Pupils shunning studies to join gig economy, says schools chief

TEENAGERS who should have been preparing for exams have started applying for “gig economy” jobs because they think school is over, an education chief has said.

Students were told last month that all GCSES and A-levels would be cancelled this summer, with predicted grades awarded instead.

Ofqual, the exams watchdog, has said that schools should not ask students to do any new pieces of work on which to base the predicted grade. They said that in the interests of fairness, only previous tests and assignments should be used to inform any decision on the predicted grades submitted to exam boards.

Martyn Oliver, chief executive of the Outwood Grange Academies Trust, which runs 32 schools in England, said that pupils who would normally be taking their GCSES and A-levels this summer are no longer interested in continuing with their academic work.

“As far as they’re concerned, they’ve passed,” he told the magazine Schools Week. “Some of them are even trying to get into the gig economy, get work in supermarkets. We don’t want them doing that.

“We understand the pressure on them, but unless anyone defines it differently, they haven’t left school and should be engaged with education.”

Employment law states that pupils aged 15 and 16 can only work up to 12 hours a week during term time, which rises to 35 hours in school holidays.

There are no such term-time restrictions for 17 and 18-year-olds.

Rob Campbell, of the National Association of Headteachers, said that it was not necessarily bad for teenagers to get jobs stacking shelves or picking fruit.

“I think we could and should at this time of crisis be drawing on the energy of young people who can get out, earn some money and also contribute to society,” he said.

“I can understand the argument that they are still in education and they should do some preparatory work for university or the sixth form. But we are in a different world, we have to mobilise the resources we have for the good of the nation.”

Mr Campbell, who is chief executive at the Morris Education Trust, which runs four schools, added that he would “encourage” school leavers to sign up to work as fruit pickers.

“Down in Cambridgeshire, where our schools are, one of the things crying out for help is agriculture,” he said.