Students will be able to leave academic education at 14 in favour of vocational training at specialist colleges under coalition plans.

Up to 70 technical schools teaching practical skills could be opened before the next election, according to Lord Baker of Dorking, the former Tory education secretary who is heading the scheme.

Baker said the schools were not a small experiment but a movement designed to tackle a shortage of young people with vocational skills.

“If we are going to have high-speed rail, the fastest broadband in the world, new nuclear power stations, we are going to need technicians,” he told the Times. “We simply don’t have enough technically orientated people coming through.”

Critics fear the move would create a two-tier system, with less able students at risk of being pushed into vocational courses, and pupils forced to make important decisions about their future at too young an age.

Baker insisted that 14 was a reasonable age to make choices about a career path. “Eleven is too soon to choose that, 16 is too late; 14 is the right age of transfer,” he said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jan/07/students-opt-out-academic-education-14