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"Just as babies learned to take their mothers milk long before anyone wrote a guide to motherhood, so children were learning to work things out for themselves long before anyone thought of setting up a school"

- John Abbott 

Gove's Plans to Make Universities Shape A-Levels

Michael Gove is calling for Universities to dictate the content of A-Levels, and to monitor them each year. I completely agree, there should be more continuity between schools, colleges and universities, just as Industry should be having more input into all three.

However, I think a balance should be met; I dont think the best course would be to hand all control to Universities. Yes, they should have a large say on what content goes into the subjects, and I believe the workload of A-Levels should be enough so that they are a pre-cursor to that of universities. That said, the structure and teaching style of universities is very different to that of schools, and the distinction between the school and university structures should be kept intact.

A-Levels should however, at least prepare students for the type of university work they will undertake.

a study suggested universities wanted A-levels to be more intellectually stretching and with less spoon-feeding from teachers

Indeed, in an ideal world this 'intellectual stretching' would have begun long before a student reaches A-Level, but it is at least a start that this kind of approach should be considered in schools.

Michael Gove Suggesting D&T Limits Progress

This is Michael Gove pretty broadly calling all Design and Technology purely vocational, and suggesting that it limits a students capacity to progress afterwards.

While I agree a GCSE in 'Nail Technology' is going to have limited applications when looking for jobs, broadly saying all D&T limits capacity compared to the core subjects is a huge generalisation. Completely overseeing the key skills which D&T (like Product Design and Resistant Materials) provides is frankly being blind.

Where in the core subjects do you learn the kind of contextualised problem solving that D&T provides? How about industrial processes and manufacturing techniques? All very applicable in a huge number of courses and jobs.

Along with them downgrading Engineering Diplomas, it shows that the government has a poor idea of the skills thats needed to get this country out of the state it in.