Here’s a harsh truth. Many overseas graduates outshine English ones. My experience as someone who has spent much of his adult life abroad is that European and American graduates are more broadly knowledgeable, numerate and employable than the products of our narrow English educational system.
This was brought into sharp focus for me when I used to recruit for the private equity firm I set up. It was non-negotiable that new recruits had to be highly numerate. In Germany and the US it was automatic that graduates would be proficient in maths. In Britain, however, the opposite was true, unless they were one of the small minority who had studied A-level maths.
So my interest was piqued when I heard the news of a new baccalaureate qualification. Might this offer a broader education for our children? Michael Gove’s proposed English Baccalaureate will provide useful rigour for teenagers — a change I support. But it fails to address the real problem with English education: not exams at 16 but the specialisation that follows.
At 15 or 16, English schoolchildren must decide on just three or four A-level subjects. They go on to study one or two subjects at university, even though many will work in areas unrelated to their degree. Nobody should be forced to chart the course of their lives so young. This is why we need a true baccalaureate at 18 that provides a rounded education.
When I took my A levels, I wanted to continue studying English, history, geography and languages, alongside the maths, physics and chemistry A-levels that I took. Only when I went to business school after four years of studying chemistry at university did I encounter a breadth of study again.
The English accept such early specialisation as the norm but it makes us an outlier among advanced nations. To be competitive, our young people must experience as much breadth as their international peers. American high school students take eight subjects, including maths and English, through to 18. At university, they spend up to two years sampling differing subjects before majoring in one or two. So they are 20 when they make their key choices — and end up graduating with breadth and depth.
Other European countries have a broader curriculum, studying up to eight subjects until the age of 18. Germans take contrasting rather than complementary subjects, covering languages, humanities, maths and science. The French Baccalauréat has a similar combination. Swedish students do Swedish, English, maths, science and civics alongside specialist subjects.
I remember one former Oxbridge vice-chancellor telling me how appalled he was at the narrowness of his students’ knowledge. Yet our universities are principally responsible for this. A-levels were created in 1951 to provide students with the depth of knowledge that allowed them to get through a degree in three years, when the norm elsewhere is four. English universities expect young people to have substantial specialised knowledge in their chosen subject before they start.
Because young people take so few subjects at A level, most drop maths or English at 16. Less than a third study each subject; virtually nobody does both. Yet scientists must communicate their ideas, and arts graduates need to analyse statistics. Real jobs don’t fit into neat compartments.
Two hundred UK schools, more than half of them state-funded, offer the International Baccalaureate (IB), for which all students study English, maths, a foreign language, a physical and a social science. They then add another language or science, or take an arts subject. They also do community service and an extended project. But some schools have dropped the IB or introduced A levels alongside it because of the resistance of universities. Admissions tutors are mainly interested in how much the student knows that is relevant to the degree subject that he or she wants to study. They simply want specialists.
Ironically, the IB is so rigorous that it suits fewer than half of those who currently sit A levels. So, the answer is not to adopt the IB wholesale. We should draw on its best features to create a genuine English Baccalaureate that provides the same mix of six or more subjects, but at a standard that could be taken by the typical A-level student.
Of course, such fundamental change would not be easy. It would mean a complete overhaul in how schools and universities work. Universities would need to make many of their courses, particularly in the sciences, four years rather than three.
This would mean some extra costs. But the gains would far outweigh them. As a nation, we would be more competitive. Employers would recruit graduates and school-leavers who were not only literate and numerate, but had the knowledge and skills to adapt to ever-changing expectations.
Michael Gove has sought to be radical. But a truly radical reform would be a genuine English Baccalaureate for 18-year-olds that not only prepared them for university, but set them up for the modern world. It would also give young people the time and space to decide their destinies when they are truly ready to do so.