Hollowing out of vocational education is Michael Gove's true legacy - Yorkshire Post Letters

From: Doug Clark, Crosshills Road, Cononley, Skipton.

I take exception to Jayne Dowle's article of 10/8/26: you can't blame Gove for the rise in NEETs. I was a teacher during the four years of Michael Gove's tenure and the damage he did to vocational education in particular was incalculable.

Jayne Dowle touches on the return to rote learning but neglects to mention the abolition of coursework as an assessment mechanism from GCSE and A-Level courses. This adversely affected practical subjects like mine (Computer Science), as there was no mechanism for students to demonstrate their practical skills in tackling a real world problem. Instead, everything hinged on terminal exams.

Practical based subjects are more expensive to teach, as they require a workshop setting, specialist equipment and smaller classes. Gove's tactic of freezing school budgets for many years meant that these subjects were marginalised and some, such as Electronics, disappeared altogether.

The major teaching unions passed motions of no confidence in Gove in 2013, saying he had chosen to base policy on dogma, political rhetoric and his own limited experience of education and he was sacked the following year.

My teaching career didn't survive Gove's tenure - no pay rises for four years, an increase in pensionable age to 68, and worse pension terms drove me to make a career change after 15 years as a teacher and I taught my last lesson two days after Gove was sacked. Many of my colleagues followed suit.

Retention rates in teaching are now at an all time low. The hollowing out of vocational education and the disillusionment of the teaching profession is Gove's true legacy and are major factors in the rise of NEETs.