Did anyone else get the feeling that last week’s announcement of new technical and professional education reforms did not get the fanfare that Nick Boles was expecting? The response from the FE sector seemed to be more a collective sigh than rapturous applause - did they understandably take this as yet another erosion of the vital role they play in the skills system?
Of course, we have heard it all before from a string of skills ministers - another “groundbreaking” set of reforms that will once and for all simplify the current over-complex system and help equip young people with the right skills to land the jobs of the future.
However, in spite of the rhetoric there is actually a lot to support in the skills minister’s plan and we must not be tempted to be immediately cynical about reform. After all, it’s easy to forget how far we have come and the progress that has been made. Widening apprenticeship participation is now a key strand of government policy, so this focus on the progression of vocational skills education into apprenticeships has not come out of thin air.
In the past, something of a quandary has been caused by some young people entering college but not continuing with their chosen career after their course. Conversely, employers often say that they struggle to recruit apprentices. Done in the right way, these new reforms could help to resolve both these issues by better directing young people from vocational courses in colleges onto apprenticeships with employers to ensure that they complete their training. We do, however, need to make sure that this initiative is not used simply as a way of saving money, so the programmes need to be designed and delivered in the right way to meet the needs of young people and employers.
It is promising that the government’s proposal states that the new professional and technical qualifications should be shaped by input from businesses and employers. To create a successful and sustainable system we really do need businesses to work with the education sector to create courses that have work experience and workplace skills built in.
Ultimately, the aim of these reforms is to improve professional and technical skills levels and that’s got to be a good thing. We have long been aware that employers don’t think that young people are coming out of education with the skills they need to be effective employees. In a recent City & Guilds poll, more than half of employers said they wanted more involvement in developing qualifications to ensure they met their needs. That is why we wholeheartedly support a more joined-up approach between the Department for Education and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Bis) to ensure that young people get the right skills for today’s economy. It’s essential that government continues to work with colleges, training providers and employers to deliver on this plan.
But to enable reform to truly succeed, careers advice in schools must also improve. As we noted in a recent research piece by City & Guilds, Making Apprenticeships Work, society has misled young people into thinking that getting a degree is the best route to all careers. Yet we know that in many cases this isn’t the case. A recent report by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development suggests that more than half of graduates (58.8 per cent) now end up in non-graduate positions after racking up an average debt of £44,000. The problem remains that young people won’t choose pathways that they don’t know about, no matter how good they are.
City & Guilds are about to release new research showing a stark mismatch between the types of careers young people aspire to and the reality of the jobs available in this country. For Mr Boles’ policy to come to fruition, we need to make sure that young people are informed of genuine alternatives to traditional academic routes and, importantly, given information about the labour market and the types of jobs that will actually be available to them when they leave education so they can make informed choices about their futures.
Crucially, the country will also need a vibrant and functioning FE sector to deliver technical and professional pathways once growing numbers of young people wake up to the variety of educational pathways available to them. The rumblings we have heard ahead of the comprehensive spending review are far from positive so let’s all keep our fingers crossed and hope the government puts its money where its mouth is and directs funds towards high quality professional and technical education. After all, that’s where the real productivity battle will be won and where we once and for all not only fulfil aspirations but address the skills mismatch we have accepted for far too long in this country.
Kirstie Donnelly MBE is managing director of City & Guilds
