It’s a familiar scene. Graduates, all dressed in academic gowns and wearing mortar boards, stand, waiting nervously. One by one, they are called on stage, in front of their proud families, who sit in the audience, cheering and looking on, as each graduate receives a piece of paper recognising that they have completed their chosen programme of study.

But, for all the trappings of academia on show, an increasing number of these ceremonies taking place in cathedrals, marquees and offices across the country are not actually for university graduates at all. They are for apprentices.

While no one would deny an apprentice the right to celebrate the completion of their programme of study, the fact that many of them end up doing so while dressed in academic robes neatly summarises the complex nature of the relationship between academic and vocational or technical routes of education in society.

At the heart of the issue is a ubiquitous phrase in education discourse today: “parity of esteem”. Generations of ministers and sector leaders have called for this, making achieving it a priority, and taking society to task for its failure to furnish, say, apprenticeships, with as much respect as honours degrees.

In December, education secretary Damian Hinds became the latest to wheel it out. “Our ultimate goal,” he told his audience, “is to deliver parity of esteem when it comes to technical and academic routes - equally valid choices. In order for technical education not simply to be something for other people’s children, it has to be something you want your child to do as well.

“That means it’s high quality and leads to a well-paid, rewarding, skilled job.

“Government can’t endow esteem on technical education, you can’t legislate for parity in this way. It’s our job to make it high quality, then employers and young people themselves will genuinely value it.”

But in the context of the oldest debate in education, what does “esteem” actually mean? How does one achieve parity in it - if it is even possible? Or is it simply an empty phrase which does little to address the issues behind it?

The first difficulty that arises when considering esteem is that there is no straightforward definition that applies in an educational context.

A quick online search throws up countless references to “self-esteem”, and even some more specific variations, such as “job esteem” (the “level of respect and dignity an individual believes is associated with his/her profession”, in case you were wondering).

There are also academic articles by economists, talking about the idea that esteem is in limited supply and significant demand; it is something that cannot necessarily be created but is, instead, decided by the rest of society.

In their book, The Economy of Esteem: An Essay on Civil and Political Society, academics Geoffrey Brennan and Philip Pettit, from the Australian National University, conclude that “the best way to pursue esteem…may be to find a pattern of behaviour that wins esteem and then cleave to it in day-to-day decisions without any calculation as to how far it actually does win esteem”.

Champion of vocational education

Surprisingly, perhaps, esteem crops up far less in the field of education research. One of the most vocal champions of vocational education in Westminster in recent years has been former skills minister Robert Halfon, who now chairs the Commons Education Select Committee. He has consistently called for more respect to be afforded to vocational education and apprenticeships.

“What I mean when I say ‘esteem’ is ‘prestige’,” he says. “What the problem was, and is now, was that if you were doing something technical, you were seen as somebody lesser.

“I want to change that to make it aspirational. So, esteem is prestige but also aspiration. Parity of esteem will happen when people see vocational routes as prestigious.”

This view is shared by Halfon’s political hero, Lord Baker, former education secretary in the Thatcher government, who has since made addressing this imbalance his mission, championing the creation of dozens of university technical colleges across the country, with somewhat mixed results.

Lord Baker believes that esteem is determined by “the quality of approval and recognition” of a form of education in wider society. So “esteem”, then, becomes shorthand for prestige, reputation and recognition. But of what? Does it come down to qualifications? The people who take them? Or the institutions where they are taught?

No one would argue with Halfon that those following vocational routes are all too often seen as “lesser” than their university peers by society in general: this is despite the fact that, in pure monetary terms, apprenticeships are anything but. A Sutton Trust report from 2015 revealed that students who complete a level 5 higher apprenticeship will earn, on average, £1.5 million over the course of their careers - £50,000 more than the average for graduates from non-Russell Group universities.

In many instances, apprenticeships can prove more lucrative than going to university. But this is by no means the case for lower-level apprenticeships. Indeed, the national minimum wage for apprentices is currently just £3.70 an hour - far less than the £5.90 for other employees aged 18-20.

So, what can be done to address this most persistent of gaps in how academic and vocational routes of education are viewed?

Apprenticeship graduation ceremonies, such as the one mentioned above, are one of the most clear attempts to address this. They are consciously designed to mirror the pageantry of universities and increase the confidence and self-worth of apprentices.

Indeed, the introduction of the title “degree apprenticeships” to denote training programmes at level 6 (equivalent to a full bachelor’s degree) and level 7 (a master’s) makes the attempt to imbue apprenticeships with the stardust of academia crystal clear.

For Halfon, the benefits can be direct and indirect: “Degree apprenticeships create a cascade. If you can do them at degree level and universities do them, a level 2 apprenticeship is seen as having esteem, too.”

It is by no means the only policy nod in this direction. The so-called “Baker clause” in the Technical and Further Education Act 2017 means there is now a legal requirement for schools to ensure that their students are informed about alternative routes to continuing education, like apprenticeships.

And then there is the government’s new T-level qualification, specifically intended to be on a par with A levels.

But warm words from the government are one thing; persuading students and their parents is quite another. Even apprenticeships and skills minister Anne Milton admitted last year that winning the hearts and minds of parents is an altogether tougher challenge.

“The job of persuading parents to do any new qualification is always quite tough,” she told MPs, adding: “I’m a parent of four children. If somebody said to me, ‘your children could do this new qualification’, I’d say, ‘leave it a year’.”

And some leading universities remain to be convinced about the merits of T levels. A year ago, Imperial College London told Tes it did not believe the qualification provided a “suitable preparation” for university study.

So, is it really institutions, rather than people or qualifications, that hold the key? Is it the case that degree apprenticeships are gaining in popularity because they can involve universities, rather than colleges and private training providers, which traditionally have less political clout and often lack the powerful reputation on which universities can rely?

Or, rather, does piggybacking off higher education serve to reinforce the esteem gap that exists, and highlight the fact that vocational and technical education is simply less understood?

Look North?

The most literal attempt to legislate for parity involves having a single framework of qualifications, mapping out where different qualifications sit, their equivalences and how they relate to one another. The framework in use in England, Wales and Northern Ireland has nine rungs, from entry-level courses for beginners up to doctorates at level 8.

In Scotland, where the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework was set up as the first of its kind in the world, one college has mapped every course on this framework to show how they compare and how learners can progress, relative to the academic qualifications parents and teachers might be more familiar with.

But does it work? In her 2011 landmark Review of Vocational Education, Alison Wolf reflects on what she calls England’s “major programme of establishing ‘equivalencies’ between all sorts of different qualifications”.

“Parity of esteem”, Baroness Wolf argues, is “a completely misguided objective”: “Not all qualifications can be seen as completely identical in prestige or content: that is true among academic qualifications just as it is true among vocational ones. And every country on Earth has a status hierarchy for school and university level options,” she says.

“But there is no reason why vocational awards for 14- to 19-year-olds should not figure among the sub-sets which enjoy high esteem.”

And that, perhaps, offers the best outcome for FE: stop striving for an impossible “equality” with academic education and, instead, focus on being the best it can be on its own terms.

As Mick Fletcher, an FE consultant and director of market research consultancy RCU, puts it in a recent essay: “Don’t worry about parity of esteem: esteem is enough.”

He continues: “FE institutions, while campaigning for better resourcing, should also reject the narrative of victimhood embedded in the ‘parity of esteem’ debate.

“In this, they could learn from the higher education sector which, while shot through with status divisions, doesn’t fantasise about their removal but operates within their constraints,” he says. “London Metropolitan University, for example, doesn’t spend its time arguing for ‘parity of esteem’ with Oxbridge. It follows a different mission and does it very well.”

Founded on a flawed concept

For James Conroy, professor in philosophical and religious education at the University of Glasgow, the entire trope is founded on a flawed concept. Rather than trying to make technical and academic education equal, the focus should be on celebrating their differences and that, as a result, they allow for people with different types of talent to be nurtured in different ways. “Equality here doesn’t mean ‘the same’, it means ‘necessary for the task at hand’,” he says.

The government’s use of the phrase is “virtue signalling” and “completely vacuous”, he says, adding that there is a difference between publicly declaring the esteem of something and esteeming it privately. While bankers, for example, are not publicly esteemed, they are privately, with people wishing their children to go into finance. Nurses, on the other hand, are held in great esteem publicly, but this does not translate into private esteem.

“Doctors have become more and more esteemed as people stopped believing in God and started believing doctors can save them from death. The esteem of medics has risen disproportionately. And as we have educated the whole of society to roughly the same level, the esteem of teachers and university professors has dropped.”

Even Halfon, an evangelist for apprenticeships, says that while he “used to believe in parity of esteem”, he is now less convinced. Rather, there should simply be a choice of high-quality, well-respected options in academic and vocational areas for young people to consider, he suggests.

In the end, it will be role models that change the way vocational routes are perceived, and who show that they have a value in their own right. Parity, Lord Baker believes, will come “when people feel that there are people who have done well from the alternative route, not just the academic one”.

The success stories, of course, are already there. Star Wars actor John Boyega started his career with a course in performing arts at South Thames College. The bestselling author and former Children’s Laureate, Malorie Blackman, took a children’s writing course at adult education college City Lit. After leaving Nelson and Colne College, John Spencer went on to become an award-winning Nasa scientist.

At the 2017 WorldSkills competition in Abu Dhabi, the tearful mother of a competitor spoke of the pride she would now feel at dinner parties with friends.

Her other children and her friends’ children had all gone to university and become doctors and teachers. While she had never been embarrassed about her apprentice son, she hadn’t quite known how to feel about his career choice. Now, she told other spectators, owing to his international success, she could finally speak proudly of his achievements.

Not every apprentice will hold international credentials, but their individual successes will prove the value of a non-academic education more effectively than any piece of legislation ever could.

Julia Belgutay is deputy FE editor for Tes