SECONDARY schools will be a safe haven from which growing numbers of 14-year-olds go out to learn new skills in colleges and the workplace in Estelle Morris’s vision of the future.

Teachers will have “a huge responsibility” to make sure that pupils pick the right course from a new menu of options, the Education Secretary told The TES after the launch of the Government’s 14 - 19 Green Paper.

Her own experience in teaching, she said, had taught her that Modern Apprenticeships and vocational qualifications were better for many 16-year-olds than GCSE retakes.

“I remember kids who got a row of Ds at the end of Year 11 redoing them and getting Ds and Es at the end of Year 12. We need to help these kids into different routes.”

Among younger pupils, she hopes for a big rise in the numbers doing GCSEs in vocational subjects, including more able pupils.

“I want to see more people post-14 learning different skills in different places but secure in the knowledge that they have one base and one set of people they look to for security. At present, most of the kids who go to FE colleges tend to be those who have caused a load of trouble at school.”

She admits that the Government is always asking more of teachers but says that the changes will be gradual and will not increase the burden of assessment.

“Some of the pressure that teachers feel at key stage 4 is because kids are disaffected. Sometimes teachers are forced to herd a whole cohort of switched-off pupils through national curriculum subjects they don’t want to do.

“I have no doubt that schools are flying close to the wind and breaking the regulations. This gives them the levers to do some of the things that they have been trying to do for ages. A lot of what we are proposing has been done in response to teachers. The clear message is that I trust their professional judgment. Beyond the core subjects we are saying you know the child, we are giving you the flexibility to decide.”

But she made it clear that a call in this week’s TES from Professor David Hargreaves, former chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (Platform, 19), for more teacher assessment would go unanswered. “It’s not that I mistrust teachers. But, when you go into teaching, you know that you are going into one of our most important professions. There has to be public accountability.”

And what of parity of esteem for vocational and academic courses, a goal which successive governments have failed to achieve?

She says that there is a better framework of vocational qualifications - 2,000 have been ditched - and the proposals offer clearer opportunities. And society has changed. “People now understand that a nation’s prosperity can’t be guaranteed by a few people with academic qualifications.”

Leader, 20