HEAD teachers called on Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, to think again yesterday and abolish GCSEs and A levels in favour of a new diploma.

The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) said it was profoundly disappointed by her rejection of reforms set out by Sir Mike Tomlinson. Sir Mike proposed the introduction of a diploma for students aged 14 to 19 to replace GCSEs and A levels within a decade.

He said that a single qualification structure would overcome the divide between academic and vocational education, and encourage more youngsters to stay on after 16. Ms Kelly rejected his report in February and instead set out plans in a White Paper to create 14 vocational diplomas to run in parallel with GCSEs and A levels.

Members of the NAHT voted overwhelmingly at their annual conference in Telford, Shropshire, to press the Government for a rethink, saying that the White Paper would deepen divisions between vocational and academic study.

Eric Fisk, a member of the NAHT’s national council, said that the Tomlinson report had won support from Charles Clarke, Ms Kelly’s predecessor, David Bell, the head of Ofsted, and Ken Boston, the chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, the Government’s exams watchdog.

“The evidence for reform was overwhelming,” he said. “It is the system that is at fault, not the people working in it. Ruth Kelly’s White Paper, in preserving what it regarded as good, has abandoned Tomlinson’s key principle that we should fit learning to the learner. What we have now is a tinkering of the existing system.”

John Riley, who sits on the union’s national council, said that the Government’s proposals would leave half of students with qualifications that were seen as inferior to A levels.

Delegates also complained that grammar schools were being hit by the Government’s new secondary admissions system. Local authorities asked parents to give a list of their preferred schools this year in an effort to ensure that every child got the offer of one place, rather than some having none and others holding several.

The conference was told that some schools were refusing to consider applications from parents who had not placed them first on the list. As a result, parents in some areas with grammar schools were unwilling to enter their children for the entrance exam because they feared that if they were unsuccessful they would not be considered by the most popular non-selective school. The NAHT voted unanimously to press for a government review of the admissions process.

• The head teachers jeered Stephen Twigg, a Schools Minister, after he ruled out extra money to ease a crisis over free time for classroom staff.

  Some heads of primary schools have said that pupils could be sent home early on Friday afternoons so that teachers can have their non-contact time, which becomes a legal requirement in September. Teachers are supposed to get 10 per cent of their week free for preparing lessons and marking pupils’ work.

  Richard Collins, head of the Whyteleafe School in Surrey, said heads could not afford to employ extra teachers to cover for colleagues so would rely on unqualified classroom assistants to take lessons instead.

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