And we’re off – Lucy Powell has followed up on Andy Burnham’s speech about providing high-quality technical education routes that are valued and respected by students, parents and employers.
The new Education Secretary is eye-poppingly adrift in her analysis and assertions. It is true to say, as she does, that we have far too many young people not in education or working (NEETs). But it is ridiculous to blame this on the Michael Gove-era school curriculum.
Until four years ago the number of NEETs was at its lowest for decades. The causes of the rise look to be the big increase in the costs and risks of employing the young (mostly under Labour), other labour market realignments affecting entry-level jobs (most obviously AI-driven automation) and the explosion in the number of young people reporting mental health concerns. As Daisy Christodoulou points out, Wales has an almost antithetical curriculum but higher NEETs, with numbers growing faster.
Powell disparages the current national curriculum. Yet since it has been in place, England has risen significantly to a very strong position in international comparisons. And the improvements have been across the board, for lower attainers as well as more academic children, for disadvantaged students as well as more advantaged.
It looks as though what we are likely to get is more curriculum tinkering
She thinks the curriculum leaves many children disengaged. Yet when curriculum is well-structured and well-taught, most children find learning satisfying – even when they don’t see an immediate career application for their newfound knowledge and skills. School does get boring when teaching is weak or too narrowly focused on exam answers and test technique, or when disruptive pupils are allowed to slow or undermine learning. Redesigning the curriculum won’t fix these problems.
The Education Secretary describes the curriculum as a ‘straitjacket’ and as a ‘one-size-fits-all’ model. But there is plenty of space within existing curriculum models for 14-year-olds to take up technical and vocational subjects, and many already do – around 575,000 alternative qualifications were taken last year, in addition to technical subjects at GCSE. The core ‘Progress 8’ measure that, in practice, controls what schools offer allows three of the eight slots to be taken up by any approved qualification, including a wide range of technical and vocational qualifications.
There’s nothing wrong with expecting all 14-year-olds to take English, maths and science, a humanity and even another language alongside the technical courses, as would be normal in the countries whose technical education systems we look to and admire. Children on technical tracks in countries like Germany and Switzerland continue with as much general education as British children to age 16 and beyond, alongside their technical programmes.
And we already have some excellent technical courses and qualifications, including Design & Technology GCSEs and many others. The problem is that not many students are taking them, often because schools have a strong incentive to steer them instead into easier classroom vocational qualifications, which have little practical content and are easier to teach. Boys who would once have taken a technology GCSE are now more likely to take BTEC in Enterprise or Sport; girls to take BTEC Health & Social Care. It isn’t the qualifications that need redesigning; it is the performance tables equivalence tariff.
But Lucy Powell has her eyes set on almost every minister’s favourite trainset: the curriculum and qualifications. Even though the current curriculum review is all but complete and awaiting publication, she wants to play. And the messages that she is sending suggest that she would like to lower expectations across the board – to expect less of our children than other countries expect of theirs – and to create a two-tier system where many children are pushed out of general education by the age of 14. This is early selection by another name, and it is astonishing that it is being proposed by a Labour secretary of state.
There are, of course, other things that Powell could and should do besides fixing the bad incentives. Technical education is unavoidably expensive and she could fight for better funding in schools and in colleges and make sure that funding is ring-fenced so it cannot bleed away into other budgets. She could review the certifications for the lowest 10 per cent of attainers, who do need something to show employers what they can do, not just what they cannot. She could work up plans to simplify pupil pathways at GCSE and post-16 to achieve better labour market integration. The Manchester Baccalaureate is an interesting pilot of simplified pathways, but the first cohort is only one year into the programme, so it is far too early to say whether it is a success.
Perhaps most urgently, Powell needs to tackle the medicalisation of childhood and the juggernaut of mental health messaging that is convincing to children and young people that they cannot be expected to function normally and take responsibility for their lives. To make real headway on NEETs, Powelll needs support from Burnham, who will need better judgement and more determination than Keir Starmer to reverse some of the bad policy changes that have been made, and to make some of the changes that have been ducked. But above all, Burnham must create stability.
Sadly, it looks as though what we are likely to get is more curriculum tinkering and even more qualification change. This will be costly and time-consuming for schools and exam boards, and may well worsen rather than improve children’s educational experience and outcomes. No wonder the sector response is so muted. Powell is giving us little reason to be optimistic.
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