What's behind the PM's plan to axe A-levels?

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

News, Daily News, Politics

4.4 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 5 October 2023

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

One of the announcements made in Rishi Sunak's conference speech was to scrap A-levels in favour of a qualification which includes compulsory English and Maths. With several problems in the education system, and years of disruption for students, what was behind the PM's decision to radically overhaul the system? James Heale speaks to Fraser Nelson and David Laws, former education minister who now chairs the Education Policy Institute.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Drax is the largest provider of renewable electricity in the UK
0:03.5	and plays a critical role in ensuring a secure energy system.
0:07.1	The company has plans to invest billions in new infrastructure
0:09.9	such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage
0:12.8	which will create thousands of jobs whilst also delivering the energy needed
0:16.3	by homes and businesses up and down the UK.
0:19.3	Discover more at Drax.com
0:25.3	Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots,
0:26.8	Spectator's Daily Politics podcast. Joining me today is
0:29.5	Spectator's editor Fraser Nelson and David Laws,
0:32.0	the former coalition near a minister who now chairs the Education Policy Institute.
0:35.7	Now Fraser, on Coffee House Shots yesterday,
0:38.0	we discussed Unack's conference speech and his smoking ban
0:41.6	and as we've also discussed about his net zero announcements in HS2
0:44.8	but we didn't really cover his big education policy. Tell us that.
0:48.8	Well to me this is actually the biggest announcement of all of them.
0:52.1	A level reform is a big subject, needless to say.
0:55.6	I've got a personal interest, I should declare, I've got a father of three children aged 10,
1:00.6	13 and 15 and these kids, as any parent would tell you,
1:04.3	have been through quite a lot of turmoil recently.
1:06.1	We've locked down with the GSEs changing, they get the head around
1:09.6	what's the 7, 8 and 9 grade, within the A level grades changing just incredibly.
	...

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