A-level qualifications are producing students that are not ready for work, the Forum of Private Businesses has claimed.

Despite a record number of ‘A’ grades in this year’s recent exam results, the FSB said the education system is not meeting the recruitment needs of small businesses.

It said its research indicates that about 750,000 small businesses have had to recruit individuals with fewer skills than they had hoped for, before training them.

FPB chief executive Phil Orford said: “There is a gap between what businesses need and what businesses get when it comes to the ability of the education system to produce viable employees.

“The results of the FPB’s research prove our members have issues when it comes to finding employees with basic attributes such as communication, numeracy and literacy, as well as more developed and specific skills that are required by individual businesses. And 18 per cent of business owners believe the labour market available to them is ‘very poor’ or ‘poor’ in providing employees with higher-level attributes, such as foreign language skills, critical thinking and graduate-level science, technology, engineering and maths.