Secondary schools whose pupils fail GCSE maths and English should be fined, a paper by a think tank with close links to Downing Street has said.
Funds from the “resit levy” should then be transferred to Further Education(FE) colleges to help them cope with the extra costs of helping students with compulsory resits, Policy Exchange said.
However, teachers said introducing this monetary fine would be an “own goal” because schools are already struggling financially and wouldn’t be able to cope.
The think tank calculates that in 2013 FE Colleges took on five times more students who retook English than schools did.
The Department for Education said that every pupil who does not get at least a C in maths and English GCSE at age 16 is allocated an additional £480 per subject, although this funding is not ring-fenced for those qualifications.
According to the Policy Exchange, 100,239 students re-took English at an FE College compared to the 20,544 who stayed at school and the 8,738 who went to a sixth form college.