Around 12 per cent of the entire budget for post-16 education in England is being wasted on the 10 per cent of students who fail to complete their studies – a figure that rises to 25 per cent among apprentices.

The analysis, which was carried out for the Local Government Association (LGA) by the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion, found the cost to the public purse is ?814m.

The report shows that 178,100 16- to 18-year-olds failed to complete post-16 qualifications they had embarked upon in 2012-13 – prompting an outcry from local government leaders, academics and teachers’ leaders.

Schools and colleges are funded according to the number of students they recruit, leading the LGA to say that too many institutions are adopting a policy of recruiting as many students as possible to sixth-form or college courses, instead of ensuring each individual can be steered towards a course suitable for them.

“Councils want every young person to achieve their full potential but too many are still dropping out of post-16 education and training or not achieving a pass grade,” said David Simmonds, chairman of the LGA’s Children and Young People Board.

“Our analysis lays bare the substantial cost of this but the human cost is even greater, with youngsters left struggling with uncertainty and a sense of failure and facing tough decisions about what to do next.”

The LGA warns that the 178,100 dropouts run the risk of becoming “Neets”  – left marginalised by not being involved in education, employment or training.

The dropout rate from AS-levels, the exams worth half an A-level which have been considered a stepping stone to the full courses, was 10 per cent. The A-level dropout rate was 5 per cent. There were 75,000 withdrawals from individual AS-levels and 22,000 from  A-levels.

The cost of dropout and non-achievement was ?316m from AS- and A-levels, ?302m from further education and ?196m from apprenticeships.

The authors say that in recent years the cost to the Exchequer may have been even more costly as AS-level and A-level dropout rates have improved – but warned that the situation could soon become worse.

The LGA is asking all political parties to give councils more freedom to work closely with local employers to provide local solutions to offering the courses that will most help young people in their neighbourhood – instead of leaving them to try to match nationally imposed programmes to local needs.

“Councils are having success in helping young people that do dropout back into learning but fear a failure to reform the centralised ‘bums on seats’ approach to funding further education could leave too many teenagers at risk of dropping out in the future,” Mr Simmonds added.

Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment at Buckingham University, added: “It is the fault of successive governments because we don’t have clear pathways for students at that age.

“Schools want to hold on to them – but then they discover that academic work is not for them. If they then opt for further education colleges or apprenticeships, it is a bit of a muddle.  The ladder from school to university is clear but the ladder from school to employment is anything but. This has to be a high priority for an incoming government to tackle.”

A Department for Education spokesman said: “We have invested ?7.2bn to fund a place for every 16- and 17-year-old in England who wants one. We are reforming academic qualifications and vocational education to ensure young people get the knowledge and skills that they need to move into a job.”

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Dr Shuja Shafi, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, told a London conference of head teachers that Muslims were happy to sign up to the teaching of values of fairness and tolerance saying that these were the “values of all of us” but said that the climate in which they had been published had led to many Muslims feeling their Britishness was under scrutiny.

Dr Shafi said: “This should not be a set of values achieved by some , the existing British population, which those who are not quite British enough must be civilised by.”

His comments came as Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said that tackling the threat of extremism in British schools was to be made a higher priority. In a statement to the House of Commons yesterday Ms Morgan said her department would extend the role of “counter extremism” in schools.

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan has said that tackling the threat of extremism in British schools is a high priority (Getty Images)
Dr Shafi also defended the schools at the centre of the Trojan Horse scandal in Birmingham saying that they had been high-achieving before they were damaged by the allegations.

“Failures in governance and procedures do no equate to a caliphatic takeover. In getting to the bottom of the Trojan Horse allegations we missed an opportunity for community cohesion. Instead for too many Muslims it was another episode where Muslims are supposed to question where they belong when in fact they are as British as anyone else.

“Children in these schools were achieving highly and had promising futures. The so called Trojan Horse allegations undermined that and effectively destroyed their confidence.”

Dr Shafi was speaking at the 100 Group conference, a meeting of state and private school head teachers organised by the independent Brighton College and Kingsford Community School, a state comprehensive in east London.

 

Richard Cairns, head of Brighton College, told the conference about a state school where Muslim boys turned their backs on girls dancing in a school performance and insisted that they needed to leave their classrooms in the middle of lessons in order to pray at set times.

But Dr Shafi shocked heads when he said that was acceptable as long as the pupils did not show disrespect saying “they need to make their feelings known”, but after repeated questioning conceded that: “they should adopt the rules of the school”.

Joan Deslandes, head of Kingsford Community School, said schools experienced problems when trying to teach about statutory subjects such as gay rights because some parents would either keep their children at home on that day or lodge time-consuming complaints.

She said: “If children are not turning up for lessons it can be very difficult. We are in loco parentis during the school day but then the child goes back to the parents and is being told to ignore what they are being told in the school day. It leads to a breakdown in order and discipline."

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Against the odds, I graduated into adulthood with an enjoyment of cooking. I would even say I’m not a bad chef, but how would my skills match up to the freshly unveiled GCSE in food preparation?

Concern has been raised that the course is too hard for 14 to 16-year-olds. As well as learning about the “scientific principles underlying the preparation and cooking of food”, pupils will be expected to portion a chicken, fillet a fish and conjure up  hollandaise, velout? and b?chamel sauces.

What better way for me to  test my skills than to receive a one-on-one practical lesson from one of London’s top chefs? Michelin star chef Paul Hood, patron at Soho restaurant chain Social Eating House, was not a fan of school cookery classes. “I failed my home economics class so badly that I got a G, not even an F,” says Mr Hood. “I really hated the lessons.”

Mr Hood sets me to work preparing the ingredients for a basic pork pie. He demonstrates a speedy julienning of a shallot before offering me the knife. “Looks pretty easy!” I boldly scoff, but a few seconds later I am nursing a bleeding finger and my sad looking vegetables are all over the place. I am not trusted with the pastry.

Paul Hood, michelin star chef, teaches Rachael Pells some cooking skills in light of new a GCSE food course (Micha Theiner/The Independent)
“There is certainly a lack of capable chefs coming through from school and college at the moment,” says Mr Hood. “If children are taught basic skills from the beginning they will stay for life, whether at home or in the workplace. It’s so important to keep lessons practical and fun.”

He demonstrates how to dice pork and gently suggests I’ve been holding a knife incorrectly all my life. Eventually my mush is put into his lovely pastry and the pie goes in the oven.

Later, I decide to speak to Myles Bremner, director of the School Food Plan.  “The purpose of the GCSE was to provide a balanced course which not only gave good, strong cooking skills but also ensure that children understand the importance of food in all of its different contexts,” he says.

“The course is challenging, but I am confident that this is a really positive way to get children interested in cooking again.”

Mr Hood is also optimistic. “Yes, students might find it hard at first, but if they’re not challenged they won’t learn.”

And did I pass the test,  if only for today? “Absolutely”, he says. The proof is in the pie.

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Just three months after she made the request, the Education Secretary’s department has received 44,000 responses from teachers taking the opportunity to tell her they are working too many hours.

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As well as familiar complaints about bureaucracy, target-setting and too many government initiatives, they also raised some more unusual issues: being required to mark different sections of a pupil’s work with different coloured pens, having to write detailed feedback notes in the books of pupils who were too young to read them, and being told to make recordings of any verbal feedback they had given to pupils in case of complaints.
 
Ms Morgan and the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, responded to the complaints by promising to give a year’s notice in future of any significant changes to the curriculum and qualifications. They also pledged not to make changes mid-course to qualifications.
Education standards watchdog Ofsted – the source of many a grievance over workload – has undertaken to provide a simplified version of the handbook, which sets out what inspectors need to see when they visit a school.
Ofsted also promised to hold a review of teachers’ workload every two years from 2016.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg meets pupils at Clapham Manor Primary School in south west London
“Thousands have told us that they’re simply not able to focus on the job at hand because of the burdensome workloads they’re faced with. It’s about time we changed that,” Mr Clegg said.
But the proposals are not enough, according to teachers’ leaders. “What was the point of asking teachers’ opinions if the Government was going to ignore their views?” said Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers. “Brushing the views of thousands of teachers under the carpet will not help.”
It is claimed that only half of teachers who responded filled out the entire form – suggesting they were too busy.

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Allies of the Chief Whip are funnelling copies of the documentation, which also goes to his successor, Nicky Morgan, to Mr Gove through Whitehall back channels in addition to red box papers relating to his day job.

The extraordinary claim, made by a source in No 10, underlines complaints by allies of Mrs Morgan that Mr Gove is continuing to meddle in his former department and block any attempt to water down his legacy as a controversial and reforming education secretary. The discontent reached a peak in December when Mrs Morgan reached out to teachers and said she was not going to wage an ideological war in education – seen as a clear criticism of Mr Gove’s approach.

The claims are made on the eve of a major speech by David Cameron on education tomorrow, when he will give a personal account of his support for the state system, in which his own children are taught. He will say that, having had an extraordinary education himself, he wants every child to have the same.

The red box row is the latest sign of discontent in Whitehall at Mr Gove’s “back-seat driving” on education, as one source described it. Like all ministers, Mr Gove receives a red box every night. In his role as Chief Whip, he gets to see paperwork that is also seen by the Prime Minister in his red box, including summaries of what is going on across government – something that has alarmed ministers. But, in addition to that, he is also being passed detailed Department for Education (DfE) paperwork, which is extremely unusual.

Nicky Morgan has tried to mend fences with angry teachers (AFP/Getty)

While Mr Gove has steered clear of the DfE building, there is still a network of allies loyal to their old boss who can provide him with a constant supply of important paperwork. What is more, say sources, he feeds back his concerns and responses into the department.

The funnelling of paperwork to Mr Gove has not been sanctioned by Mrs Morgan or her permanent secretary directly, which would breach civil service procedures, but via this back channel. Members of the current Education Secretary’s staff are understood to be exasperated that Mr Gove sees all the documents and comments on most of them.

A source in No 10 said: “Michael is very pleased to still be able to keep such a close eye on education policy, even after he was forced out of the department. He likes to see all substantial documents and comment on them because, in his vanity, he still likes to think of himself as education secretary.

“Nicky is a much more inclusive, consensus-building politician than Michael and that is the Education Secretary she is trying to be. But she is driven to distraction by malign Govite tendencies in the department and the never-ending tensions between her Spads [special advisers] and those over here.”

Mr Gove was sacked as Education Secretary last July and moved to the job of Chief Whip after Lynton Crosby, in charge of Tory election strategy, advised that he had become toxic to the Conservatives’ message on education.

Angry teachers took part in a rally through Westminster in March last year following a one-day walkout (Getty)

The move outraged Mr Gove’s allies, including his wife, the journalist Sarah Vine, who tweeted a story from the Daily Mail with the headline “A shabby day’s work which Cameron will live to regret”. Yet, as soon as Mrs Morgan was at her new desk, allies claimed she was being undermined by the “back-seat driver” Mr Gove.

Mrs Morgan gave an interview in December that hinted at her concern at how her predecessor was still trying to be involved in policy. Asked if it was true that Mr Gove had blocked any of her ideas, Mrs Morgan said: “Well, there is always a discussion about things in the party and with No 10, and I’m not entirely sure where ideas get to and where they come from. So I’m not aware that he has said no – or that, if he has, that it has been acted upon.”

A spokesman for Mr Gove last night denied that Mrs Morgan’s papers were being passed to the Chief Whip, saying: “This is total nonsense as usual. The story is categorically untrue. The only way it could happen would be if Nicky’s private office sent us copies of all her papers every evening. Obviously, she and the DfE permanent secretary would not allow that.” However, the source in No 10 said that this did not exclude officials passing paperwork through a back channel without the knowledge of Mrs Morgan or her private office.

It is understood that Mrs Morgan’s office has no evidence that her paperwork is being copied into Mr Gove’s box.

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The claim comes from Carl Lygo, vice-chancellor of the private BPP university, in a booklet, What Do I Get?, published by the Higher Education Policy Institute think-tank.

Professor Lygo, whose university specialises in business, says that – despite universities being able to charge up to ?9,000 per year in tuition fees – “students are unhappy and universities want even more money”.

“I am left asking: ‘Where has all this extra money gone?’,” he adds. “I fear the answer may be that it has gone to boost pension funds, research and vice-chancellors’ pay – anything but enhance the undergraduate student experience and the direct costs of undergraduate provision.”

His comments come after the findings of a report by Parliament’s spending watchdog, the Public Accounts Committee, were published. The report takes the Treasury to task for being slow in identifying and addressing “seemingly excessive pay awards” in the education sector.

University vice-chancellors and “superheads” have been given large pay increases with little oversight, MPs said in its annual examination of the Government’s accounts.

Some vice-chancellors earn more than ?400,000 per year. Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, has expressed concern over the “substantial upward drift” of the salaries of some of the top management in universities.

In a letter to the Higher Education Funding Council, the  spending watchdog, he said: “We want to see leaders in the sector exercise much greater restraint as part of continuing to hold down increases in pay generally.”

Professor Lygo said that most universities are investing in infrastructure. Yet “only 11 per cent of students saw this as a priority”.

“One student told me that her course involves only six hours of classroom teaching per week,” he added.

“She told me ‘I just don’t think students are getting value for money’.”

However, Dr Wendy Piatt, director general of the Russell Group, has argued that UK vice-chancellors earn “significantly less” than their counterparts in the United States or Australia.

She said: “The salaries of vice-chancellors and other senior staff at our universities reflect their roles leading extremely complex, international organisations with annual turnovers of more than half a billion on average.”

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Sir Michael, chief executive of Ofsted, has come under fire from staff and parents at a handful of predominantly Christian schools  who claim inspectors have asked “inappropriate” questions of pupils to determine whether there was homophobic bullying. These questions allegedly include asking primary aged pupils: “Do you know anybody in the school who is gay?”.

Writing in The Independent today, Sir Michael says his inspectors “absolutely understand the need to behave with sensitivity and integrity when talking to young people”.

“Inspectors had to couch their questions using age-appropriate language that the children would understand to get to the heart of what was happening - and, crucially, to determine what the schools were doing about it,” he adds.

“The idea that this constitutes harassment of unsuspecting ten-year-olds or a sinister attempt to force a particular metro-liberal, politically correct orthodoxy on the nation’s schools is simply wrong.”

In a clear riposte to sections of the media, he says anyone wading through some of “more lurid” press reports “would be forgiven for thinking Ofsted is rampaging through the education system on an aggressively secular mission to tear up the fabric of England’s proud faith school tradition”.

Sir Michael is adamant his investigation has cleared inspectors of asking inappropriate questions and insists any inspector found guilty of doing so would face “serious” consequences.

The two schools at the centre of the row  - Durham Free School and Grindon Hall in Sunderland, both Christian schools - were failed by inspectors for failing to show respect to people of other faiths and instances of homophobic bullying. 

Their Ofsted reports also criticised standards of teaching at the school.

In the Durham case, Education Secretary Nicky Morgan has withdrawn its funding so it closes at Easter - a decision which lawyers representing the school claim show she is “tainted with bias” over the school.

It was the allegations of homophobic bullying and religious intolerance, however, that most angered parents at the two schools - and have led to Durham Free School seeking a judicial review of the decision to withdraw funding plus lodging an official complaint with Ofsted about the conduct of the inspection.

The inspectors’ verdicts follow the Government’s decision to order Ofsted to ensure that all schools teach “British values” - which include tolerance for all faiths as a necessity to prepare  pupils for life in modern Britain.

In other cases, though, Muslim schools have been criticised for failing to teach pupils to respect other religions.  Five private schools in Tower Hamlets, east London, were recently all declared “failing” by Ofsted as a result.

In addition, the “Trojan Horse” affair in Birmingham - in which a letter purported to show evidence of a concerted campaign by hard-line Islamists to take over the running of city schools - led to a further five (this time state schools) being failed by Ofsted. 

The new edict urging inspectors to keep an eye out for “British values” being taught in schools is likely to mean there will be further cases where  schools are criticised for failing to teach them. However, Ofsted says the vast majority of faith schools should have nothing to fear from the new edict.

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