‘We’ll value the hard hat as much as the graduation cap.’ These are stirring words from newly incumbent prime minister Andy Burnham, who has announced plans for children as young as 14 to study technical subjects alongside core academic GCSEs such as English, Maths and Science. The idea is that these more vocational subjects would give children a clearer pathway into work and be linked to jobs available in the local area. After 16, they can study practical qualifications while gaining work experience and building connections with local employers.
Burnham is right that promoting a greater range of subjects at GCSE would help boost engagement and stop students from skipping school. He is right that an emphasis on vocational work will also protect young people from AI destroying clerical and administrative jobs in the professional sector. He is also right that we need to redress the over-simplified focus on academic routes and the narrow pedagogical philosophy that ‘there’s only one route to success: university, a degree, a desk’.
The problem is, we have been here before. For decades, successive governments have intoned that vocational education should be equally valued. Last year, Keir Starmer said that Blair’s ambition to get ’50 per cent of kids to university’ was no longer ‘right for our times’. Instead, he set a new target of at least 10 per cent of young people pursuing higher technical qualifications or apprenticeships by 2040. Rishi Sunak repeatedly pledged to crack down on ‘Mickey Mouse’ university degrees and offered to fund 100,000 more apprenticeships instead.
The social snobbery of assuming that university is the only option is deplorably out-of-date
As education secretary, Gavin Williamson oversaw the introduction of new T-levels and the Skills for Jobs white paper. He promised to bring an ‘end to getting a qualification for its own sake’ and that further education would ‘no longer be hiding its vast potential under a bushel’. Boris Johnson also had a ‘radical plan’ to end the ‘pointless, nonsensical gulf between so-called academic and so-called practical education’. As, for that matter, did Theresa May and David Cameron (‘apprenticeships will be the new norm’), and so on.
Yet here we are, in 2026, with a record 1 million young people aged between 16 and 24 not in education, employment or training. This is despite record numbers of university offers and huge skills shortages.
To get this right, Andy Burnham needs to look at what’s gone wrong. Firstly, funding for further education colleges has been dramatically cut, whilst the apprenticeship levy scheme has been a dismal failure, as employers have simply spent the money on existing employees and older adults rather than entry-level opportunities. Research from King’s College London found that for every 17- or 18-year-old who landed an apprenticeship, three had tried and failed, whilst last year saw the smallest number of under-19s getting apprenticeships since the frozen days of Covid. There are simply not enough opportunities to go around: for example, engineering apprenticeship starts fell from 78,000 in 2016 to 45,000 last year.
The introduction of T-levels has also been a disaster. T-levels are narrower and harder than the courses they are meant to replace, making them unsuitable for students without a specific job in mind, or students who only achieve grade 4s or 5s at GCSE. (It is worth noting that only a very small minority of disadvantaged students achieve the grades needed for T-levels.) As a result, only 3 per cent of 16-year-olds currently enrol for a T-level, and around a third drop out (which is much higher than for other courses). Burnham is right to focus on how to embed employability skills earlier in the curriculum, but he also needs to address the fact that the post-16 educational landscape is currently patchy, messy and woefully underfunded.
Burnham is also right, however, to capitalise on the changing cultural consensus. Calling something a ‘bit BTec’ used to be slang for saying something was sub-par, but experts now agree that the UK economy is crying out for plumbers, builders, IT technicians and nursery staff – anyone with ‘real-life’ skills. The social snobbery of assuming that university is the only destination carrying real prestige is now deplorably out-of-date: a third of people now believe university is no longer worth the time or money. Parental expectations have shifted dramatically: a 2010 report noted that 97 per cent of mothers with children born between 2000 and 2002 wanted them to go to university. Now 51 per cent of Britons would opt for an apprenticeship and only 33 per cent for a degree.
Finally, Burnham needs to incentivise employers to hire young people, but he also needs to incentivise young people to become employed, which means the government needs to stop penalising hard work and reward work ethic instead. Yes, AI will never be able to build a brick wall, but why train to be a brickie if you can get more on benefits instead?
Burnham has expressed a grand and worthwhile ambition. But if he wants to differentiate himself from all the prime ministers who have had this ‘vision’ before him, he will have to make some tough decisions.
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