The past decade has seen fundamental policy initiatives at a national level intended to improve vocational skills and to raise school-leaving standards — particularly in mathematics. These initiatives centred on:

1. (i) the formation of a National Council for Vocational Qualifications with the object of re-designing, and imposing fundamentally greater coherence into, our previous ‘jungle’ of vocational qualifications, thereby raising their level of recognition both by employers and by potential trainees, and consequently encouraging a greater volume and higher levels of training to accredited standards of qualification;

2. (ii) the specification of a National Curriculum for schools, stipulating the main subjects to be taught, the standards which teachers need to aim for in respect of the majority of each age-group, and associated nationwide attainment-tests to be taken by all pupils at several stages in their schooling. A detailed teaching scheme, the National Numeracy Strategy, was laid down nationally for teaching primary-school mathematics (based on the Improving Primary Mathematics scheme developed in Barking and Dagenham together with NIESR using a Continental model) together with a similarly detailed scheme for teaching basic literacy.