Simplifying the qualifications?

The clean out has started with some of the qualifications that are not being taken up by providers and students.

TES reported this week that a number of BTEC, OCR Nationals and City and Guilds are likely to disappear or be subsumed into the new Diploma qualifications.

Surprise for me is that Applied A levels are also going – now these are quite a new qualification anyway. It seems sensible but I feel a little sorry for students who have these now and they’ll quickly become something that few people understand. Also going are AEA which I have to confess I didn’t even know existed. Reading a little deeper it states they are like the old S levels that only the very clever and very committed did when I was at school. My daughter has just done A levels and she wasn’t offered an AEA option.

A big advantage of the clean up will be simplicity I hope. I think this will be supported by the statement presumably from QCA that any future qualification will have to show that no other GCSE, Diploma, A level, Apprenticeship or Foundation Course.

I have to say – it all looks very sensible!