at the end of their first year using a computer program.

Teachers were asked to rate pupils’ behaviour and impulsiveness based on three different factors: blurting out the answer before hearing the end of a question; having difficulty waiting their turn; and actions which interrupted other children, such as pushing in on games.

The researchers found there was a nine-month advantage in reading and maths for those who continuously blurted out answers compared with those pupils who never did so but had similar levels of inattention.

The research paper suggests there might have been an “evolutionary advantage” to having a small proportion of individuals who blurted out answers.

“The excitement of one individual may encourage others to become engaged. Or perhaps the one who cannot help himself saying something can force the group to face a reality which none dared declare openly.

“In evolutionary terms it may have been advantageous to have a small proportion of individuals who blurted out.”

The researchers suggest that harnessing the virtues of blurting could help teachers educate children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) symptoms.

Tymms said: “Managing and responding to pupils’ different needs and abilities within a class is a challenge for teachers.

“We’re not suggesting that classrooms become free-for-all shouting matches but if this can be harnessed, it could help teachers and learners.”

The findings are published in the journal Learning and Individual Differences.

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Number of places on offer rises by more than 25% – an increase driven by family breakdown and pressure on working parents

State boarding schools are witnessing a surge in popularity, with the number of places rising by a quarter over the past decade – an increase driven in part by family breakdown, which has in effect left some children homeless.

Two academies have opened boarding facilities this term, and a third is due to open residential quarters in September, raising the number of children in state boarding to more than 5,000 from 3,800 at the start of the last decade. Five more academies plan to open boarding facilities, including one in south London, which hopes to send inner-city children to board in Sussex.

Instead of the cold showers and ascetic dormitories of public school tradition, modern boarding quarters feature purpose-built blocks with ensuite bedrooms, access to Wi-Fi and thumb-print recognition entry systems.

The Harefield academy in Hillingdon opened a boarding facility with 50 places this academic year, mainly to provide for children with difficult home lives. This includes pupils who were “sofa surfing” because of family breakdown or the death of a parent.

The school also selects 15 children a year for their sporting excellence, and some of these pupils have chosen to board because they were commuting long distances or because they wanted more time to train.

Boarding has helped diversify the school, which now includes two boys from the Bahamas and children from Spain. Principal Lynn Gadd said: “Harefield is very white, working class, and we felt we needed a slightly bigger global dimension, so we offered a few places to students who could bring that richness.”

Hilary Moriarty, director of the state boarding schools association, suggested that changes to working lives had increased the appeal of boarding for families. She said: “Many boarding schools now offer weekly boarding, which is an attractive proposition for many families, particularly if mum and dad both work – on Monday we all go to work, see you on Friday. If you’re on a train at 7am, get home at 7.30 or 8pm, there’s very little time for the kind of ideal vision of family life that we had 30 years ago.”

At Ashby school in Leicestershire, which has almost doubled its boarding wing to 72 places this academic year, headteacher Eddie Green concurred: “There’s a number of reasons [why children board]. Modern family life is one of them. Parents are working overseas, or working longer hours. We have students coming from abroad who value the English educational system. Quite a lot are from Hong Kong. We’ve got students from EU countries where the parents have gone to live abroad.”

Boarding school accommodation is being created around the country. Priory academy in Lincoln is due to open a sixth-form boarding house with 60 places in September 2012, catering for demand from RAF families and pupils who commute long-distance.

The Wellington academy in Wiltshire, sponsored by the public school Wellington College, opened twin boarding houses for 100 students this academic year.

One of the most ambitious boarding school projects is a plan by a school in Stockwell, south London, to set up a satellite school for its pupils in the home counties.

Durand Academy plans to open a junior school in London this autumn, and from 2014 students will attend a boarding school in Sussex. Under the plan, which has received £17m of government funding for building work, pupils will be driven to Sussex on Monday and return home on Friday. The aim is to move children to an environment free from negative influences and offer an extended school day combining study with music, drama and sport. Unlike other state boarding schools, it will not charge for accommodation. Instead, its running costs will come out of private income the school generates from a swimming pool, gym and block of flats.

A similar motive drives plans for a boarding “free school”, which will admit children at risk of going into care. About 20 children in each year-group of this proposed school would have been identified by social workers as being at risk of entering care, its backers say. The school would have a “family” system of house-parents providing pastoral care for the boarders.

Lee Donaghy, who is proposing the school with his wife, Ann, said: “Our central motivation is to give the most disadvantaged and marginalised children in society an educational experience that is on a par with the very best that’s on offer in British schooling. One thing that struck us powerfully was a state boarding school head saying that boarding provision for this group of children works because for the first time in their lives they have access to something that others desire – and are even prepared to pay for.” The proposed free school, which would open in 2014, would be based wherever the need is greatest, Donaghy added.

Other state boarding schools are urging the government to provide funding for building work so they can expand. State boarding scho ols are permitted to charge parents to cover accommodation costs – with fees of £10,000-£12,000 – but restricted from charging more. This limits their ability to accumulate surpluses for construction work.

Ray McGovern, chairman of the State Boarding Schools Association, said: “If we manage to get the investment, then we can fund other children who need boarding places but whose families can’t afford it. But we need to know what the government’s strategy is going to be.”

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In east London, the best jobs aren’t going to local people. A new school aims to solve that.

Youth unemployment, over a million now, is the most painful feature of the recession; a breach of the promise one generation makes to the next. But it’s not new – unemployment among the young was rising even in the tail end of the boom years.

There’s a deeper change going on here. The brutal truth is that in the 21st century, Britain has no jobs for young people without qualifications.

There’s a real shortage of first jobs for young people with all levels of education. Only 6% of employers offer jobs to 16 year old school leavers and only around 10% offer jobs to 17 and 18-year-olds fresh from school or college, according to 2009 data held by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills. Increasingly, the jobs which are on offer to young people are not particularly good ones – they are more likely to be temporary or part-time, and they are less likely to receive training than older people.

But what about the future? Two of the most successful sectors of the economy – professional and scientific jobs, and IT – employ a below average proportion of young workers. Both of these sectors are significant in employment terms – employing around 1.9m and 1m people respectively. If we’re going to get more young people into work, here’s where the growth could come from.

Here’s a puzzle: the employment rate in Hackney, east London, has been rising over the past three years to nearly 71%, which is above the national average. But Hackney’s unemployment rate has barely been whittled away. Meanwhile, the percentage of the borough’s population with degrees rose dramatically in the past decade, from 33% to 46%. (Nationally, the figure is 25%).

In other words, the jobs aren’t going to local people. There’s been an influx of graduates which has transformed Hackney but left untouched a layer of young people without a future.

Even after years of investment, thousands of teenagers across the country are leaving school without the basics. School league tables published by the government last week highlighted the fact that just under 60% of 16-year-olds achieved five A* to C grades at GCSE including English and maths, in last summer’s exams.

Just 34% of those in care or on free school meals achieve this benchmark.

For those who fail to get these qualifications, the prospects are bleaker than ever.

How do we fix this? Improving school standards is part of the answer, but it’s obvious that there are thousands of young people who fail to be switched on by a traditional academic education.

One solution can be found in a new generation of vocational schools, backed by firms such as BlackBerry and Toshiba, which will open across England from September. The first of these schools, the JCB academy, opened in Staffordshire in 2010.

The first in the capital will open in Hackney this autumn. And while the University Technical College scheme is the brainchild of the former Tory education secretary Lord Baker, the chairman of the Hackney project is a prominent figure on the left, Anthony Painter.

Education secretary Michael Gove has announced today that 13 more UTCs have been approved to open from September.

Hackney UTC is sponsored by Hackney community college, whose principal Ian Ashman sketched out to me how a “radical strategy of closing down schools” had transformed the borough’s GCSE results. But he believes this will now have diminishing returns.

“The strategy of doing more of the same has been successful but is not going to carry on being successful,” Ashman says.

“There are young people capable of being successful at 16, but who don’t at the moment because they’re not motivated by the academic programme.”

The problem in Hackney is not necessarily one of a lack of jobs, but a mismatch of skills. On the doorstep of the new UTC is Tech City, the cluster of tech and digital companies that began at ‘Silicon Roundabout’.

Health, and the way that technology is going to change healthcare is another source of potential growth. There are three hospitals in the vicinity; Barts, the Royal London, and Homerton.

Austerity means these workforces are unlikely to expand, but they will change shape as the way that health services are delivered changes – making greater use of remote diagnostics, for example.

But even in a bleak economic climate, employers say that they can’t recruit young people with the necessary hi-tech skills.

Annie Blackmore, who will be headteacher of the Hackney UTC, says: “What the UTC is doing is sitting down with these employers and saying: ‘what are your skills needs?’”

Partners including BT and Homerton hospital will help draw up specifications for the curriculum – and the the children’s schoolwork will include employer-led projects. The school day will be based on the working day, all part of channelling young people into work.

But equipping them with skills for work doesn’t mean that they should be pigeonholed, Blackmore says. After all, children will be 14 when they start.

Instead, they’ll be encouraged to do the core curriculum – GCSEs in English, maths, science, a humanity and a language – alongside a vocational qualification in either health, or information and creative technology.

There will be a strong “bias towards” the use of technology in class, and students will be expected to blog on what they’re doing in the curriculum.

That will be an essential preparation for the future.

“They’re going to be working freelance,” Ashman says. “The way in which they’ll find work is through Linked In, Twitter.”

The new school’s immediate challenge is to find 100 pupils, to start in September – all of whom are currently at other schools.

The UTCs won’t be selective. To start with, Blackmore is working with schools to identify students who might, as she puts it “benefit from a change of curriculum”.

Though based in Hackney, its catchment area extends across a swath of east London. It is wide because its envisaged that the UTC won’t recruit large numbers of students from any one school.

But how will the new school ensure that it isn’t seen simply as a second choice – a second class education fit for someone else’s children?

Blackmore says: “I don’t want schools to think this is a programme for students they don’t want, don’t necessarily want to keep in their schools – the curriculum will be challenging.” The aim is to rercuit children “who are capable of succeeding but are switched off by what’s on offer.”

Painter advocates a “hybrid and high-quality academic, technical, personal and work-linked curriculum” that should exist alongside the traditional academic route.

He says: “Student strengths are varied and so should the education system be: status and quality however must be universal.”

The question, Painter says, is whether its children from Hackney who benefit from the new opportunities on their doorstep.

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The vast number of approved GCSE or GCSE-equivalent qualifications has been reduced by 96% to just 125, and these fulfil tough criteria ensuring they lead to meaningful further study or employment, says Alison Wolf

Young people all over Europe face a daunting labour market, and school qualifications are critically important to their job prospects. An education system that ignores labour market realities is failing in its duty. In the review of vocational education that I carried out for the government last year, I concluded England was doing exactly that.

Of course, no one set out to achieve anything so terrible. But we created a system in which the self-interest of schools and the interests of young people had diverged. My recommendations, which have been the catalyst for the league-table changes the government is announcing, were designed to reverse that state of affairs.

Institutions are under great pressure to do well in league tables. In recent years, they were able, and strongly encouraged, to do so by piling up GCSE and GCSE-equivalent “points”, with more and more qualifications added to the approved list. There are 3,175 that currently count in the tables. The temptation for a school was to behave as if the more the better, regardless of whether or not the qualifications were of any value in the world outside.

Today, this vast number of approved qualifications has been reduced by 96% to 125. These have fulfilled tough criteria ensuring that they lead to meaningful further study or employment. Key stage 4 pupils will no longer be offered qualifications without labour market or progression value, solely in order to help a school rack up league-table points.

I have met students who told me they were “getting 15 GCSEs” when they were doing no such thing. Colleges complained to me about growing numbers of young people applying for courses in the belief that they had the necessary entry qualifications, when they did not.

Employers could not care less about “points” and “equivalences” and how many of them a young person has. Many of them have only just got used to GCSEs, as opposed to O-levels. They look instead at whether young people have got certain, specific qualifications: ones which they recognise and value.

English and maths GCSE (at C or above) are top of this list; and it is very good news that these subjects will soon be compulsory for all 16- to 18-year-olds who have not yet achieved them. But employers also recognise and value some of the traditional school subjects, both for their content and because they signal general abilities, such as being able to analyse, write coherently, think quantitatively, and, indeed, work hard at something difficult. And educational gatekeepers – colleges and universities – are the same.

There is no reason whatsoever why some vocational courses could not be included in the list of qualifications that are highly respected. On the contrary, they can and should. Vocational subjects can develop all the skills I listed above, and other important ones as well.

But if you proclaim that everything is valuable, and that everything is worth the same, no one will believe you. If you encourage schools to offer qualifications that were never designed for school settings you compound the problem. When people don’t know which are worthwhile and which are not, they simply disregard them all.

Our 14- to 16-year-olds need qualifications that are respected, that develop general skills and help progression. I believe that in the next few years, some vocational awards will earn general recognition for their excellence. But, first, we need to stop hampering young people with half-truths that serve them ill in the real world.

• Alison Wolf is the Sir Roy Griffiths professor of public sector management at King’s College London. In 2011, she carried out the Wolf Review of Vocational Education

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