CBI praises engineering diplomas, but…

The boss’s organisation said employers had consistently backed the government's sector related diplomas in areas like engineering as a parallel qualification to GCSEs and A levels because they had been created with substantial business input and retained the strong support of employers. However, it went on, employers were worried about the more recent proposals in the government's diploma strategy to introduce a new range of academic diplomas in humanities, languages and sciences. It said members feared they would not have any greater value to young people or to employers than the existing GCSEs or A levels, and would instead be an unnecessary distraction. The CBI also urged policy-makers to streamline the number of levels of diploma to two, rather than increase it from three to seven as is proposed. It recommends simplifying the diploma structure to two levels - one for 14 to 16-year olds, and one for 16 to 18 year-olds – and concentrating on raising literacy and numeracy standards and increasing the numbers of pupils studying science, technology, engineering and maths. CBI director-general Richard Lambert (pictured) said: "There has been genuine enthusiasm for the sector-specific, vocational diplomas as firms recognise that they have the potential to add real value to students who are keen to learn in-depth about a particular sector and gain vital employability skills.” He believed, however, that introducing a range of science, humanities or languages diplomas ran the risk of undermining the integrity of these traditional academic subjects and they could also be a distraction from the need to raise the numbers of young people studying science and maths.