“A lack of skills is holding back business growth and impeding organisations’ ability to capitalise on economic recovery. Whilst it would be absurd to lay the blame for every skills gap or shortage at the door of schools and colleges, continuing weaknesses in our education system are perpetuating long-standing skills deficiencies, particularly in literacy and numeracy.
“It is right to acknowledge the achievements of hard-working students. But the fact that we have a system where we can expect little more than half of pupils to achieve the benchmark of five good GCSEs including English and maths is a fundamental problem. The Government has set out a bold reform programme to introduce more competition in education; the fruits of this cannot come soon enough.”
