Tony Evans: Why Tomlinson is so depressing

To be fair, the mission was virtually impossible, the sort of homework task that provokes parental protest: how to get the basics right; how to raise post-16 participation; how to strengthen vocational education; how to provide greater challenge; how to reduce the assessment burden.

Forty or so years of interference has got us here, education being, in this country, both a political football and a means of social engineering. We can hardly blame Mike Tomlinson if the emergency exit was hard to find, or if, in the enthusiasm of its discovery, he has sought to herd everyone through it together. Some problems are bulkier than others.

Since 1944, the consistent weakness has been vocational education. Tomlinson addresses this with imagination, rightly involving employers and business, and integrating apprenticeships, and he may well palliate the problem of adolescent disaffection. If he succeeded in this alone, we would all be grateful, and society would be the better for his determination. It is his most convincing chapter, even if the merger of the vocational and the academic will leave many uneasy.

Elsewhere, things are less secure and, in places, downright depressing. The most disquieting reality is at the proposed intermediate level, where the core will cover only "functional" mathematics, literacy and ICT. Exactly what is meant by "functional"? If it means what I think it means, such a level should be secure by Year 9, given the huge investment in literacy and numeracy hours. And how can any self-respecting system omit science and a foreign language at so early a stage? Whatever happened to breadth?

The reason, of course, is that there are insufficient numbers of scientists and linguists to teach to even intermediate level. These omissions guarantee that there will be still fewer as the crisis deepens. Lord help the nation...

And it will escape no one's attention that the critical battle for breadth post-16 has been lost already as a result. At least Tomlinson has resisted the temptation to call his proposals a baccalaureate: they could not possibly merit the title. For it is, above all, the absence of an educational vision along the academic route that is most striking, the absence of challenge at the early stage that is most distressing. Pragmatism prevails. We cannot expect Tomlinson to breathe life back into the myth of the "gold standard": A-levels, in content and style, with their multiple resits and packaged modules, and the predictable grade inflation, surrendered credibility some time ago. They are better quietly subsumed. Tomlinson bravely recognises this, but it is disturbing that their debilitating features are not addressed unambiguously and that the only solution to stretch the most able is the devalued invention of A* and A**.

Another solution is the extended essay, a concept borrowed from the International Baccalaureate but immediately diverted into the nebulous alternative of the "personal challenge". Under the IB, the essay is the most stimulating and demanding exercise, testing the best pupils to the limit. Will such a rigorous standard be implemented across the nation? I doubt it. The "personal challenge" inspires only scepticism. And internal assessment by teachers may prove far too onerous, and carries with it the vexed issue of subjectivity.

All of this would be staged over a decade, and one can understand, given the previously maimed reforms, Tomlinson's recommendation that time and patience play their part. However, a decade to implement Tomlinson's diploma does seem excessive. One can only imagine the trials and errors, the uncertainty and the tactical machinations as schools grope their way towards the latest Promised Land. Meanwhile, those taking AS and A2 papers will recognise the cruel truth denied by the Government - that the system has failed them. And they may fear that the future will judge their grades as a currency no more useful than the Italian lira today.

Those who have turned to the IB will cling to it even more tightly now: why surrender it for a pale, not to say anorexic, imitation? The IB represents stability, rigour, breadth, coherence and philosophical vision. It is probably what Tomlinson would have liked to offer the nation in some form, but, alas, pragmatism has inevitably prevailed.

The writer is headmaster of King's College School, Wimbledon