Balls 'to take forward diploma plan'

Ed Balls has defended government plans to introduce diplomas in academic subjects.

The school's secretary told MPs that the diploma programme was "going from strength to strength and we will continue to take it forward".

He was responding to a question from Liberal Democrat spokesman David Laws who said Alan Johnson, when he was education secretary, had predicted that the system could go "horribly wrong".

Employers' organisation the CBI warned last week that the move would be "an unnecessary distraction".

However, Balls denied that Johnson had made the prediction.

And he pointed to comments by the vice president of pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca that "the diploma ethos of applied learning, far from being a distraction as the CBI suggests, will in fact have a real and positive effect in boosting the number of young people studying key subjects like science and languages".

The diplomas, combining traditional qualifications with practical skills, would help end the "deeply damaging gap between academic qualifications and vocational training", he added.