News: Hundreds of vocational courses to be axed

Hundreds of vocational courses will effectively be axed under a Government overhaul of qualifications for teenagers.
Ministers will step in to prevent pupils opting for "dead end" courses that fail to prepare them for higher education or the world of work.
The Coalition will today outline plans to ban many of these qualifications from official school or college league tables - stopping heads pushing pupils onto courses simply to inflate their ranking.
Ofqual, the exams regulator, will also be told to take a tougher stance towards exam standards in a move designed to ensure many poor-quality courses fail to win state accreditation. It will enable more money to be spent on higher level apprenticeships.
Under Labour, the number of vocational courses on offer to teenagers more than doubled.
In 1996/7, some 2,254 different qualifications could be taken, but by 2009/10 that number had ballooned to 5,620.

For the Full story: Vocational Qualifications Axed

News: £60m Youth Jobs Package

£60m youth jobs package unveiled
David Cameron wants to reverse the trend of rising youth unemployment
The Government has moved to tackle rising youth unemployment by announcing a £60 million package aimed at boosting work prospects and "transforming" vocational education.
With youth unemployment nearing a million, the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister issued a commitment to get more vulnerable youngsters into work by tackling some of the long term "structural barriers" they said stopped some young people starting their career.
The Government said it will provide funding for up to 250,000 more apprenticeships over the next four years, and fund 100,000 work placements over the next two years.
Ministers also announced that more than 100 large firms and tens of thousands of small companies around the country had pledged to offer work experience places.
Measures in a new paper called Supporting Youth Employment are designed to ensure that young people have the opportunity to get work, advance their career prospects and encourage social mobility and help fill some of the 500,000 vacancies in the job market, said ministers.

For the full story read: £60m Youth Jobs Package