For the memory of a lifetime, reform, reform, reform

We find ourselves staring down the barrel of reform in vocational and technical education once more, with the aim of matching our international peers for invention and innovation, but how long exactly have we been chasing this goal? You’d be surprised at the answer…

It seems we can’t get enough of it. Tinker here, trim there. Cut here, paste there. The English have seemed to develop something of a fetishism with educational reform, and just when you think you’ve got your head around the latest qualification, it pops its head up again. What worked 10 years ago is now deemed to be utterly the wrong thing and requires reform. Again.

In the last 15 years we’ve taught the NQF, QCF, RQF and T Levels. We’ve delivered NVQs and Apprentice Standards. Awards, certificates, diplomas, extended certificates, sub-diplomas, foundation diplomas at al. In the next three years, we will be adding the AAQ (Alternative Academic Qualification) and the TQ (Technical Qualification) alongside T Levels, A Levels and the continued Standards (being reformed?). That amounts to 6 qualification frameworks in 15 years linked to vocational and technical education. On average every two and a half years qualifications have changed. No wonder people are confused. Consider that the A Level has been in place since 1951, and you may get more of an understanding of why this is not a good thing.

One hundred and seventy years of hurt

Much of this is predicated through the highly influential Wolf Report (2011). A theme throughout the report was the convoluted nature of qualifications and the apparent confusion to employers, although in over 20 years of education, training thousands of electricians and a product of the system itself, I have never had this conversation myself. It felt at the time that I was perhaps alone in my experiences as a teacher and assessor and my relationships with apprentices and employers.

Another recurrent theme is international competitiveness. The rhythmic dissonance of vocational and technical qualifications and the development of a skilled competitive international economy has oscillated for 170 years. It goes a little something like this: “we are lagging international competitors – we must change the qualification because that must be the problem – we are still lagging international competitors – we must change the qualification because…” You get the point.

The Science and Art Department was founded in 1853 to promote and encourage ‘practical’ arts alongside science, develop examinations and focus on teacher training, arguably because influential people noticed that a hundred and seventy years ago we might be on the international backfoot. Whilst Britain basked in the retrospective glow of entrepreneurialism and artisanal arrogance and superiority, continental Europe was developing an educational system that valued and encouraged vocational and technical development, and it was having an impact.

At around the same time, we made the decision to transfer industrial schools to the Home Office to be used for young offenders, associating vocational training with criminality. Notice the difference? Even the successful industrialists of the time sent their children to study academic programmes through university rather than explore the technical opportunities. Perhaps culture has as much a part to play in this international decline as education?

Let’s pinch the German’s idea. They seem to know what they are doing.

As the 1900s rolled in, Robert Morant, the then Education Secretary, drew upon French and German vocational schooling successes in his vision for the Junior Technical School. The concept, familiar today in the form of the UTC, saw schooling with an industrial link and specific trades for those aged 13 alongside a general education.

The expense however of providing specialist teachers and equipment proved too much for the government and the concept ended up being diluted before finally being subsumed into general secondary schooling. As the decades progressed, vocational and technical education continued its decline. Politics and politicians increasingly became more of a career, with decreasing exposure to industry and the realities of the practical world. Experience in the vocational and technical world suffered as a result, and the A Level was perpetuated as the post-16 destination of choice for the wealthy and political class.

So, we’re lagging internationally, what do we do?

Cutting a long story short, we find ourselves once again, 170 years after first recognising the fact that our international competitors were stealing a march, trying to fix it through educational reform. The T Levels in some instances are laudable, in others will exacerbate skills shortages. The BTEC and Applied Generals allow the opportunity for progression to higher levels for the disadvantaged; those whose parents can’t afford tuition to get into grammar, or fund private schooling. They are being removed.

Vocational qualifications have seen some of the biggest recent changes but are felt to be an inferior option by the Government, omitted completely from highly influential reports such as the Sainsbury’s post-16 skills plan, who first denigrate then remove the term ‘vocational’ from the report, instead suggesting everyone be ‘technical’. I’m unsure that housebuilders are crying out for thousands of bricklayers with super-high levels of qualifications, but the T Level content, produced as a result of the skills plan, seems to think differently. It’s all screaming out for a system that recognises every form of education as equal in their intent, but somehow the whistling arrow of solution gracefully glides over the target and instead hits a passing hay bale.

Reform will fix it, leave it with us!

Will the AAQ allow the same equality of opportunity that the BTEC has? Who knows. Will the TQ be genuine reform, or just another rebadge and reshuffle of qualification content, as the NQF, QCF and RQF have been? Forgive my scepticism, but probably not. Will we ever address the culture in this country of academic being the best, technical the ‘compromise’, and vocational being for ‘someone else’s kids’? It’s looking increasingly unlikely in my lifetime.

When I hear the word ‘reform’, I shudder, yet retain a glimmer in the deepest recesses of my soul that someone, somewhere, with knowledge, integrity, experience and common sense, is going to do the right thing. It pains me to say that I think with this next tranche, we’re going to hit yet another hay bale.