The White Paper gives us the new diplomas and the breathing space to develop a new, mainstream composite qualification that in time will be taken by hundreds of thousands of candidates each year.

It gives us for the first time a proper Level 1 qualification. At present achievement at Level 1 is rather ignominiously achieved through failure at level 2.

It gives us the opportunity to develop a broader offer at Level 3.

It may also give us the opportunity for development at Entry level. There is clearly a need for a structure to enable the most needy learners to stretch their potential to the utmost.

This is emphatically not just about vocational qualifications or a vocational diploma.

The diplomas can include whole qualifications and units from GCE and GCSE, as well as specially designed new units, depending on the nature of the industry sector and the requirements of higher education.

In this way it will open up a whole new area of industry-verified curriculum for schools and colleges.

We will be able to develop a mix of vocational and academic learning in every diploma. General or academic learning can be understood in the context of a wider vocational field; vocational learning will be interdependent with academic study.

Designing the diplomas will give us the opportunity to put together the coherent learning programmes that Mike Tomlinson articulated so clearly.

The White Paper calls for 14 'lines of learning'. This is not about channelling young people to decide on their occupation from the age of 14, which in my experience is not what young people do. Indeed, it has been shown that too much occupational specialisation too early can lead to high drop-out rates and reduced progression to Higher Education - the very problems Mike Tomlinson and the White Paper set out to solve.

We need to construct diplomas which provide credible, industry-verified vocational learning, linked to interdependent general learning, with real opportunities to practise occupational skills.

We need to develop some clear recommendations of which options to take for which broad career paths. This is what the International Baccalaureate does so well: for possible careers in business, it recommends maths, economics, world politics and business management; for a possible career in law, a language, history and economics; for engineering, maths and physics. These are 'lines of learning', although in that qualification limited to the academic domain.

But, above all, the diplomas should aim to open up career choices and explore career possibilities, rather than corral young people into particular career choices.

In the general or academic subjects, such as French or history or physics, young people at levels 2 and 3 will gain knowledge, skills and understanding, ultimately verified by universities, and potentially preparing them for - but by no means committing them to - a future career as a linguist, an historian or a physicist.

So too, in the vocational subjects, such as mechanical engineering, stonemasonry or printing, young people will gain knowledge, skills and understanding, ultimately verified by industry, and potentially preparing them for - but by no means committing them to - a future career as an engineer, a stonemason or a printer.

For those who are ready to choose, and who wish to gain specific job competence, the high-quality occupational apprenticeship route is available.

Within a diploma line, some candidates might choose to focus on vocational learning, while others might concentrate on general learning, with particular related vocational learning as a subsidiary area of study.

But clearly, diplomas should always contain both general and vocational learning, in proportions that learners may choose. It is important that they should be able to see the logic of the mix of components available to them.

Learners must come to understand the higher-order cognitive learning and problem-solving skills which reside in well-taught, well-constructed, industry-verified vocational learning: eye/mind/hand coordination, knowledge, judgement and skill, be it web design, joinery, polymechanics, autobody repair, mechatronics, jewellery, printing or electrical installation.

Importantly, we have the opportunity to build technology into the new diplomas from the ground up, so that we are not entrenching further the pen and paper logistical difficulties of the thirty million scripts that we must manage each year for national curriculum tests and examinations.

There is now the real prospect of on-line, on-demand testing providing both summative and formative assessment for learning, spreading the assessment load throughout the year, and removing the peak summer stress from awarding bodies, providers and above all students and their parents.

Technology also offers the prospect of graded assessment in vocational education (where it is felt to be needed), rather than the simple assessment of competence. And that is because it can eliminate the prohibitively costly one-to-one assessment which the grading of vocational performance requires.

We, together with our partners in the sector skills councils, will need your expert input as to how we can build practical, deliverable and real work experience into the diplomas.

Further, the new qualifications will almost certainly need to be delivered by partnerships of schools, colleges, training providers and employers.

But in the end, no amount of innovation in the design of diplomas will in itself do the trick.

The value and status of this new qualification must be earned - it cannot be legislated. We must build a new form of qualification, which over the years will earn its spurs in the eyes of the learner, and those of employers and higher education and the community generally.

It must be a qualification which - when constructed from
A-levels together with other specifically defined innovative units - is a genuinely competitive alternative to the International Baccalaureate.

It must be a qualification which discriminates sufficiently between standards of performance for university selection, and is valued by all our universities.

And it must be directly attractive to industry and employers, in providing the skills and aptitudes they value and need as a basis for work-force development. We are working closely with the sector skills councils to achieve this, through a sector qualifications strategy for each industry sector.

The green light that has been given to the diplomas allows us to embark on the development of a new set of qualifications which, if successful, will stand alongside the general qualifications in status and esteem, and in due course become the obvious qualification of choice for many pupils across the entire ability range.

I have found that one of the joys of working in England is that you can read in a newspaper on a Tuesday what you are going to say in a speech on Friday.

This week I read with surprise that today I would say that A-levels are 'certain to disappear within the next decade'.

What is far more certain ten years from now is that if we haven't by then succeeded in establishing the diplomas as a mainstream qualification having status and value at least equivalent to A-levels in the eyes of employers, higher education, learners, parents and the community, we will have failed a generation.

Young people will now have genuine choices about which route they choose to follow from 14 onwards.

This slide shows firstly the traditional 14-19 GCSE/A-level route leading potentially to a degree. It can include both general (academic) and applied (vocational) studies.

Next to this is the new 14-19 diplomas route. The term National Diploma is used in this slide, for a reason I will explain in a moment.

These also include academic and vocational studies, and potentially lead to a degree or a foundation degree.

The third choice, mostly for 16+, is the occupational route through apprenticeship, leading either to a foundation degree or to some other higher level occupational qualification.&;

And finally, the adult specialist qualifications at various levels (award, certificate and diploma) in various occupations.

Now these specialist occupationally-based diplomas are in similar industry-specific sector areas to the new 14-19 White paper diplomas. The new diplomas need to be distinguished from them.

In our response to the remit letter from Secretary of State on work to be undertaken by the QCA on implementation of the White Paper, we suggested amongst other things that we should consult further on an alternative to the term specialised diploma, for that reason.

There is also, I believe, a need to give the new diploma a title of status and distinction.

One possible title is National Diploma, which is used here, so that a young person could take, for example:

Now, at present, without the diploma route, there is very little progression across pathways. It is possible to move from GCSEs to apprenticeships, and from apprenticeships to the occupational route - but it is all in one direction.

Put the diplomas into the picture, and progression can take place both vertically and horizontally across the pathways.

And this will be because of the shared units across the framework, a fundamental concept of our consultation on the Framework for Achievement. Let me explain.

This next slide is strictly notional and by way of example - it represents the sort of future which we expect we will be able to create together - not something which already exists.

It shows three different but related qualifications, which share some units across the framework of qualifications:

Firstly let’s build in the basics - functional numeracy (in pink), functional ICT skills (in blue), and functional literacy (in yellow).

Functional literacy, numeracy and ICT - core parts of all these qualifications.

Similarly, these green units are all units from the new Geography GCSE which map across the three qualifications - living with floods and urban transport for example.

The orange blocks are construction units which again work right across the three qualifications.

And here are others, health & safety, and some physics units.

In the GSCE, maths embraces statistics and data handling, and geometry, as well as functional maths; in the diploma there is no geometry.

In the GCSE, ICT is offered as functional skills; in the diploma and apprenticeship there is additionally CAD/CAM.

In the diploma, there are units in design and in construction process and technology, based on industry-verified preparatory curriculum; in the apprenticeship, units such as joining and welding and aircraft systems, aimed directly at job competence.

Now, this slide is illustrative only and doesn't show complete qualifications. It doesn't include, as it could, a complete A-level as part of the diploma qualification. But it does show how core units (such as functional literacy), elective units and optional units might be drawn from a central unit bank into a number of different qualifications.

And it also shows that qualifications can include units of different sizes which would be measured by a number of credit points in the framework. And diplomas could of course also contain whole GCSEs and A-levels. In this way the system of credits allows us to build a series of qualifications such as A-levels or diplomas of equivalent volume and challenge.

Equally, it allows us to build qualifications such as apprenticeships of equivalent challenge (for example apprenticeships at level 3) but of different volume because it may take longer to become competent as a chef than as a motor mechanic.

The diagram assists also to make the point that the 14-19 White Paper and the Skills White Paper are part of a single integrated strategy for education and training 14-90 and beyond.

The essence of the Skills White Paper is the new qualifications framework known as the Framework for Achievement, which will make some sense of the National Qualifications Framework.

With

The recent consultation on the Framework for Achievement gave strong endorsement to the rationalisation of qualifications, to the use of credit-based teaching units as the building blocks of qualifications and to the inclusion of all qualifications including company-based training in the framework.

So, as I said earlier, I am immensely optimistic about the prospect of making the 14-19 White Paper and the Skills White Paper provide a 14-90 education and training perspective, at least within the context in which I have spoken.

Look at what we have:

There is also an amber light which signals some areas where more work and thinking needs to be done, beyond the ambit of the White Paper.