By Jaimie Kaffash
24 August 2010
The lack of university places available this year has had a knock-on effect on students receiving their GCSE results today, teachers and lecturers unions have warned.
The results were once again up on the previous year, and there was continued improvement in science, mathematics and English.
But the University and College Union warned that GSCE students could suffer from the crisis in the availability of degree courses in higher education, which has left more than a quarter of university applicants without a place. The lecturers union said that many students who missed out on a place could turn to further education colleges, depriving poorer performing GCSE pupils.
UCU’s senior further education policy officer, Dan Taubman, said: ‘This is bad news for GCSE students as a domino effect means it is they who are most likely to be pushed out. This is particularly worrying when we consider the number of young people already not in education, employment or training and the current job market.
‘The government has to look seriously at funding more places in further and higher education as part of the forthcoming Spending Review.’
The National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of WomenTeachers said that the ‘worst ever employment and training prospects for young people’ could demotivate pupils.
General secretary Chris Keates said: ‘We are already seeing the lack of jobs leading to a scramble for fewer opportunities by many more school and college leavers.
‘If both job opportunities and education places continue to be squeezed, teachers will face a tough challenge to keep young people in school motivated to achieve the continued levels of success we have seen over recent years.’
Schools minister Nick Gibbs welcomed the results, particularly those achieved by academy schools. ‘A number of academies have achieved exceptional GCSE results, including English and maths in areas where standards have previously been too low,’ he said.
‘It is because of this success, together with our determination to tackle inequality in education, that we want to see academy freedoms used more widely to drive up standards.’ This would be achieved by ‘the heads of outstanding schools working in partnership with weaker schools to help the poorest children, along with allowing great new schools to be set up by teachers, parents and charities’, he said.
