Five ways to boost post-16 English and maths

The college sector supports the government’s policy aim to increase the number of young people who achieve Level 2 English and maths by 19. Good literacy and numeracy skills are essential for life and employment and we want students to be enthused about improving these vital skills. Colleges need support to re-motivate these students and set their sights on improvement.By the age of 16, 35 per cent of the age cohort have not yet achieved grade 4 in GCSE English and Maths after 11 years of schooling. The vast majority of those young people who need to improve their grades are studying in colleges and it is the college sector that is expected to do the "heavy lifting" of turning this around. Post-16 teachers have worked hard to ensure thousands of students per year achieve their all-important grade 4 in English or Maths for the first time and many others are making progress towards it.However, rather than stimulating aspiration, this can feel like a thankless task; squeezing diminishing returns from multiple retakes. High grade pass rates for GCSE resits remain low at age 17 and 18 and Functional Skills entries have fallen as increasingly colleges enter all students for GCSE. This is hardly surprising given that moving from grade 2 GCSE to passing level 1 functional skills currently represents "negative progress" while moving to a grade 3 GCSE is regarded as "positive progress".