The government has released its industrial strategy Green Paper, which it expects to form the bedrock of a global, competitive and prosperous Britain. The strategy is built on a reassuringly frank and evidence-based assessment of the country’s strengths and weaknesses. On the skills side, this includes our system’s dichotomy consisting of one of the highest levels of university entry in the developed world and England’s position as the only Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) jurisdiction where 16- to 24-year-olds are no more literate or numerate than 55- to 64-year-olds. It also rightly highlights geographical inequalities in educational outcomes, and the economic implications of the decline of high-level technical training identified in the Education Policy Institute’s ”Remaking Tertiary Education” report, published in November last year with Professor Alison Wolf.
The industrial strategy confirms the government’s commitment to strengthening vocational education, so that it becomes a credible alternative for those who do not go to university. This is welcome and uncontroversial. Until this route has the parity of esteem which it currently lacks, we will not only fail to meet the challenges that lie ahead, but we also risk widening the divide between academic and vocational education. However, in order to deliver a better parity of esteem across routes, technical provision needs to be of genuinely high quality, and it needs to deliver genuinely good labour market outcomes.
Strengths and weaknesses
For many learners, technical or vocational learning begins at 16 as they move into a stage of education that the House of Lords Select Committee on Social Mobility has noted is underfunded, compared with earlier education in school and university education. Our research highlights that expanding university participation in the coming years could increase taxpayer costs by as much as £1 billion per cohort. As the Green Paper acknowledges, college provision involves few learning hours relative to international competitors and other stages of education. Furthermore, England’s big gaps in attainment at 16 currently combine with a clear sorting of pupils into technical and academic training. That means further education institutions face a big challenge in delivering the immediate labour market outcomes of their academic counterparts for learners, especially in a labour market that, for the time being, lacks intermediate level jobs. With public funding scarce, to provide a more diverse and better-funded learner population to the technical routes, the government may need to make a clearer decision about whether it is willing to compromise on its ambitions to expand university participation.
The government has pledged to invest £170 million in the construction of Institutes of Technology in every region, focusing on the development of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem) skills. Although the announcement could help stream more young people into Stem routes and bridge skills gaps in those fields, it is uncertain whether new centres of excellence in maths and English teaching will help improve provision of basic skills amidst a difficult teacher recruitment climate. Furthermore, the government’s intention to reduce the number of FE colleges, combined with a regional or city-based focus for new institutes, may limit the range of new options within reach of learners wishing to remain in their family home: currently 70 per cent of further education learners travel less than 10km to their provider. That means more funding may be needed for the maintenance loans for technical education that are, sensibly, being considered.
Introducing a Ucas-style system for applying for vocational courses could give consistency to the new strategy, especially if information and transparency become central to it so that potential routes, details on providers, and labour opportunities are clearly presented to prospective students. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and Department for Education joint report on careers advice warned that current provision is poor, patchy, equipped with unqualified professionals, and struggling to provide independent advice that builds on accurate labour market information. The new careers strategy, if built on proper foundations and the progress made by the Careers and Enterprise Company, will be crucial.
Although the industrial strategy rightly identifies many of the challenges ahead, it needs to be built upon with further detail and should address the concerns raised around funding, teacher training, capacity in vocational education provision, and the development of numeracy, literacy and Stem skills.
Gerard Dominguez-Reig is a quantitative analyst at the Education Policy Institute
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