The new prime minister’s eye catching opening announcement on education contains important truths, interwoven with equally important misconceptions. In implementing his agenda, he has the potential to do much good, but also much harm.
Most fundamentally, the design of the school curriculum is not the primary cause of the rapidly expanding crisis of young people not in education, employment or training (Neet). Neither is it the key driver of youth unemployment – most recently measured at 16.4 per cent, close to the highest level since 2015. The main culprits are instead the inflation-busting rises in minimum wage and national insurance contributions, the Employment Rights Act and a buckling welfare system which incentivises inactivity.
The welfare culture that has been fostered over recent years incentivises young people to exit the workforce for minor mental health issues. Policy Exchange’s Out of Control report highlighted that 36 per cent of young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (Send) end up Neet between ages 18 and 25 – compared to 20 per cent of their peers. This has been fuelled by an 83 per cent surge in Education, Health and Care Plans since 2015 and a 20 per cent increase in 15-year-olds claiming Disability Living Allowance. Fixing welfare, rolling back taxes on work and revealing damaging new labour laws would do more to solve the Neet crisis than any educational changes.
On the other hand, Burnham is correct to say our education system does not do enough to support those with vocational talents. Blair’s ambition for half of all young people to go to university – which has formed the basis of subsequent policies for over 25 years – was a disaster. It assumed that expanding access would pay dividends for graduates and the wider economy. However, this has not turned out to be the case; a significant share of university provision no longer delivers the commensurate improvement in fortunes it may have done for previous generations. Policy Exchange’s Tarnished Towers paper found that only 57 per cent of graduates are even in full-time employment 15 months after graduation.
Blair’s vision has underpinned much of the education sector’s recent pathologies, with further education repeatedly cut to pay for it. Schools and colleges have focused on funnelling young people in to debt-trap degrees, letting down many young people whose talents lie elsewhere, and neglecting other pipelines into work.
Andy Burnham’s Manchester Baccalaureate is a genuine example of policy ingenuity in the educational space, and expanding options for vocational education would be an impactful and positive priority to focus on.
Yet in rolling this out, Burnham must not trash the effective academic reforms delivered during the 2010s, which shot England up the international education rankings. Despite union pressure, the government should resist the pressure to implement yet more confusing and harmful changes to GCSEs or A-Levels. Instead, Burnham should home in on established methods for offering high-quality vocational routes to those who would benefit. He does not need to look particularly far.
Policy Exchange’s 2025 paper, From School to the Skilled Workforce, which includes a complimentary endorsement from one Andy Burnham, sets out the case for University Technical Colleges (UTCs). As the UK faces a severe labour shortage – 27 per cent of all job vacancies stem from technical skills deficits – choosing to expand UTCs, which combine traditional academic study with employer and university partnerships, could be the solution. Designed as specialist schools for 14–19 year olds, UTCs take on higher than average proportions of students with Send and Free School Meal eligibility yet outperform equivalent mainstream schools in placing young people into technical employment, higher apprenticeships and Stem degrees, and see fewer young people become Neets.
In his endorsement to the paper, Burnham said ‘This is a tried and tested model, and one that is much needed across more schools in England.’ Doubling the number of UTCs, and creating a similar number of UTC sleeves – which allow existing, mainstream secondary schools to teach specialist technical education – would be an effective way to put a high-quality vocational track within reach of almost every child, without damaging the core knowledge-rich academic curriculum. If he is serious, he will also need to look at the post-18 landscape: capping university places, funding a new place in an FE college for every university place cut, and looking to new, work-based models such as NMITE in Herefordshire.
Awareness has been just as big a barrier as funding
Employers have been directly involved in the education process for decades across the continent, and their contribution will be crucial if Burnham is going to make a success of his technical education reforms. Business engagement on a mass scale will require concrete funding – which means Burnham must be willing to face down the Treasury. This is where T-Levels stumbled: the £8.5 million Employer Support Fund was too cumbersome for employers to access, and did not sufficiently compensate them, meaning a failure of work placements held back the roll-out.
Awareness has been just as big a barrier as funding: only one third of employers are even aware T-Levels exist, and the Department for Education itself had estimated that a shortage of teachers and industry placements would cap enrolments at 48,000. Burnham’s ‘business friendly socialism’ must incentivise firms to engage on a scale that will meaningfully tip the scales.
The reforms must focus on expanding the options available for young people. More vocational routes are needed, but not every school should be a UTC or be forced to offer technical options – and the rigour of academic qualifications must not be compromised. Rather than replacing the university monoculture with a technical one, Burnham should foster diversity of provision, catering for different talents, both vocational and academic.
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