The language used to describe what we do in post-16 education reflects how the sector is perceived by outsiders. It’s confusing.

Up until a few years ago, the word predominantly used to describe the type of learning carried out in colleges and training providers was “vocational”. This term is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as “providing skills and education that prepare you for a job”.

Even as recently as 2011, the influential government-commissioned Review of Vocational Education - best known by its alternative title, the Wolf report, after its author, Baroness Wolf of Dulwich - made clear that this was the label of choice for non-academic education. The word “vocational” appears 575 times in the 197-page document - almost 20 times as frequently as the word “technical”.

Yet in the next seminal report on skills - the Post-16 Skills Plan, borne out of Lord Sainsbury’s government-commissioned review leading to the creation of T levels - the relative usage of the two terms had flipped. Even when the word “vocational” does appear, on more than half of the occasions it is used in reference to the Wolf report; on the other occasions, it appears in quotation marks, implying that the term is now considered passé.

Speeches made by ministers since then confirm, without doubt, that “technical” has now become the official descriptive term of choice for further education provision.

But why has the well-established “vocational” been airbrushed out of the government’s educational lexicon? And what does the language that we use to describe further education tell us about how it is perceived by society?

To set this in context, it is useful to consider why, for much of the period since the mid-20th century, “technical” was the term of choice when it came to describing non-academic study.

In particular, this term has been incorporated into the names of four distinct types of provision that were created, shaping the structure of our education system in the process: technical schools; technical colleges; polytechnics; and university technical colleges (UTCs).

Technical schools were a product of the 1944 Education Act, which ushered in a three-tier system. For those who passed the 11-plus exam, there was a choice between selective grammar schools or selective technical schools; for everyone else, there were secondary moderns. A limited number of technical schools opened, as most who passed the 11-plus chose the academic route. The few technical schools that remained until the 1960s were increasingly shifted towards the grammar-school model.

Later, technical colleges emerged. These were similar in many ways to today’s FE colleges. They were initially based in religious institutions, later branching out into a range of other organisations, such as mechanics’ institutions, working men’s colleges and art schools. By the mid-20th century, technical colleges were state-funded and controlled by local education authorities - a status quo that continued until 1993, when colleges became independent incorporated bodies.

Polytechnics had their roots in the early 19th century, and were established as a reaction to European advances in industrial power. They began with a focus on advanced engineering and Stem qualifications, but expanded to offer humanities subjects as higher diplomas, undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. In 1992, they became universities - a move that, for Lynne Sedgmore, was “a huge mistake”. Over more than three decades working in FE, Sedgmore served as the leader of Guildford College, the former Centre for Excellence in Leadership and, most recently, the 157 Group of colleges (now the Collab Group).

Turning polytechnics into universities was, for Sedgmore, “the worst thing that happened for vocational education”. “The polytechnics had a huge value,” she says. “It was something to aspire to, the pinnacle of technical vocational craft education. People were proud to go to polytechnics. I’m sure if they hadn’t been subsumed into universities, the role of FE would have stayed cleaner and clearer.”

The most recent institutions using the word “technical” in their title are UTCs, the brainchild of Lord Baker, who was education secretary in the Thatcher government. These 14-19 schools deliver technical education alongside core curriculum subjects. Their success has been varied. Despite government backing and substantial funding, out of around 60 UTCs that have opened since 2010, 11 have either closed, plan to close or will switch to another model.

The fact that these four types of technical institution are either no longer in existence or have, in the case of UTCs, failed to establish themselves on a large scale, stands in stark contrast to how, among policymakers, the word “technical” has usurped “vocational” as being the term in vogue. The value of language when it comes to education is, it would seem, anything but clear.

And the water is muddied further, given that there are plenty of other words to consider. Do our students go on to be tradespeople, technicians, craftsmen or artisans? Do colleges offer professional, occupational, practical or applied education? One thing’s for sure: the word “academic” is not in our semantic field.

Professor Bill Lucas, who leads the Centre for Real-World Learning at the University of Winchester, has written extensively on the subjects of craftsmanship and vocational pedagogy. For him, the shift in how practical learning is described comes down to perceived status. “Some people can’t get it out of their heads that vocational is the opposite to academic and therefore implies a low status,” he explains. “Some jump to [thinking], ‘Well, let’s call it “professional” because that’s got a better status.’ I think that’s just silly.

“You can’t play with words like that, because words have cultures and histories.”

No one appreciates this more than Sedgmore. She was raised on a deprived council estate in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, and says that the choice of language used to describe the work of FE is directly connected to socioeconomic class.

“My mates from the estate who went on to be motor mechanics or hairdressers didn’t think there was anything at all wrong with that, and they certainly weren’t bothered by the language,” she says. “I think the social snobbery comes from middle class and above who look down on being ‘craft’, so have to make ‘craft’ sexy by using other language. It can’t just be ‘craft’, because that’s for thick working-class kids.”

In other European countries, the perceived gulf between “academic” and “vocational” doesn’t exist to anything like the degree observed in the UK, Sedgmore adds. “When I used to talk to people about the German system, they were clear that there was no academic or vocational divide. The class stigmatisation just wasn’t there.”

In recent years, some words used to describe people who work with their hands have been co-opted, nodding towards a more exclusive, niche market.

Utter the word “artisan” and small, expensive, independent shops selling posh coffee or handmade rugs come to mind. Similarly, “craftsperson” has retained its higher social status.

This hasn’t always been the case, though, according to Kevin Orr, associate dean at the Huddersfield Centre for Research in Education and Society, part of the University of Huddersfield. “All of these words can be colonised and taken over to mean something quite different to what they might have meant in the past,” he explains. It is the quality of the provision in question, and the value that students gain from it, that has greater impact than any language used to describe the sector’s activity.

“I don’t think you’re going to find middle-class parents making a different decision about T levels just because they’re called T levels rather than something else,” says Orr.

Another term that has grown in prominence in recent years is “apprentice”. The ever-increasing apprenticeship targets pledged by political parties in the last general election created a perplexing game of one-upmanship. Former skills minister Nick Boles has since admitted that the Conservative Party’s current 3 million target was “always a nonsense”, based on very little other than the fact that 2.5 million sounded “Mickey Mouse”.

Perhaps the concept of apprenticeships was leapt on by policymakers and brought into focus because, unlike the maze of qualifications and settings that makes up the rest of FE, people outside the sector tend to know what an apprenticeship is. It’s a word that has for generations been understood to mean “learning on the job”. However, the noble heritage of the word is at risk of being diminished by the disparity in quality and levels of provision.

Today, an apprentice can be an individual taking anything from a level 2 (GCSE-equivalent) apprenticeship up to an MBA programme. Orr suggests that there is “a moral question about some of the courses we are calling apprenticeships”.

“The fact that we have level 2 apprenticeships seems to me to be absurd,” he adds. “To have something called an apprenticeship at that level simply would not be recognised in other countries. When you get an apprenticeship, you are ready to work - that’s the definition of it.

“It is a term that is being tarnished by being applied to training that is not worthy of that title.”

Which begs this question: how do we untarnish the apprenticeship and reclaim its reputation of quality? Is it as simple as getting rid of the lower-level ones?

Orr believes that would go only part of the way towards boosting the status of apprenticeships. And while he states that there are certainly many apprenticeships that are excellent and worthy of the name, he also believes that there is a fundamental flaw at the heart of the programme: apprenticeships must, as employment-based training, be attached to real jobs.

“The disconnect between a job and an apprenticeship is what concerns me,” he adds.

So how does this fit into the perception of the FE sector in general? Interestingly, while no other country uses the term “further education”, the majority now employ the term “TVET” - technical and vocational education and training.

This, however, has never gained currency in the UK. So, if we limit the choice to either “vocational” or “technical”, which is the most appropriate term to describe what FE does?

There appears to be little consensus. Sedgmore, for one, says that she has had a change of heart: her instinctive preference was for “vocational”, but she has come to accept that “technical” could carry more weight. Lucas, however, disagrees: “Why would you not stick with the word ‘vocational’ when it has the most opportunity and the least particular tainted baggage?”

As for Orr, he says he is undecided. Though he asserts that the language we use matters because it reflects the way that the provision is discussed in society, he is clear that “simply changing the words is not enough”.

“There is snobbery about ‘vocational’, but the problem is not just snobbery,” he says. “The problem is the status of that provision, the funding of that provision and also what that provision can lead to, in terms of employment and education. That’s what really matters.”

Sarah Simons works in colleges and adult community education in the East Midlands and is the director of UKFEchat. She tweets @MrsSarahSimons

This article originally appeared in the 10 May 2019 issue under the headline “‘The problem is not just snobbery’”