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Brown grant for new apprentices Brown outlines education vision
(about 3 hours later)
Every 18-year-old who finds a job with an apprenticeship will be entitled to a grant of up to £15,000 towards their training, Gordon Brown will announce. Gordon Brown has announced a drive to raise aspiration and achievement among children and to eradicate failure from England's schools.
In a speech, he will say "substantial financial support" will be available for every child that aspires to an apprenticeship or higher education. The Prime Minister said councils would be encouraged to use new powers to intervene in failing schools.
Schools in England will need a third of pupils achieving five A*-C grades at GCSE, including maths and English. Britain needed to do more to close the achievement gap between children from different backgrounds, he said.
And Mr Brown wants parents to be more involved in their children's schools. And he announced plans to overhaul the apprenticeship system to make training more widely available.
In his first speech on education since becoming prime minister, Mr Brown will outline his vision for realising aspirations and ending the culture of failing schools. Minimum standards in England's schools would be raised over the next five years, with all schools needing to have 30% of their pupils achieving five high grade GCSEs by 2012-13, the prime minister announced.
High achievers We can no longer tolerate failure Gordon Brown
He will say that 18-year-olds who choose to get an advanced apprenticeship, instead of going to university, will be entitled to a credit of £3,000 for some skilled jobs and up to £15,000 for a high-cost sector like engineering. Schools which failed to meet that target could face being taken over by interim management boards, or by other successful schools including independent schools, or being turned into academies.
Minimum standards in schools will be raised over the next five years, with all schools needing 30% of their pupils achieving five high grade GCSEs by 2012-13. "We can no longer tolerate failure," he said.
And schools that fail to meet that target will face being closed down by local authorities. He outlined his vision for education: "No longer acceptable for any school to fail its pupils, no longer acceptable for young people to drop out of education without good qualifications without us acting.
Mr Brown will argue that the level of parental engagement and interest in a child's learning is the "single biggest determinant" of their achievement at school. "No more toleration of second best in Britain - no more toleration of second best for Britain."
Parents will be urged to get more involved in the life of schools and in the teaching of their child. Parental involvement
Top teachers Mr Brown talked of the need for greater parental engagement with schools and children's learning.
Schools will be encouraged to give more feedback, through regular e-mails, meetings and more parents' sessions at key transition points for children, such as discussing the next stages in learning or new goals. That was the "single biggest determinant" of a child's achievement at school, he said.
Mr Brown will also outline his aim to have the best teachers in the world in a generation, with a new focus on recruitment of the brightest and best, and continuing professional development. Schools would be encouraged to give more feedback, through regular e-mails, meetings and more parents' sessions at key transition points for children, such as discussing the next stages in learning or new goals.
He will focus on the best education systems in the world, such as in South East Asia and Scandinavia to see how the best people can be attracted to become teachers. Mr Brown also outlined his aim to have the best teachers in the world in a generation, with a new focus on recruitment of the brightest and best, and continuing professional development.
Britain needs to compete with educational standards that are rising across the world, he will say. He pointed to countries seen as having top education systems - such as Finland and South Korea - and said Britain could learn lessons from them.
He will cite countries like Finland as good examples of educational excellence, where there are 10 applicants for every teacher training place.