You can have a lot of fun showing a non-Radio 4 listener a clip of the panel game Mornington Crescent. When they express bewilderment, you leave them no wiser by saying the object is to name other locations in such a way as to prevent the next person saying the address. 

Sometimes, I think the word “educator” has taken on the same mantle, a word we try hard to avoid.

In recent months, we have seen expert scientists and healthcare specialists standing alongside the prime minister explaining the Covid-19 pandemic and its implications. The government has made it explicit that it is guided by scientific expertise. It fills me with envy because, in contrast, in further education settings, we more commonly hear phrases like policy-led, LEP-led and employer-led as the solution to all our skills and technical education problems. Given the importance of getting skills education right for a Covid-19 world, I wonder when we might consider “educator-led” as a solution?

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When people use the term employer-led, they tend to mean private companies - and large ones at that. But in over 20 years as a principal, I’ve yet to meet an employer who wants to lead on anything educational. Consulted, yes, but they find the idea of taking a lead laughable. “You’re the expert” is the most common riposte.

Assuming expertise

The appeal of employer-led is strange. The Business Statistics briefing paper lodged in the House of Commons Library in December 2019 showed the then-private sector landscape. The coronavirus pandemic will have, of course, had an impact on this. But according to that data, of the 5.9 million private companies in the UK, only 1.4 million are employers, the lowest proportion ever. Of these over 1.1 million employ nine or fewer people (micro-businesses). Around 211,000 small companies employ an average of 20 people each, while the 36,000 medium companies employ on average 96 people.  There are only 8,000 large companies in the UK and on average they employ just over 1,300 people each. 

That means the vast majority of private employers are about the size of a typical family. They will possess real expertise in their field but why would we assume they have the expertise and time to lead on education? In practice when we talk about employer-led initiatives we tend to mean the leaders of large private companies. But given such businesses represent 0.5 per cent of employers can they really speak for the 99.5 per cent let alone have expertise in education? If employer size was seen as important large colleges like my own have the same scale. We employ 1,300 people and have expertise in education, yet somehow we are not viewed (or paid) as captains of industry.

This is not to denigrate the importance of the employer voice though. Colleges work with very large numbers of employers, in our case nearly 1,500, but these are likely to be the most enlightened, ones who already care about the development of their staff.  They are fantastic in helping us shape our offer. In general, however, international comparisons tend to reflect badly on UK employers. A Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) report in 2012 ranked the UK well behind our competitors across 18 management practices. The report set out reasons for underperformance including that UK managers are less qualified, they are under-trained, they lack key skills, and leadership and management skills are not being applied strategically.  Perhaps most worrying was the widespread perception that leadership and management skills are something you “pick up” and the inability of UK managers to objectively assess the effectiveness of their own management practices. 

We should also remember the apprenticeship levy was introduced because employers were not voluntarily investing in their workforce in the way we should expect. Another black mark. Given all this what recommends UK employers to lead on determining UK education and skills policy?

Does business know best?

The history of employer-led initiatives is not good, and you don’t need to take my word for it. In her authoritative book “Does Education Matter?” Alison Wolf pulls no punches, especially about their official representatives. In the chapter “Does business know best?” she concluded “in its entanglement with NVQs, its creation of national targets, and its commitment to core skills… business helped create policies that ranged from neutral to expensively harmful”. 

In short, business tends to make simplistic, narrow, ineffective, and unappealing suggestions. I’ve yet to meet an educator who would have suggested UTCs or National Colleges as the solution to anything, yet businesses are often enthusiastic. Even with T levels, it feels like educators have been brought in late to the party to ensure they will work in practice.

In contrast, the qualifications developed by educators tend to be the ones that have real currency and that have stood the test of time. Our degrees, A levels and GCSEs have high international recognition and esteem. The most respected vocational and technical qualifications are those shaped by educators and again are both popular and have an international reputation, despite being so badly under-funded. They have also enabled thousands of young people to progress and succeed at high levels.

One of the common criticisms thrown back at educators is employers reporting skills gaps.  But any advanced country will have such gaps, it is a sign of progress. The reality is that on this measure the UK fares very well. The 2018 Manpower Group survey showed the UK was third-best in the world for overcoming talent shortages, way ahead of the US, Germany and Japan. That could suggest UK employers are less ambitious or it could be the result of our immigration system, but it hardly suggests colleges are not supplying good people.

We need input from employers, students, parents, community and government if we are to develop world-leading technical education, but surely we should recognise the primary importance of educators themselves, and harness their expertise and experience to achieve that shared goal.

Ian Pryce is principal and CEO of the Bedford College Group