The Tory leadership candidate said his plans to reform post-16 education marked “an important step towards equality of value between vocational and academic education”. If he becomes the next prime minister, Sunak will strengthen technical institutes’ networks and links with industry, as well as give them powers to award degrees, his campaign said. The former chancellor would assess university degrees through dropout rates, graduate job numbers and salary thresholds, with exceptions for nursing and other courses with high social value. In an apparent attempt to appeal to the right, Sunak’s campaign said it would also fast-track the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, which is in the House of Lords. The government has argued the bill is necessary to tackle growing intolerance at universities, but opponents have said it aims to tackle a problem that doesn’t exist and could protect hate speech. Sunak also pledged to improve professional development for teachers, commit to plans to open 75 new free schools announced by the government in June and give school trusts an “accountability holiday” for two years after taking over low-performing schools. It will also work to expand the use of artificial intelligence and digital technology in classrooms and reduce the workload of teachers. Sunak said: “A good education is the closest thing we have to a silver bullet when it comes to making people’s lives better. “These proposals represent an important step towards equality of assessment between vocational and academic education. And they will take a tougher approach to college degrees that burden students with debt without improving their earning potential. “I will also take bold, practical steps to build on the successful Conservative education reforms of the past decade by leveraging technology and improving the quality of teaching in underperforming areas. “Every child deserves a world-class education and, if I become Prime Minister, I will make it my mission from day one to ensure that they get one.” The former chancellor will also set up a new UK Leaving Certificate which would require students to continue studying core subjects such as maths and English until they leave school at 18. In an interview with The Times, he criticized the “too narrow specialisation” of the current curriculum, which he said was not preparing young people for the “economy of tomorrow”. “We are almost unique in the Western world, for an advanced economy and all high-performing education systems, that allow people to drop out of maths and stop studying their mother tongue at 16,” he told the newspaper. “In Germany, France, Asia, young people study maths until they’re 18 and the way a modern economy works, I think it’s going to hold us back if our young people don’t have those skills.” After private schooling at Winchester College, where he was head boy, and degrees in politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford, Sunak got an MBA at Stanford University in California. His Tory leadership rival Liz Truss has set herself up as “education prime minister” with a plan to replace failing academies with new free schools and a promise that students with top A grades will get an automatic interview call at Oxford or Cambridge – which has raised questions about whether the timing of the academic year should be changed.
