Most school exams at 16 should be axed as part of a radical reform of Britain's education system, David Miliband urged today.
The Labour leadership frontrunner said that "overtesting" in schools diverted pupils from real learning and claimed that GCSEs were becoming increasingly irrelevant with the shift to a school-leaving age of 18.
In a further sharp difference with Tory-Lib Dem policy, he also called for an increase in graduate numbers so that 60 per cent of all 18-30 year-olds attended university.
Mr Miliband said that his "greatest frustration" as a former schools minister was that Tony Blair blocked his plans to ditch traditional GCSEs and A-levels for a broader-based system.
In a speech in Bristol today, he floated the idea of a single "graduation exam" at the age of 18 and the gradual introduction of an international baccalaureate system.
He also said that — apart from English, maths and science — schools could dispense with externally marked exams altogether at the age of 16. Pointing out the huge £600 million cost of paying examination boards for exams, Mr Miliband suggested that teachers could mark tests in-house. "There is too much time spent in exams, not enough time in learning," he said.
