A secondary school which has opened an on-site call centre where pupils can practise selling mobile phone contracts and answering customer complaints has been criticised for lowering children's expectations.
The centre, at Hylton Red House school in Sunderland, was set up with the help of EDF Energy, which runs its own call centre a couple of miles away. Pupils taking the "preparation course" - worth half a GCSE - answer queries from computer-generated customers.
The assistant headteacher, Helen Elderkin, said the scheme gave 15- and 16-year-olds a wide range of skills that would help them to get a job or continue with their education.
However, Howard Brown, secretary of the National Union of Teachers in Sunderland, said schools had a duty to educate pupils rather than turn out efficient, pliant workers. "We do have to equip our children for a variety of different jobs, but I think this is a step too far," he said.
"It seems that this is going back to the old days when we told children round here that they had to go straight down the mines when they left. Now the mines have gone and we are saying they have to go and work in a call centre. We have an obligation to give them a bit more than that."
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