Prime Minister, David Cameron, has outlined a pencil-sketch vision of an educational future in which all post-16 students either take on an apprenticeship or go to university university. Mr Cameron told an audience at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) annual conference that he wanted to see “either apprenticeships or universities for almost everybody”.
We’ve got to build an economy where you don’t go either one way with apprentices or the other way with universities,” he said at the event in London’s Grosvenor House Hotel.
“The apprenticeship system needs to be flexible enough, as it is at the moment, so that many people can go on and do a degree while they are working in one of your businesses. That’s what we want to build.
“At the end of the day though, we want to see fewer and fewer 18-year-olds leaving school without taking either path. If we’re going to compete in a global economy then we need to make sure that our young people are more highly skilled, more highly trained than our competitors. So either apprenticeships or universities for almost everybody.”
