“Some pretty poor decisions were made by the last government which have resulted in a narrowing of the curriculum in post-16 education. Virtually everybody warned them against decoupling AS-levels from A-levels and yet they went ahead and did it regardless. This has resulted in students generally taking three rather than four subject options.
“The previous government’s introduction of the English Baccalaureate favouring a particular set of academic subjects at GCSE has also led to a decline in entries to other subjects which has a knock-on effect in post-16.
“And this has all been compounded by teacher and funding shortages which have made it harder to preserve courses with smaller cohorts.
“In addition, the previous government’s plan to scrap BTECs and similar qualifications will make matters worse and we very much hope the new government will reverse that decision.
“We have to get the balance right between specialisation at post-16 and maintaining a reasonable breadth of study and options for the future, and that balance isn’t quite right at present.
“The new government’s curriculum and assessment review will need to consider how to address that – and getting rid of the English Baccalaureate would be a good start.”