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The education secretary has said hundreds of thousands of young people are being encouraged to take easy subjects that are of little vocational value.
Michael Gove made a statement to the House today about Profession Alison Wolf's report on vocational qualifications.
"The damaging system of vocational education that we inherited is failing young people," he told the Commons.
"It must be changed now before the prospects of generations of young people are further blighted.
"We need to elevate the practical and treat vocational education not as it has been seen in the past as an inferior route for the less able, but as an aspirational path for those with specific aptitudes."
Gove told MPs he is accepted all the recommendations in the report.
They include: incentivising young people to take the most valuable vocational qualifications pre-16; enabling FE lecturers and professionals to teach in schools; removing the requirement that all qualifications offered to 14- to 19-year-olds fit within the Qualifications and Credit Framework and ensuring that those who have not secured a good pass in English and mathematics GCSE continue to study those subjects post-16.
Gove said: "At the moment schools and colleges are incentivised to offer lower grade qualifications which are easier to pass because they get paid on those results.
"That must end. The dumbing down of the past must stop if the next generations are to succeed.
"Students should choose the qualifications they need to succeed, not those bureaucracies deem appropriate."
Shadow education secretary Andy Burnham said the introduction of the English Baccalaureate is creating a two-tier system where vocational subjects are marginalised.
He also accused the government of "kicking away the ladders of support that help young people get on in life".
"The government is taking hope away from our young people.
"Unless they change course quickly, this government's legacy will be a lost generation of young people."
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