David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, sparked an interesting discussion on Twitter following his article for Tes, in which he worried that too much technical training provides too narrow a base for a long-term career - in contrast with David’s own geography degree.

In the maritime sector, we’re used to giving people broad initial training, so we avoid most of the traps to which David pointed, but even with that broad base we know that most people will need to retrain later on. The contrast between academic and technical routes is a false one; we all need to keep on learning, whatever path we take initially. 

Background:  Why job-specific courses do students a disservice

Podcast: Why pit knowledge against skills?

News: FE’s impact on UK productivity continues to drop

Broad occupations and skills

When the trailblazer reforms were introduced, the maritime sector had no difficulty embracing the concept of training for broad occupations, because that’s the way it’s always been. Sailors of the past learnt to sail a ship, and the core skills were the same whether that ship had a commercial purpose (what we now call “the merchant navy”) or a military one: mooring and unmooring, making a vessel safe to sail, keeping a watch, navigation and so on. There’s much more specialisation now, but everyone has that strong common core.

However, most seafarers don’t stay at sea until they retire. They “come ashore”, often to join a different employer, and they retrain when they do so. Even a decade as a captain does not, in itself, give someone the additional skills they need to work as a harbourmaster, and that’s particularly the case for desk-based jobs like marine insurance. In the past it was a common assumption that sea-going experience on its own was enough, but look carefully at the skills needs and it’s clear that people require a good deal more. 

That’s why we have been busy creating a number of higher level apprenticeships for these second stage careers, for occupations like marine pilots at level 5 or technical superintendents (who are responsible for a fleet of ships) at level 7.

Commercial focus

In fact, there has been a lot of debate about the non-technical skills which people need when they come ashore, in particular commercial skills (which someone else normally looks after when you’re at sea).

It’s part of a wider concern which we share with other heavily regulated, safety-critical industries: that too much of our training sticks too closely to the regulator’s standards. They’re good standards, but they define the floor, and many employers simply will not pay for training which goes beyond that floor.

And they tend to focus on safety rather than business success, which is (literally) vital when you’re at sea, but too narrow a base for when you come ashore. That’s why the Department for Transport’s Maritime 2050 strategy urges us to look much more carefully at how we can create a culture of continuous learning. This two-stage maritime career model formalises what others might do less formally, but it’s not enough. 

Let me end with an example of an individual who, like David, now leads a major national body, but who started his career as an apprentice. John Syvret is chief executive of Birkenhead-based Cammell Laird, which is building the super-sophisticated polar research ship the Sir David Attenborough (which you may know as Boaty McBoatface). John’s shipbuilding apprenticeship led to a City & Guilds in fabrication and welding technology, then an ONC in ship-building, and an HNC in naval architecture (i.e. ship design), before he joined the draughting office and went on to production management.    

His start in fabrication and welding technology doesn’t appear to have been too narrow a base on which to build a successful business career - any more than geography was for David. But John Syvret did retrain, and he kept on learning, much as David Hughes did, no doubt, after his rather different start. Isn’t that the wider lesson, rather than trying to design early training or education that somehow covers all eventualities?

Iain Mackinnon is secretary to the Maritime Skills Alliance