I am begging Andy Burnham to read the Wolf Report. Practical education is valuable. But Key Stage 4 (aged 14-16) is too young to start sorting children into 'academic' and 'vocational' tracks. We learned this lesson in 2011 when Alison Wolf found that children from poor backgrounds were being funnelled into vocational qualifications which offered no progression on to further study and negligible employment opportunities. Meanwhile, fewer than half of pupils leave Key Stage 4 with a strong pass in both English and Maths. This is the real barrier to employment. Not that teenagers didn't study 'business' or 'creative media' at 14. Schools with a strong academic track record, and pupils with affluent parents, will avoid V Levels. They know they will soon be regarded as 'soft' by employers. But those already disadvantaged, or at underperforming schools will be pushed down a technical route. 14 year-olds who is struggling will be encouraged to take construction at GCSE rather than given extra maths tuition. The V Levels experiment will probably be phased out in a decade. But it will leave thousands of children, from the most deprived backgrounds, with a set of qualifications they cannot leverage into a job or further study.