Royal Society leads call for review of post-16 education

A narrow approach to education is producing students who are entering higher education without the necessary skills required for independent learning and research, the president of the Royal Society has said.

In a speech to business leaders, Venki Ramakrishnan has called for an independent review into post-16 learning in the UK to be carried out during the next parliament, with a view to transforming school curricula within the next 10 years.

He criticised the A-level system—in which students take a small number of subjects—as too narrow in scope. Instead, young people should be learning a broad range of subjects from different disciplines that prepare them for university, he said.