Blair Suggests Scrapping GSCE Examinations

Son of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Euan Blair has said the British education system needs a reset as it focuses too much on the wrong thing.

The Yale educated millionaire says GSCEs are pointless and it would ‘not be a bad idea’ for them to be scrapped because the UK’s focus on grades and ‘what type of university’ you went to is holding people back.

Euan said the General Certificate of Secondary Education should be scrapped because they are not a good indicator of future work performance and can hinder social mobility.

The millionaire founder of the Multiverse apprenticeships firm, who attended top US University Yale, said there was too much focus in the UK on exam results and the type of university a person attended.

He added that it would not be ‘a bad idea’ to get rid of GCSEs, saying teenagers sat ‘mock after mock, and this becomes the end in itself rather than actually learning, is really problematic’.

His remarks set him apart from his father, who only last month called for seven in 10 young people to go to university – saying an increase from the current 53 percent was key to the UK competing with ‘high-innovation economies’ like South Korea and Japan.

Euan told a panel on the skills gap at the Times Education Summit that ‘we’ve had for a long time the obsession with academics as a kind of marker of potential and talent’.

‘Only 4 percent of those claiming free school meals make it to a Russell Group university. Over half of those on corporate graduate schemes were educated at private school,’ he said.

‘We are missing out on a huge segment of society and lots of incredibly talented people if we just focus on ”What did you get at GCSE, and A-levels and what type of university did you go to?”

Mr Blair Jnr created an estimated £160 million fortune through his company, which encourages school leavers to take up apprenticeships instead of going on to higher education.

Asked about his father’s target for 70 percent of school leavers to attend university, Mr Blair said: ‘It’s not really a matter of having a fixed target in either direction.’

He commented that professional apprenticeships are an ‘incredible’ way to begin a career, but ‘pretty much every teacher went to university and so they’re often more comfortable promoting that route’.