Even the teenagers of new Labour’s elite despair of the exams that stalk their years in the sixth form.

Alex Birtles, 16 — daughter of the trade and industry secretary Patricia Hewitt — and her friend Georgia Gould — daughter of Philip, Labour’s polling supremo — recently complained vigorously about the A-level exam system.

Gould told a minister at a question and answer session for pupils: “AS-levels create stress and pressure.” Birtles added: “I don’t sleep properly any more because of all the work I have to do ... I lie awake and worry.”

Finally, there are signs that ministers are considering unpicking the mess that is the 14-19 curriculum.

Less than five years since the introduction of the new A-level system, which involves up to five AS-levels in the first year of sixth form followed by three A2s in the final year, the government is considering another change. This time the replacement of GCSE and A-level with some kind of baccalaureate.

On Wednesday, Mike Tomlinson, the former chief inspector of schools in England, will publish his interim report on the possible introduction of a baccalaureate. His final report, commissioned by ministers, is due next summer. We will be told that too many young people are dropping out of education at 16, that we have not got the right vocational courses, and that there are too many exams.

The solution? Tomlinson is likely to recommend abolishing GCSEs and A-levels in favour of a baccalaureate diploma or over-arching certificate of achievement.

The diploma is likely to have four levels and to require every student to study English, maths and science. They would also undertake some form of specialist study, either academic or vocational, and would engage in various extracurricular activities — such as the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme.

However, Tomlinson will not be recommending the introduction of the existing International Baccalaureate (IB), which is sat by sixth-formers in some private schools and which even Eton is considering introducing alongside the current A-levels.

The two-year IB, in which students take a range of subjects, including English, foreign languages, maths, science and the arts, and which requires some community service, is an intellectually demanding exam. Universities such as Oxford and Cambridge like it because it helps identify high-flyers.

The baccalaureate proposed for state schools will be a very different creature. It will blur further the distinction between academic and vocational qualifications and take us one step closer to an unholy mishmash that satisfies neither the academically gifted nor those who have practical skills.

Fourteen-year-olds sick to death of school should be allowed to leave and get a work-based apprenticeship. Whitehall may have a hang-up about plumbing and bricklaying and want 14-year-olds who are technically minded to get a qualification that comes under the same umbrella as its academic counterpart — the rest of the world doesn’t care. The Construction Industry Training Board says we need

29,000 more plumbers and 35,000 electricians over five years. Let’s train them on the job.

What, moreover, will happen to the academically gifted student under the proposed scheme? I remember a minister telling me after the 1997 election that people would send their children to private schools if standards were not raised in state schools. Now we are told the only academic subjects that will have to be studied after 14 are English, maths and science. Tomlinson is expected to propose that citizenship, sex and careers education and information and communications technology will also be compulsory and all pupils will learn, whatever this means, about “work and enterprise”.

Two years into his second term as prime minister, Tony Blair is allowing his education ministers to promote exam reforms that will ensure parents who can afford to do so will flee the state sector to buy the academic education top universities will continue to demand.

An emphasis on skills, work and socialisation must result in a further erosion of the academic curriculum. Ministers may be keen on such changes but Tomlinson should have said no to this nonsense. It is an educational disaster in the making.

NEW EXAM SYSTEM

Mike Tomlinson, the former chief inspector, is chairing a review of the qualifications system for students aged 14-19. This includes the future of GCSEs, A-levels and AS-levels. Tomlinson’s interim report is due on Wednesday. He favours: