For technical education to succeed, creativity can’t be an afterthought

For too long, young people have been told that academic routes carry ambition and status, while technical and vocational pathways are somehow second best.

Giving young people earlier access to technical education from age 14, with skills training, work experience and stronger employer connections, is an important moment. So is the ambition for mayors to develop local pathways with schools, colleges and employers from September 2028.

Young people should see routes into skilled work where they live, rather than leaving their home region to believe serious opportunity exists.

But if Andy Burnham’s “hard hat and graduation cap” ambition is to work, we must resist treating technical education as one single thing.

Creative technical education is different.

That point was made powerfully in the House of Lords recently, when Baroness Caine warned against a one-size-fits-all approach and highlighted Birmingham Ormiston Academy and the partnerships helping to build Birmingham’s screen cluster.

Her intervention was important because the creative economy is project-based, often freelance, and built around portfolios, networks and collaboration. Around 90 per cent of creative businesses are micro-enterprises. More than 30 per cent of the workforce is freelance, and in film and television that rises above 50 per cent.

Skills minister Jacqui Smith was right to confirm no qualifications will lose funding approval in 2026–27, commit to no further removal of funding for creative art and design qualifications until 2030, and convene a creatives advisory group for qualifications reform.

That is the right direction of travel. The creative sector does not need reform done to it. It needs reform done with it. This matters especially at level 3. For many young people, level 3 creative qualifications are not a holding pattern before university. They are the bridge between school and industry. They are where young people discover whether they are editors, producers, performers, designers, lighting technicians, coders, animators, production managers, filmmakers, game designers, stage managers or entrepreneurs.

They are also where many young people develop the confidence, discipline and professional behaviours that employers value but traditional academic qualifications do not always measure.

That is why breadth matters. Portfolio matters. Rehearsal matters. Studio practice matters. Live briefs matter. Collaboration matters. Time to experiment matters.

A narrow qualification model will not build a broad creative workforce.

At BOA Group, we see this every day.

Since Birmingham Ormiston Academy opened in 2011, BOA Group has grown into a specialist multi- academy trust rooted in Birmingham’s creative and digital economy. Across its three academies, learners produce, perform, code, design, edit, rig, film, rehearse, collaborate and present through real projects, specialist facilities and industry-connected pathways.

Our new Imagine Everything strategy responds to a national challenge: how do we build a stronger talent pipeline for sectors that are growing quickly, changing constantly and still too often closed to young people without networks, confidence or access?

Our answer is to bring together high standards, professional practice, technical confidence, work experience, employer partnership, enrichment, progression and a network that lasts beyond school.

The test for reform is simple. Young people must see where new pathways lead. Level 3 qualifications that work should not be abandoned before replacements have proved their breadth and progression value. Creative apprenticeships and placements must reflect freelance work, project cycles, small employers and regional clusters.

Will the new system strengthen the creative pipeline, or weaken it?

The prime minister has opened a vital national conversation. The skills minister has created an opportunity to get the creative detail right. Now government must learn from what already works.

The creative economy does not need a skills system designed for another world of work. It needs one designed for this one.

That is what BOA Group is building in Birmingham. And it is why this moment matters.