Further written evidence to be reported to the House
Education and Skills Bill
10:30 am
Ian Pryce: Transition is very important. The pre-16 work we have done for a decade demonstrates, as Ioan said earlier, that the 14 to 16-year-olds do better in school work because they suddenly get it, and we get almost guaranteed progression and achievement post-16. If you give us somebody at 14 we will give you a work-ready person at 18, almost 100 per cent of the time. That is very important. It is obviously difficult where there are school sixth forms because not everybody transits from one to the other.
On the subject of entitlement qualifications, I am slightly sceptical of entitlement, because it may have perverse consequences. If you require certain things to receive an entitlement, the things that you do not require could get lost as an unintended consequence. The wider you make entitlement to all sorts of courses, the more difficult it is to plan, so I would am wary of that proposal.