Tory leadership hopeful Rishi Sunak will seek to make students study maths and English at school until they're aged 18.
The self-confessed underdog of the race to become the next Prime Minister said he shares his parents "passion" for education.
He even suggested he wanted to work in the Government's Education department after becoming an MP, having been "inspired" by Michael Gove.
Setting out a three-point plan to transform education, the former Chancellor vowed to phase out university degrees that do not improve students’ “earning potential”, create a Russell Group of world-class technical colleges and introduce a British Baccalaureate that would prevent 16-year-olds from dropping maths and English.
It comes a week after his Tory leadership rival Liz Truss pitched herself as the “education prime minister”.
Mr Sunak told the Sunday Times: "We are almost unique in the western world, for an advanced economy and all high-performing education systems, in allowing people to drop maths and stop studying their native language at 16.
"In Germany, France, Asia, youngsters are studying maths all the way to 18 and in the way a modern economy works, I think it’s going to hold us back if our youngsters don’t have those skills.”
Ms Truss vowed to replace failing academies with new free schools, and a promise that pupils with top A level grades would get an automatic invitation to an interview at Oxford or Cambridge.
After private schooling at Winchester College, where he was head boy, and a degree in politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford, Mr Sunak took an MBA at Stanford University in California.
Last week Ms Truss set out a six-point education plan that included replacing failing academies with “a new wave of free schools” and improving maths and literacy standards.
She has said she would end the ban on new grammar schools.
In a repeated line of her leadership campaign, Ms Truss said she saw “first hand how children were failed and let down by low expectations” during her comprehensive state schooling in Leeds.
The comments drew criticism from political leaders in the city, and former pupils and staff of her former school, the Roundhay School.
