The arguments for change at 14-19 need little rehearsing. Curriculum 2000 has not been a success. It has failed to deliver the anticipated breadth and stretch at AS level and shows no sign of significantly raising standards at A2. The new vocational courses lack status, confuse students and do not appeal to parents. More importantly perhaps, new students are not being drawn into post-16 study.

That may be because it is the GCSE - and the hurdles it creates for average achievers - which is the real stumbling block. The figures for GCSE outcomes are shocking. Around half of all pupils still leave secondary education without five A*-C Grade GCSEs and a significant minority, especially those most at risk, drop out altogether. There are three hundred secondary schools where more than three quarters of the pupils fail to reach this level. Given these figures it is no surprise that the UK is equal twenty-fifth out of twenty-nine OECD countries in a league table of participation in education for 17-year-olds. It is also no surprise that young people from professional backgrounds are over five times as likely to qualify for higher education as those from unskilled backgrounds.

Clearly change is overdue and there are some obvious paths to explore. Comparative surveys have suggested that European education systems which are viewed as more successful than the United Kingdom’s possess three distinguishing characteristics. These are vocational routes that offer access to higher education as well as to employment, positive discrimination to support disadvantaged and disaffected students and umbrella awards like the French Baccalaureate or the German Abitur. These are fast becoming the priorities for reform in the UK.

However, although the Tomlinson report is full of brave words about maintaining standards, opening pathways for all and providing a map that links general and vocational qualifications it may need to address a more fundamental set of concerns to do with the kinds of learning that are appropriate for this age range and the sort of qualifications that are required.

Tomlinson defines three kinds of learning at 14-19 - generic, specialist and supplementary. In essence they reflect what might be seen as current practice. So, generic learning is to do with key skills and what might be termed the prerequisites for higher learning in terms of literacy or communication, numeracy, team-working and problem solving. These skills are considered to be generic in the sense that they are relevant to all learning and underpin progress. The second category, specialist learning is learning focused on a particular area of study at a higher level of demand. It can be academic and linked to further learning or general / vocational and linked to employment. Supplementary learning is additional to the other two categories. It may exist as an add-on to specialist study or as a means of adding breadth to the curriculum.

It is easy to assume that these forms of learning once applied in the right combinations will make for an attractive diploma but is it true? While they readily relate to current practice it is questionable whether they stand up to detailed scrutiny as the basis for a new framework.

The assessment of skills is challenging because a desire to take the skill out of the context – the opposite of the original GNVQ model – and to assess it discretely has led assessment into reductionist avenues. The end products are basic skill tests which are largely irrelevant yet time consuming for those who are competent - over 80% of trainees pass the literacy and numeracy tests for aspiring teachers first time - but are hurdles for those with less ability. So, in the development of modern apprenticeships, apparently adequate candidates are denied success in large numbers. More broadly, after almost ten years of investment in this area, there is little evidence of progression and no ladder up which candidates advance. Key skills simply exist as a barrier to those who fail to acquire them.

Specialised learning would be an oddity if it was not so embedded in our attitudes to education. In Tomlinson’s definition, it appears to cover learning that is employment related but it also includes a raft of traditional GCE subjects which exist by inertia rather than relevance and are studied ‘for their own sake’. The notion of seeking a qualification so as to provide a measure of intellectual capacity has fallen apart over the years because so many go on to higher study and because employers increasingly seek specific skills in terms of recruitment. The danger for Tomlinson is that these ‘old’ subjects will simply be assumed appropriate for specialist study in their current forms when they are already a significant factor in non-completion rates.

Supplementary study is linked to the curriculum breadth sought - but in practice rarely achieved - by AS level. When AS was introduced the belief was that students would study five subjects in year 12 and then specialise in three or four of these in year 13 but this did not happen in schools where students followed their three specialist subjects and filled up with key skills or ICT rather than new learning. There has also been confusion over whether a subject like supplementary biology should be a diminished version of specialist biology or a separate subject set out against different criteria. It is arguable that a student specialising in the arts, would not benefit from a limited study of aspects in biology at the same depth as a specialist study (the current AS model) but might benefit from a study that covered the human aspects of biology as preparation for life. Needless to say, it is the former which is currently on offer. However, the most damning indictment of supplementary study comes from its title which implies that it is an add-on, lacks status and is unimportant in the bigger career picture.

The problem for Tomlinson is that if he proposes a curriculum core (English, mathematics, key skills, citizenship) for the new diploma which is rooted in these categories of learning he runs the risk of simply repackaging the factors that foster student disengagement and disaffection. Take up will not be increased and there will be a substantial cohort that falls outside the baccalaureate net. Instead, what is needed is a reassessment of the subjects in the current qualifications framework against the Tomlinson aims of broadening access, levelling status and providing coherence followed by a ruthless weeding out of those that work against them. And, that will take longer than six months to achieve.