Looking at the recent Skills for Jobs White Paper, I’m concerned. Not about what it means for individual colleges or the sector as a whole, but about what it means for our students.  

One of the key proposals is all about putting employers at the heart of FE and skills and giving them a central role in designing “almost all” technical courses by 2030. 

The problem is, creating predominantly employer-led qualifications may create an educational experience that: a) doesn’t fit the workplace that the student finds themselves in; and b) lacks the kinds of knowledge that can allow for progression both in education and in the workplace.

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Let’s look first at the idea that one qualification can prepare all students for all workplaces. It is perhaps naive to assume that the world of work comes in a recognisable form that can be easily translated into the curriculum. We should ask whether it is realistic for these qualifications to claim that they can pop out “oven-ready learners” upon completion and whether it is ethical to sell qualifications on this basis.

The trouble with employers designing qualifications

Take a subject like engineering as an example. Creating a qualification that produces an “oven-ready employee” suitable to the needs of all engineering firms is unlikely.  This is because “engineering” can be lots of different things: manufacturing engineering is likely to require different knowledge and use different norms and practices than engineering firms focused on testing and homologation.  

Even within an industry like manufacturing, dependent on the size of the organisation and what is being manufactured, knowledge and practices are likely to be different. I have heard similar issues raised around motor vehicle qualifications, the design of which has been led by large-volume motor manufacturers. These qualifications are great if your students live in the Midlands or North East, but if your students are likely to go into small local or specialist garages, where ways of working are very different, these qualifications lose their relevance. 

Future-proofing young people

The second problem is that, just like the rest of us, employers are unlikely to be able to predict what their future workforce needs to look like. What does it mean for tomorrow if qualifications are designed with only today in mind? This is an argument that is often levelled at qualifications in our sector, with some saying that our qualifications can lack the knowledge that allows learners to progress or to see other ways of working and being. 

I am aware that many university engineering departments are worried about the amount and complexity of maths taught at lower levels and the way this hampers successful progression to university, so much so they are considering foundation maths courses for some students. This can’t be good for students, but these are the problems that marginalising university voices in qualification design may create. Progression may also be an issue in workplaces. 

Imagine a qualification in the aero industry (where a licence to practise is required) where apprentices are trained to work at the level of the licence but are not put on a qualification that gives the learner the license itself. This means the employer gets a well-trained workforce, but the apprentice cannot move jobs or progress their career without gaining the costly licence themselves. 

Powerful knowledge

So what about other ways of working and being? Michael Young talks about “powerful knowledge”: these are generally theoretical forms of knowing that allow someone to look at something differently and adapt, change or create new ideas. We know from leading academics like Leesa Wheelahan, Gavin Moodie and Jeanne Gamble, who analyse qualifications across the world, that curricula that only looks at “what the job needs” don’t tend to contain much powerful knowledge.  

This is generally because you don’t need this knowledge on an everyday basis - most jobs, both high and low skilled, contain fair amounts of routine thinking. It is when we are required to step into non-routine situations when you have to draw on “powerful knowledge” to create a new response, a new product or a new future. Not having this kind of knowledge can potentially doom our students to very routinised jobs and prevent them from moving on in their career. It also means that employers are likely to get a workforce who can do a job but can’t improve that job or product and can’t develop practice around it.

In these difficult economic times our students need not just jobs, but careers. Our employers need not just instrumental workers, but workers who can adapt and change. They will need staff with agile minds who can work together with others and create new and exciting future possibilities.  

This appears to me to be what is lacking from the plans for vocational qualifications in the White Paper, and I worry that our students will be the ones who pay the price for this.

Sam Jones is a lecturer at Bedford College, founder of FE Research Meet and was FE Teacher of the Year at the Tes FE Awards 2019