Tag Archives: vocational education

Vocational education: Closing doors or widening opportunities?

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The education of young people has had quite an airing over the past week. At the Liberal Democrats conference, Munira Wilson MP, the Party’s Education spokesperson at Westminster, gave a platform speech that foreshadowed the announcement by Lucy Powell, the Secretary of State, about post-14 vocational education.

You can see Munira’s speech on YouTube. I suggest starting at 1 hour 38 minutes into the video lib dem conference 2026 autumn saturday afternoon session – Search

In her speech, Munira raised one of the key dilemmas of education. How to promote ambition without encouraging many young people to leave their communities to seek to achieve their ambitions? Many that leave our rural and coastal communities (the source of another debate at the conference) to fulfil an educational ambition, often at university, never return.

I believe that governments should be encouraging these young people to return and set up businesses in rural and coastal communities as part of regeneration schemes.

Labour’s,  Lucy Powell’s, focus was one the perennial issue within the British education system: how to resolve classroom and practical subjects at examination level in terms of parity of esteem? Labour answer is to recreate courses for 14-16 year olds in practical subjects, such as construction, care and business. New Vocational GCSEs unveiled in major shake-up to hands-on learning for teens – GOV.UK

In 2003, I wrote a paper for the Liberal Democrats entitled ‘No child left behind’ – a phrase borrowed from US President Bush – in which I advocated a 14-18 sector. I recognised that many young people at 14 were disillusioned with school, but might be brought back into education if they were offered courses more aligned with their career ambitions. Now, I understand Munira’s point that at 14 she wanted to be a teacher, but as a graduate went into a different career. Munira no doubt already wanted to go to university at 14.

But, what of those, the Newsom 50%, Half Our Future: A tribute to Sir John Newsom’s Report | John Howson  that don’t aspire to stay in education. At what age should we help them on the path to a working life? In 2003, I suggested links with further education, and its more grown- up approach and better facilities than many schools can provide for practical courses.

Labour’s announcement this week, ahead of their conference, seemed a bit rushed. Nothing about where to find the staff to teach  these new vocational subjects in schools? Nothing about the issue of ‘norm’ referencing in examinations. How do you ‘norm reference’ the building of a wall in a construction class or the creation of a meal in a hospitality course? Trying to create national standards will be a real challenge.

Both Munira, and then Lucy Powell, did speak about the need for more work experience in schools. Again, this is something that I support wholeheartedly, but again how do we deal with the limited opportunities in our rural and coastal communities? As so often in education, it will come down to who will pay for the transport?

However, NEETs are not just an education issue. Any government that is responsible for an economy that is not producing jobs for either young people of those made redundant in their 40s and 50s, has two choices, either benefits or some form of education and training provision, if it wants to keep down the numbers unemployed. With AI likely to recreate the job scene in a new format, the issue of the relationship between education and employment isn’t going to go away anytime soon.

Slow start for UTCs

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Along with Free Schools, the Coalition, (well the Conservative section at least), is keen on University Technical Schools and Studio Schools. I don’t really know what my Party’s position is on these new types of 14-18 schools offering specialisms designed to help the local labour market, and provide youngsters will vocational skills.  I suppose we accepted them as part of the Coalition deal, and because we have always wanted better 14-18 education for those not likely to be heading straight for university at eighteen. But, I don’t recall any serious debate about the topic; perhaps I missed it somewhere early on in the life of the Coalition.

Whatever their purpose, it is sad to see that the 39 UTCs and Studio Schools open by the start of September 2103 have in some cases attracted only limited numbers of students. Perhaps not surprisingly, the UTC with the largest number of students is the JCB Academy, a flagship schools which opened in January 2013, and had 276 students enrolled by September of that year. As befits its flagship status, it also had the best attendance record of any of these schools.

Of the other UTCs and studio schools open in September 2013, 25 had an enrolment of 100 students or less, and 14 had enrolled more than 100 students. Now 150 students is a reasonable number for one year group in a 14-18 school, and would give a total of 600 when the school was fully operational. However, three of the schools with fewer than 50 pupils opened in 2012, and one that opened in 2011 with the first tranche of such schools still, apparently, only has 54 students on roll in September 2013. So, unless they increase enrolment over the next two years, they could be fully operational with little more than 100 students.

I am not sure how much capital for new buildings has been ploughed into this programme, but so far it is educating fewer than 2,500 students across the whole of England, or the size of one large comprehensive school. Hopefully, the new schools aiming to come on stream in 2014 will have fared better in the admissions round just completed; perhaps someone might like to file a few FOI requests to find out.

After the recent debate about funding for the 800,000 extra pupils entering the mainstream school system over the decade after 2010, it might be appropriate to ask whether many of the skills being offered in both studio schools and UTCs could have been taught more cost effectively in the further education sector. How far should the national taxpayer be asked to pay for a specialist local school that is often only of benefit to a small section of local industry?  This is especially the case when government is also championing the growth in apprenticeships: the two policies risk being at odds with one another.

As the decisions on where to place these schools seem more related to who wants to fund them, the opportunity to develop a coherent policy towards 14-18 education once again appears to have been lost.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some Studio Schools encounter student attendance challenge

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Are the government’s new studio schools getting off to a difficult start? Recent DfE figures for pupil absence during the autumn term of 2012-13 do at the very least raise questions about what is happening. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/200820/Main_text_-_SFR17_2013.pdf

Five of the ten schools with the highest absence rates, across both primary and secondary sectors, were either studio schools or in one case a University Technical College. As all five of these schools had relatively small enrolments, the behaviour of just one or two reluctant transferees may have unduly affected the outcomes. Nevertheless, against a national rate of 5.2%, or 5.7% for the secondary sector as a whole, absence rates of more than 14% do seem a little on the high side.

Although the majority of the studio schools in the list were in manufacturing centres, with school systems that have faced considerable challenges over the years, it does seem odd that despite the variety of different specialism in these new studio schools so many have these high levels of pupil absence. It might have been though that a fresh start in a new school with a definite vocational slant to the curriculum, and often backed by well known employers, might have inspired pupils to attend regularly. On that basis, it is important to identify what, if anything is going wrong? Indeed, although two studio schools are ranked better than 4,000 in the list of all schools for overall absence rates, the other three schools with studio in their title are in the 600 worst performing school for absence rates.

By focussing on vocational trades, it may be that the early studio schools that a skewed distribution of ability and it will take time to enthuse the pupils about the value of their education after nearly a decade when school has not been the most welcoming of places for many of them. What really must not happen is that these schools become dumping grounds for the failures of the mainstream school system. The new schools coming on stream in 2013 and 2014, including the space studio school in Banbury, need to learn the lessons, not least about transfer to a new school at age 14, that these schools have had to encounter in their early stages of development. It would certainly not be acceptable to either turn a blind eye to high levels of absence in these new types of school or to accept it as a part of the deal for the future of education in England.

As the responsibility for these schools lies with Ministers in Westminster, so officials in the DfE, as would any competent local authority, must ask these schools for the preliminary figures for term two. If these so no improvement over term one of the academic year, action must be taken now. Not to do so will reveal to the education community that while it is acceptable  for central government to castigate local authorities for poor outcomes, government schools are able to produce even worse outcomes with impunity.