GOVERNMENT plans to allow 14-year-olds to drop design and technology will have disastrous consequences for British industry, multi-millionaire inventor James Dyson told leading designers and engineers this week.
From September, pupils can drop design and technology andor modern languages allowing them to focus on their strongest subjects or consolidate basic skill. But Mr Dyson said this would only reinforce the divide between the “doers and the thinkers”.
Academic snobbery and parental prejudice would rapidly force an exodus of talented students away from design and into so-called “academic” subjects unless its compulsory status is preserved, he told the Design and Technology International Millennium Conference.