SECONDARY school pupils face a huge extension to their workload under proposals by Charles Clarke, the Education Secretary, to have them tested in all subjects at the age of 14.

His plan for a new school certificate will provoke confrontation with teachers and some parents who believe children are already tested too much.

Under the plan, pupils’ results would be recorded on a school certificate setting out the standards they had achieved in each subject before they begin GCSE courses.

Mr Clarke is concerned that the curriculum in the early years of secondary school is not demanding enough and that pupils can abandon subjects such as history, geography and foreign languages at 14 without anyone knowing what they have learnt.

He believes that greater freedoms for students to choose subjects after 14, due to be introduced next year, will have to be balanced by greater certainty about what they know at that age. Making the test results available to parents would increase pressure on schools to improve standards of teaching between 11 and 14, known as Key Stage 3.

Mr Clarke told The Times: “We are not ambitious enough at 14. Subjects like modern foreign languages and ICT (information and communications technology) ought to be pretty much nailed down by then so that by the time you go past 14 you should be able to explore more widely according to your own interests.”

He believes that the radicalism of his push to create a specialist secondary school system has not been fully appreciated.

Fourteen-year-olds are tested in only three “core” subjects at present — English, mathematics and science. Results in English have shown no improvement in the past five years and those in maths have been static for three years.

The Government already intends to add a new test next year in ICT as part of a national strategy to boost standards at Key Stage 3. Targets for next year require schools to get 75 per cent of pupils at 14 to the expected standard in English, maths and ICT, and 70 per cent in science. That will rise to 85 per cent, and 80 per cent in science, by 2007.

Last year, just 66 per cent reached the standard in English and science and 67 per cent in maths.

A government White Paper in January set out changes to the curriculum for 14 to 16-year-olds from September next year. Students will no longer have to study a foreign language or design and technology after 14. They will also be free to drop all other subjects, including history, geography, art and music.

English, maths and science will remain compulsory for GCSE, with ICT, though it may be phased out as a separate subject over time. All pupils must also continue to take citizenship classes, PE, religious education and sex education.

Mr Clarke said that 14 should be the launchpad for youngsters to plan their studies for the next five years. The curriculum had to offer them the widest possible opportunity to pursue their interests and talents, but more had to be achieved in the early years of secondary school. A more rigorous assessment at 14 could help to raise the tempo of teaching.

Mr Clarke said that he had yet to refine his thinking into firm policy proposals. The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), the body responsible for national tests, would have to develop new examinations in half a dozen subjects. But he suggested schools had failed to capitalise on the raising of the leaving age to 16 in 1973.

Teachers’ unions have been pressing for fewer examinations. The review, by Mike Tomlinson, the former Ofsted chief, of qualifications from age 14 to 19 is likely to recommend a big reduction in GCSE examinations at 16 when he reports later this year.

That may give Mr Clarke the opportunity to argue that a slimmed-down series of tests across the board at 14 would benefit pupils, while a record of achievement would safeguard standards. It would ease pressure on the examining system, which the QCA’s chief executive Ken Boston said last week is close to breakdown.

Mr Clarke would be going back to the future if he revived a form of school certificate. The last one was overtaken by the introduction of O and A levels in 1951 amid concern that it did not adequately reflect pupils’ achievements in the full range of subjects.

Ofsted studies have repeatedly highlighted concerns over the “lost years” suffered by up to 40 per cent of pupils who make little or no progress between 11 and 14. Mr Clarke also wants to prevent gains made in primary schools in recent years from being wasted as children move through secondary education.

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