Sir Keir Starmer’s speech to Labour party conference was a repudiation of two Tory-era skills policies.
The prime minister signalled the undoing of controversial reforms that saw vocational subjects score ‘no value’ in the 14-19 curriculum. Starmer also called time on the failed apprenticeship changes of 2017 which caused the number of young people getting on the careers ladder to plummet by one-third.
The curriculum review, led by professor Becky Francis, should recommend new ways of breathing life into our rigid Edwardian-style syllabus. For too long, young people have missed out on music, dance, drama and vocational courses, mainly because of outdated dogma like the Wolf Review.
The last Tory government enforced unwanted segregation in upper secondary education with the roll-out of T levels. Labour is remaining tight-lipped about the precise future of these qualifications.
No amount of money or political manipulation, however, should get in the way of a quality comprehensive education for every student up until they reach nineteen.
Government telling parents of teenagers that they must study either A levels or T levels, is rooted in a discredited notion that people are innately endowed with two types of brain — academic or technical. This kind of social class engineering was defeated by the great socialist education secretary, Anthony Crosland in the 1960s, when he got rid of the 11-plus.
Bridget Philipson, if she remains true to Labour’s once proud traditions, should have nothing to do with such a blatant form of educational apartheid. If T levels are to have any future, they must be reduced to the equivalent of one A level or a single Applied General Qualification (AGQ).
This way, 14-19 year olds will be able to ‘mix and match’ academic and vocational subjects via an integrated and comprehensive education offer. For work-based options, the policy focus should shift towards paid foundation apprenticeships for 16–19-year-olds, reversing a staggering 70-per-cent decline in young apprentices since 2015/16.
The money saved on slimmed downed T levels, perhaps without the need for expensive 45-day industry placements, can be directed towards state-of-the-art apprentice training instead.
FE has been reduced to a local delivery arm of the state
In the 1960s and 70s, FE colleges delivered day release and evening courses to more than a million younger workers. Technical colleges were invented to meet the needs of local industries. It’s bizarre that FE has been reduced to a local delivery arm of the state. No wonder staff morale and pay is so far behind more autonomous universities.
With the inaugural report of Skills England, the starting gun has gone off on repairing the country’s broken skills and labour market. For too long, policy makers have shrugged their shoulders or idly stood by as the apprenticeship levy was abused by corporate bosses.
Instead of providing apprentice opportunities to 900,000 under-24-year-olds that were NEET, senior managers helped themselves to MBAs, all fully funded by the taxpayer.
To add to the problem, many employers have failed to invest adequately in the workforce. Training volumes have slumped by half since 1997. Multinationals relied on importing cheap labour instead of investing in domestic skills and paying a proper living wage.
The biggest headache for Labour now is avoiding the trap of ‘Whitehall knows best’. Policy documents being drafted by officials haven’t changed for forty years. They all promise more of the same: bureaucratic market centralisation.
Labour say they want to see a decade of national renewal. Skills England will be easily replaced by the next government unless ministers seriously engage in skills reforms that become irreversible.
The way to achieve this is through what I call triple decentralisation.
First, by devolving all education programme spending to post-18-year-olds, including HE funding, via individual learning accounts.
Second, by devolving all capital funding (on a needs formula basis), including decisions about the (re)organisation of 16-19 and adult provision, to locally elected mayors.
And third, by bringing all employers within scope of a national workforce investment fund. Every firm should be obligated to pay something into the levy pot.
For too long the skills bureaucracy has been content to muddle through. And many employers have got away without paying for training. It’s time for real change.
Individual Learning Accounts have been tried and failed. “Training volumes have slumped” relates to formal qualifications only as there is no way of knowing how much an employer spends on training. As someone with direct experience of two training levies, they are far from perfect. And if UK PLC is to close the estimated 10 year skills lag with its peers overseas then focusing young people on music, dance and drama won’t make us a competitive nation. And yet the University of Staffordshire offers / offered the L7 Senior Leader apprenticeship (“..senior managers helped themselves to MBAs”).