A levels at McDonald’s

According to the BBC website:

“Fast-food giant McDonald’s has become one of the first firms to offer its own nationally recognised qualifications. It will offer a “basic shift manager” course, training staff in skills such as human resources and marketing. The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority said the company had been approved to develop courses up to the equivalent of A-level standard. The QCA will also allow Network Rail and Flybe to award qualifications based on their workplace training schemes.”

The article can be found here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7211958.stm

A report in the Telegraph has the PM defending the plans:

“Gordon Brown has denied that allowing McDonald’s and other firms to offer A-level-style qualifications represents a dumbing down. He insisted the new courses would be tough and intensive. Speaking ahead of the formal launch of the qualifications this morning, he said: “If McDonald’s do it, it is not that standards are going to fall, in fact it is going to be a tough course. Once you have got a qualification in management you can probably go anywhere. I think that is the important thing - companies prepared to train people up which they weren’t doing before, in the way that we want them to do, in a far greater number, so that people have the qualifications for the future.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/28/nmcd228.xml

But in today’s Guardian there is severe criticism:

“Working more closely with companies via apprenticeships and training schemes might be a good way of achieving these things, but giving them A-level equivalency is a bad idea. Why? Because the kind of education you get in a formal educational institution is different to the kind of training you get inside a company.”

Read more here: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/rowenna_davis/2008/01/the_big_mac_questions.html