The prime minister has defended the accreditation of in-company qualifications after it was announced that staff at McDonald's could gain the equivalent of an A-level in burger bar management.

The fast food giant, Network Rail and the airline Flybe are the first three companies to win government approval to become an exam board.

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority has approved a pilot "basic shift manager" course, which will train staff in everything they need to run a McDonald's outlet, from marketing to human resources and customer service skills.

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The budget airline Flybe will start piloting their "airline trainer programme" in the summer, which will cover everything from engineering to cabin crew training.

Much of the course will fit with the QCA's Qualifications and Credit Framework, which allows credits for units of work to build up to full qualifications over time.

The company hopes to award qualifications equal to good GCSEs and up to university degrees.

Network Rail is piloting an initial qualification in track engineering and hopes to issue qualifications equivalent to GCSEs, but with some units at postgraduate level that could contribute to a master's qualification.

Speaking on GMTV, Brown said: "You have got to do a pretty intensive course to get that qualification. It's not that standards are going to fall. It's going to be a tough course. Once you've got that qualification you can go anywhere."

Brown has just returned from a trip to China and India, where 2 million people go to university. "We can do it in this country," she said. "We've got to win the skills race of the future. Lots of companies are saying 'we will help' and train in management qualifications.

"Every young person needs a skill and to think about going to college, doing an apprenticeship or university."

The government wants to double the number of apprenticeships from 250,000 to 500,000 so that young people leaving school can get an opportunity to learn, he said. "It's the range that's available for young people now that's important."

Brown added that the numbers completing apprenticeships was rising and the government was considering a financial incentive to teenagers finishing the scheme. Currently 51% of apprentices fail to complete their course.

Today's announcement marks the first time commercial companies have been allowed to award nationally recognised qualifications based on their own workplace training schemes.

The initiative aims to give official credit to training that would otherwise not be recognised outside the firms concerned. But ultimately it will be up to universities and the admissions service, Ucas, to decide whether they take on students with these qualifications.

Ken Boston, QCA's chief executive, said: "This announcement gives official recognition to employers' commitment to training. By becoming awarding bodies, Flybe, McDonald's and Network Rail are enabling the skills of their employees to be recognised and recorded."

John Denham, the skills secretary, said the move was an important step towards ending the "old divisions" between company training schemes and national qualifications, "something that will benefit employees, employers and the country as a whole".

John Cridland, deputy director general of the CBI, called the decision a "significant milestone on the road to reforming qualifications so that they better reflect the skills and competencies employers and employees need".

"Companies currently invest £33bn every year in training their staff, but only one third of employer training leads to qualifications because not enough official courses offer the competencies that employers require. Firms have instead run their own bespoke training programmes and formally recognising more of this employer training will lead to more relevant qualifications and give a greater recognition to business and employee investment in skills," he said.

"Flybe, McDonald's and Network Rail deserve recognition for trailblazing this initiative and making it easier for companies wanting to follow in their footsteps."

But the general secretary of the University and College Union, Sally Hunt, said: "We fully understand the benefits of people being able to transfer in-house accredited training to the next level. However, we would have concerns about qualifications that are very narrow and specific to one organisation, like McDonald's.

"Just last week, a report revealed that some universities have concerns over diplomas. We are unsure whether those institutions would be clamouring to accept people with McQualifications," she said.

A Ucas spokesman said employer-led qualifications could prove a valuable route into higher education and pointed to the diploma in fashion retail, which is already part of the Ucas tariff. Ucas has not been approached to consider these new awards as part of its tariff system, "though this is not unusual at an early stage of a qualification's design", said the spokesman.

The shadow skills secretary, David Willetts, said: "For the new qualifications to work, they should be rigorous and transferable. It's not for Gordon Brown to specify how much they're worth. That should depend on what employers and academic institutions think of them."