Dr. David Hughes:

There are a number of points on which I wish to supplement what has already been said. The questions on how to keep young people in education have been answered from the perspective of the end of compulsory education, as it were. From the perspective of schools, however, there are a number of strategies we would adopt that have the impact of maintaining what one might call traction with compulsory education. The critical one is the degree of freedom schools have to devise a school curriculum that suits their particular intake. The statutory curriculum is quite minimal in content, so the school curriculum can be developed quite flexibly around that. We maintain an open market in qualifications. There is an enormous array of qualifications that schools can work towards, particularly at post-primary level.

The one requirement we place on post-primary schools, which has a particular impact in this area, is that all young people have an entitlement to access to, or an offer of, a minimum number of courses both at key stage 4, which is years 11 and 12, and at the post-16 stage, which is years 13 and 14. At key stage 4, which is now in place in full for the first time in this academic year, all young people are entitled to an offer from their school of 24 courses, and 27 courses at post-16 stage. Those courses do not have to be delivered by the school, but they must be offered. That is done in collaboration with other schools and with FE. That idea of breadth and range means that there must be something that suits. If it means that a young person continues to go to school to do whatever it is that they are really keen on, they will also continue with their English, mathematics and so forth.