LIVERPOOL has one of the worst records in the country for children leaving school without a single qualification, the Daily Post can reveal.

Across the wider Merseyside and Cheshire region, up to 1,000 high school students are leaving schools without a single qualification – and not a single education authority meets the national average.

It has also emerged that Liverpool and Knowsley have two of the highest percentages of final-year students in the country leaving without any exam grades.

One in every 20 secondary pupils in Liverpool finishes school with no qualification – 4.9% – more than in most other big cities and inner-city London boroughs.

In Knowsley, named earlier this month by the Department for Children, Schools and Families as the authority with the lowest GCSE results in the country, that figure is 6%.

The figures appear to back up claims from employers in the region that a lack of skilled or qualified staff locally is forcing them to look abroad for staff in areas such as construction.

Department for Work and Pensions figures also show the likelihood of people leaving school without qualifications gaining employment is falling.

Now Liverpool’s education leader is calling for more funding to introduce greater flexibility into the education system so learning can be tailored to suit pupils. He admits that having around 235 pupils leaving school without a single qualification is “not good enough”.

Birkenhead MP Frank Field, meanwhile, wants the compulsory school leaving age to be lowered to 14, believing youngsters will soon realise they need training and qualifications to get on in life.

According to government figures, Liverpool had the highest number of pupils leaving without a qualification, 235. Elsewhere in the area, Cheshire had 129.

Knowsley saw 116 leave without a qualification, followed by Wirral (97), Sefton (82), St Helens (56) and Halton (30). Several hundred in Lancashire every year also leave school without a qualification.

Not a single local education authority in the region performed better than the national average of 1.1% leaving without a qualification.

Mr Field said: “Although we do well by the majority of children who go through our schools, what makes a mockery of that is our failure to engage with a significant group.

“That lack of engagement does not arise because they are thick or damaged, but because we are serving a diet of education by which they are deeply bored and quickly failed.

“One of my suggestions is to introduce a leaving certificate, because those young people might well knuckle down and do some work.

“It could cover the basic skills in maths, education and IT and, as soon as young people gain the certificate at 14, they would be allowed to leave school provided that they could get a job.

“That group should have the £20,000 that we would spend on them between the ages of 14 and 16 if they turned up to school held as a dowry, which they would control. When they realised that it is quite tough out there in the world of work, even if they have a job, they might change their views about wanting to acquire skills. They would become buyers of skills, rather than the consumers of the training skills that Jobcentre Plus buys in job lots."

But Cllr Paul Clein, Liverpool’s executive member of education, said: “We want every child com-ing through Liverpool’s schools to leave with qualifications which give them the best possible chance later in life.

“I don’t think allowing children to leave school at 14 is the answer, nor do I think the Government’s proposal to keep children in school until 18 will stop more than 200 leaving school every year without a qualification.

“What we do need is greater flexibility within the education system. Things are getting better, some youngsters now spend two or three days a week gaining practical skills in the workplace while still at school.

“We need to expand that, so children have a learning programme which is best for them, but to create that flexibility costs a lot of money.

“The Government has been good at putting more money into education, but we need at lot more if we are going to help those youngsters who currently leave without anything.”

OPINION: PAGE 10

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