by Malcolm Hyde, regional director of the CBI South East

When companies clear their shorter-term in-tray, the longer-term issue crucial to economic growth that troubles them is our education system.

It’s not just apprenticeships, or business-school links, or careers advice. We need to recognise that to overcome the growing skills shortages we have in key industries, and to fight youth unemployment, this country must face the deep-seated issues we have in our schools system.

Our landmark report, First Steps, sets out the business community’s ideas on how best to help young people whose performance drifts in primary school so much that they can never catch up.

It was about young people who find the single, high prestige, academic route offered isn’t right for them but can’t find a suitable alternative.

Schools must provide a ‘whole education’ experience rather than sticking pupils on the exam treadmill until the day they exit the education system.

So how far has the government come?

In our new report on their progress, we award the Government Bs and Cs for their ideas, but a D for delivery.

We are travelling in the right direction but it’s not been enough to deliver the world-class schools system our young people deserve. We need Ofsted empowered to run broader assessments of school performance moving away from metric-only judgments towards a more rounded assessment of pupils through more narrative reporting.

And we need to invest more in school governance. We need to back training and support governing bodies to challenge school leaders.

While the government continues to make progress on reform to our schools system, they cannot rest on their laurels.

There is so much more to be done if we are to turn around under-performance in our schools and secure a better future for young people.