YP Letters: Education failing to deliver the skills we need

OUR education system exists to equip people with the skills they need to join the workforce and to become productive members of society.

Robert Halfon (The Yorkshire Post, February 11) is right to say that the current system is not meeting the needs of our young people, employers or businesses.

The way we work has changed, and the pace of change continues to increase. And yet, there has been no significant change to our education system in living memory. While qualifications have been tweaked and refined, at no point has the basic format of the UK education system altered.

Our education system is not only failing to equip young people with skills they need in the future, but it is failing to give people of all ages the skills they need today. This isn’t going to be fixed by scrapping GCSEs. Nor will focusing purely on reforming schools.

The digitisation of the workplace is not some distant future, it is here now. And employers need workers with the skills to manage. What the system needs is investment in vocational technology that allows learners and teachers to focus on the basic reasons why we educate: preparing people of all ages for the workplace.