Thousands of vocational qualifications, including basic-level awards for cake decoration, nail art and parking control, face the axe from state schools and colleges in a bonfire of certificates, the Government has said.

Plans to introduce an elite International Baccalaureate examination for sixth-formers in state schools have also been abandoned. The reforms, announced yesterday, are widely seen as promoting the importance of a new diploma for pupils aged from14 to 19 and hastening the demise of the A level as the gold-standard qualification.

Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, said that the reforms aimed to replace an “alphabet soup” of 6,500 qualifications with a streamlined structure that would be more easily understood by students, their parents and employers. Under the system, every 14-year-old pupil will have to choose from three routes — academic (for those taking GCSEs and A levels), vocational (for those doing apprenticeships) or a mixture of the two (for students taking the diplomas).

A fourth “foundation learning” route of core subjects, such as English and maths, will be taken by all pupils.

The proposals include the creation of the Joint Advisory Committee on Qualification Approval. It will do for qualifications what the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence does for medicine, by deciding which ones deserve state funding.

The reforms will sweep away entire tranches of academic and vocational of qualifications. Applied A levels, which include work-related courses in health and social care, and travel and tourism, will go. Also out are scores of vocational courses, including a City & Guilds Level 2 Certificate for Parking Attendants. The best vocational qualifications will be absorbed into the diplomas or apprenticeships. But courses with a very low take-up could lose state funding altogether.

Mr Knight said that 65 per cent of the 6,500 qualifications accredited and funded by the Government each year are taken by fewer than 100 people. “We have a range of [qualification] brands that have different strengths in different sectors. We need to make that coherent. It’s too complicated. It needs streamlining,” he said.

The Government has indicated previously that it wants the diplomas to become the “qualification of choice”, instead of A levels. Mr Knight refused to be drawn on the question yesterday, stating only that all qualifications for pupils aged from 14 to 19 would be reviewed in 2013. However, the document published yesterday suggests that the 2013 review would aim to “remove duplication” in the qualifications system, suggesting that A levels could go altogether at that point.

Michael Gove, the Shadow Children’s Secretary, said: “This is another step towards ditching A levels. The Government wants to undermine the gold-standard qualification by arguing it would duplicate what’s provided by their new diploma, but students and teachers would be let down by the abandonment of the tried and tested qualification.”

John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said that the mix of qualifications available in schools would still appear very confusing to parents.

A spokesman for the International Baccalaureate Organisation said that demand for the qualification would continue to grow with or without government funding. The qualification was already available in 68 state and 57 independent schools, with take-up expected to grow to 300 schools by next year.

A spokesman for City & Guilds said that many of its courses, such as the one for parking attendants, were not designed for children but for industry and would continue to be offered in workplaces.

Under threat

Examples of the 6,000 courses that could be “stripped away”

Cleaning Services Supervision City & Guilds Level 3 Diploma in (no awards last year)
Body Massage EDEXCEL Level 3 BTEC Award (1 award last year)
Nail Art ITEC Level 2 Diploma in (1 award last year)
Cash and Valuables in Transit NOCN Level 2 Award in (1 award last year)
Fresh Food Retail Skills NCFE Level 2 Certificate (3 awards last year)
Cake Decoration ABC Level 2 Certificate in (0 awards last year)
Parking Attendants City and Guilds Level 2 Certificate for (no award last year to a learner aged between 14 and 19)

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