Thread by @jonpayates

Having left the Department for Education time to share some thoughts. Today: “Why is the UK crap at technical education?” (a thread)

Everyone focuses far too much on schools and not enough on colleges. (And by everyone, I mean everyone - especially the public, i.e., you dear reader.)

Which is a problem as the top priority by far should be to fix the UK’s constant underperformance at technical education.

Despite all the noise, our education system is ok at academic teaching (we have a long problematic tail of poor performance - more on that another day - but the average is good).

But we have been crap at technical education though for 70+ years. Why? Fundamentally, because people with influence (politicians, journalists, business leaders) don’t think about it.

Why don’t influential people think about technical education? Three reasons. 1: Because hardly any influential people did it.

They therefore think most other people did A levels and went to uni.

Care to guess what % of young people do A levels?

Less than 50% of young people do A levels.

Reason 2: Because the public don’t talk about it.

Why? Because everyone’s children goes to school but only some do technical education. At DfE we received thousands of letters about school funding, hardly any about college funding.

Which is (on one level) crazy as we fund schools about the same amount as other rich countries (more on funding in future). But we fund colleges well below other rich countries. No-one external to the Department ever made this point to me.

Out of work I got lobbied often by friends about school funding. But never about college funding.

This disinterest means that when the government decides (again) to ‘fix’ technical education - no one pays any attention. People would say that Damian Hinds wasn’t doing much radical reform when he was making the biggest reform of technical qualifications for a decade.

This lack of interest means that after a year of so - when reform gets hard - the government simply gives in. And nothing changes. Bad news for the 50% not doing A levels. But there will no marches, petitions. Nothing.

Reason 3 - linked to the above - is that the public secretly think that technical education is for stupid, not very capable student. Worse they think it is for disadvantaged, stupid, not very capable students (as though all disadvantaged students are stupid and incapable)

Therefore they think it needs to be easy. The result? A load of ‘technical’ qualifications that don’t actually train you to do a skilled job. Which makes them pointless. And when you suggest changing this, in comes the government’s mandatory equality assessment process.

Minister: “I would like I get rid of this poor quality product and replace it with a better one.”
Equality assessment: “Hang on a moment, don’t do that - lots of people with protected characteristics use that product.”
Minister: “Exactly!!!”

In other words when you try and create technical qualifications that actually make you employable (which is the whole point of a technical qualification) people complain! (I’m looking at you Michael Rosen) “But some people won’t be able to do these!” Madness.

The other madness is trying to achieve ‘parity of esteem’. Totally pointless and impossible. Lots of countries have great technical education. None of them have parity of esteem. Including Germany...

... I asked Germans what the big problem with their education system was: “Today, everyone wants to go to university. There is no parity of esteem.” Same in the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Singapore. Everywhere.

The academic route will always lead to certain high status - from judge, teacher, civil servant, doctor. When we create a technical route to a middle class job, we pretend it’s an academic route! Try telling your doctor friends that they took a vocational route. (They did)

Academic courses will always have the halo of higher esteem. That’s life. So let’s forget about it.

Who cares? We don’t need parity of esteem. Germany doesn’t. Focus on quality, not esteem. By quality I mean: will the course get you a skilled job? If it will, enough esteem will follow. Today, too often, it doesn’t.

So what do we need to do to fix technical education? That is a story for another day...