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Written question asked by John Hayes (Conservative) on Tuesday, 20 December 2005, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 9 January 2006. It was answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern (Labour) on Monday, 9 January 2006 on behalf of the Department for Education and Skills.

GCSEs

Question
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what proportion of the total number of level 2 GCSE equivalent awards were in vocational subjects for each academic year since 2001–02.
Answer

The available information is given in the following table.

Table 1: Results of 15-year-old pupils in Level 2 qualifications for pupils in all schools by type of qualification(2)
Number of Level 2 qualifications
2004–05 2003–04 2002–03 2001–02
Full Course GCSEs 3,035,800 3,016,800 2,894,300 2,846,200
Short Course GCSEs 197,433 192,454 163,045 149,746
GNVQ Full Intermediate 56,888 45,839 33,361 14,318
GNVQ Part one Intermediate — — 47,100 38,269
GCSEs in Vocational Subjects 54,178 36,503 — —
Basic Skills 6,193 123 — —
Key Skills 5,930 6,581 — —
VRQ 5,823 1,882 — —
NVQ Language units 287 — — —
NVQ 48 14 — —
Total awards 3,362,580 3,300,196 3,137,806 3,048,533
1. Including achievements by these pupils in previous academic years. 2. Pupils aged 15 at the start of the academic year i.e. 31 August. 3. Figures for 2004–05 are provisional, all other figures are final. 4. Level 2 qualifications include those at grades A*-C for GCSE qualifications. 5. Short course GCSEs are equivalent to ½ Full course GCSE. 6. GNVQ Full Intermediate are equivalent to 4 Full course GCSEs. 7. GCSEs in Vocational Subjects are equivalent to 2 Full course GCSEs. 8. There were no qualifications in NVQ language units prior to 2004–05. Note: From 2003–04 a new group of qualifications approved pre-16 were incorporated.

Vocational qualifications include GCSEs in vocational subjects, GNVQs, VRQs, NVQs and NVQ language units.The following table shows the percentage of level 2 awards in vocational qualifications for each year.

Table 2: Percentage of Level 2 awards in vocational qualifications for pupils in all schools
2004–05 2003–04 2002–03 2001–02
Number of awards in level 2 vocational qualifications 117,224 84,238 80,461 52,587
Total number of awards in level 2 qualifications 3,362,580 3,300,196 3,137,806 3,048,533
Percentage of awards for level 2 qualifications in vocational subjects 3.5 2.6 2.6 1.7

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
441 c417W; 40444
Session
2005-06
Subjects
Qualifications Standards Vocational education National vocational qualifications GCSE GNVQs
Link
View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk