On August 15 an 18-year-old near you will take a leap in the dark – they will be one of the 50,000 or so students whose A-level results were not good enough to get into their first or second choice university. I want to examine just how dangerous this leap is.

I am of course talking about the UCAS clearing system, that undignified scramble where unfilled (and unwanted?)  places are offered out like supermarket items that have passed  their sell-by date.

Let’s be brutally frank. With few exceptions, what we have are young people who have not achieved their predicted results chasing unfilled places at universities and courses that simply haven’t attracted first rate candidates.  One admissions tutor stated frankly that what we have are “second rate candidates chasing second rate places!” The consequence of this harsh truth is that young people end up on courses they aren’t suited to at places they don’t want to be.  And all of this decision making is concentrated into the hours after the results hit the door mat.  “It’s all over by lunchtime” said one admissions tutor.  This explains why, during the 15 years I taught sixth formers, I kept them well away from clearing.

I discussed this with an admissions tutor from one of our largest and oldest metropolitan universities. They described clearing as an “undignified bunfight” and called for a “more measured approach”.  The vacancies that this university has are few, and invariably not in mainstream subjects, and the entry requirements remain very high.  These are not second rate opportunities, but they remain choices made in extreme haste – by lunchtime! A member of the admissions team at the LSE confirmed that they hadn’t been in clearing since at least 2004, and quite probably some time before that. So it looks pretty clear that places in clearing at our most prestigious universities are very thin on the ground.

I would like to see real hard data on the outcomes for those who have used clearing – year one drop-out rates, degree quality, employment destinations and salary levels.

I then turned to UCAS to see what their experience was.  Unsurprisingly for an organisation that still clings to the discredited and outdated process of applications supported by predicted grades rather than post A-level applications, data on the success of the clearing process is well buried. I asked their data team for non-continuation rates of students who enter university through clearing and the information is not available. So as a last resort, I called some universities who I suspected had a higher number of applicants through clearing, and asked the same question about drop-out rates from clearing applicants.  They proved surprisingly reluctant to discuss this.  I wonder why!

Now let’s look at the subjects that proved popular in clearing.  Top of the pile was Business and Management Studies with a huge 8,179 clearing places. Social sciences attracted 4,336 candidates through clearing and Engineering attracted 3,200 candidates. How many of these places were at Oxbridge, the LSE, Manchester, Imperial – those flagships of international excellence? Not one I wager.  Another interesting popular beneficiary of clearing was Computer Sciences – 3,800 candidates for a subject that has the highest level of graduate unemployment after six months, and where the industry preference is for direct training, often through apprenticeships, according to a Microsoft spokesperson.

Who is advising these young people in this narrow window of ‘opportunity’?  Is anyone around to tell them that entry to these sectors is better served by undertaking an apprenticeship, with companies crying out for good A-level candidates, and that the new higher level apprenticeship programme offers a fully employed debt free pathway to career fulfilment.

I would like to see real hard data on the outcomes for those who have used clearing – year one drop-out rates, degree quality, employment destinations and salary levels.

Until someone convinces me otherwise, my advice is simple. Steer clear, and don’t be beguiled by the advertising and promoting of clearing by, among others, the Daily Telegraph and The Independent.

Peter Cobrin runs the Apprenticeships England Community Interest Company and the Campaign for Real Apprenticeships

Last year it was my great pleasure to be invited to the celebratory dinner held during WorldSkills; in my role as President of the Chartered Institute of Plumbing and Heating Engineering, I was dressed in my finest presidential regalia. There were many professional bodies and institutes represented, each having its own rich history of supporting craft, vocational and professional learning. Our jaws dropped during a speech given by John Hayes when he announced that all the ills currently plaguing the economy could be fixed if he, yes he, introduced ‘guilds’, like we had back in the day.

Back in the day? Did we no longer exist? Were we all wasting our time? Many of us shook our heads with incredulity as he announced the areas benefiting from this great vision. FE Week has a wide readership, so I couldn’t possibly repeat the various responses to the terms ‘construction’ and ‘engineering’ from the six or so professional bodies on my table, all representing different aspects of the construction and engineering industries. We wrote to the Minister offering to meet with him and help shape his vision and offer a picture of what we had been doing for the last few centuries. He never replied.

Yesterday FE Week carried a story of a leaked ministerial report suggesting that all of the ills plaguing further education could be addressed through the introduction of a ‘guild’. Sound familiar? So here we go; having suffered the progressive dismantling of the professionalism agenda since the coalition came to power, we are to have a new guild charged with standard setting, qualifications, continuing professional development, etc. Membership, both individual and institutional, will be voluntary, except you will only be able to draw down funding related to ‘Chartered Community College’ status if you are in membership.

I am sure we will hear the usual players say what a wonderful idea this is and how they will help the Minister realise his vision. They did it before, with Equipping our Teachers for the Future. Until government (this one) withdrew financial support for professionalism in the form of subsidised IfL subscriptions, then they revolted. This time, however, it plays more to the employer perspective than that of the individual professional. So teachers and trainers go back to being part of a workforce where the status of the institution (Chartered Community College) matters more than the professional standing of individual teachers.

How much will this cost? Almost certainly more than the saving made by government when it pulled back from funding IfL membership. What difference will it make? Almost certainly none. You can not recreate the tradition and history of guilds and professional institutes through a policy such as this with its related funding strings. Guilds and institutes exist where there is a culture of shared professional identity and broad agreement on what professionalism looks like, this includes the need for professionals to be appropriately qualified and the will of employers to support this.

This is where the advances made since regulation first appeared in 2001 started to crumble; when the financial burden moved from the state to the individual; when unions cried this was unfair and that employers should pay; when employers said they saw no value in a professional institute if they had to fund it. Impasse. Lingfield Review. A review which addressed the mechanics of regulation but not the culture of professionalism. And here lies the problem. Until we turn around the culture of mangerialism and state influence over teaching and learning and foster instead a culture of shared professional identity and trust in the professionalism of teachers and trainers it simply doesn’t matter if we have a guild, institute, professional body or improvement service ….. as we don’t have a profession.

Lee Davies was formerly the Deputy Chief Executive of the Institute for Learning and is the Immediate Past President of the Chartered Institute of Plumbing and Heating Engineering.