Last year the government announced a new policy for 14-19 education in England. (I say England because the education policies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are different.) At age 14 school students will follow one of two routes.

One is the traditional ‘academic’ route – normal school subjects leading to an examination at 16, which is the end of compulsory education. After 16, young people can continue at school, or take vocational courses at Further Education colleges (which are colleges for adults), or get a job. About 40% of them choose to stay at school for two more years and take the exams which enable entry to university.
The new policy creates another route. At age 14 the government intends that around 40% of students will end their general education and follow a vocational course. There will be 14 of these courses, each one based on a particular industry sector: Health and social care; Public services; Land based and environment; Engineering; Manufacturing; Construction and the built environment; Information and communication technology; Retail; Hospitality and catering; Hair and beauty; Sport and leisure; Travel and tourism; Creative and media; Business administration and finance. They will lead to qualifications – they are called Specialised Diplomas – which are designed by employers.
This new policy raises two big questions for us: how should we understand what is being proposed, and how should we respond to it? These are the questions I will try to answer, focusing on the 14-16 age group.

In terms of analysis, there are 5 issues:

1. What are the reasons for the government’s new policy?
2. How will the new policy be implemented?
3. How does the vocational agenda relate to the needs of employers and thelabour market?
4. What are the implications for the student?
5. What is our alternative?

What are the reasons for the government’s new policy?
The government’s rationale for the vocational agenda is asserted in the government’s 2005 Education and Skills White Paper:

The changing context of work and society and the need for the UK to be economically competitive place increasing demands on the knowledge and skills of the population. Our levels of participation in post-compulsory education are well behind those of most similar countries.

While there are factors specific to England, this is part of a Europe-wide development which has been promoted by the European Union for more than 10 years. I will just quote briefly from three European Commission documents from the 1990s:

the understanding of the world of work, the knowledge of business and the perception of the changes which mark the activities of production are elements which the school must take on board.

Education could be rationalised by providing a shorter period of general education which is better tailored to market needs.

To delay access to vocational courses can diminish their attraction for young people.

In addition to the economic argument the Labour government also offers an educational rationale, which is that a practical and work-related education is better suited to the needs of ‘non-academic’ students. They can succeed in a vocational programme instead of failing in an academic one. This argument marks the final abandonment of the idea of a common general education for all till age 16.

Ironically, the closest we got to that was during the Thatcher government when a National Curriculum up to age 16 was first introduced. It never succeeded in overcoming the differences in pupil attainment rooted in social class inequality – in fact its inappropriately ‘academic’ character tended to reinforce them – and divisions in what schools provided started to open up at age 14. Finally, the Labour government has decided, not to rethink a broad common core curriculum for all, but to abandon it altogether as an aim at age 14 in favour of a segregated system.

2. How will the new policy be implemented?

I want to begin by stressing that the transformation of secondary education which the government aims to achieve is a very difficult task. It needs powerful instruments of policy to compel change, as well as persuasive ideological arguments. It needs a system of rewards and punishments. The instrument of punishment is Ofsted, the government agency which carries out  inspections of schools and local council education departments. It has the power to close a school or to compel a council to contract out its education services to a private company.

The reward is money for new school buildings. Building Schools for the Future is a massive government programme of rebuilding or renovating all of England’s secondary schools over the next 10-15 years. That is very welcome. But there are strings attached – the government doesn’t give money without demanding something in return. This is how it works. The BSF money goes to local but to get the money they have to submit detailed plans for government approval, not just for school buildings, but for the transformation of secondary education in their local schools in conformity with the government’s 14-19 agenda. This government strategy is very effective. All around the country councils are welcoming and supporting the government’s agenda with enthusiasm, for three reasons. First, they want the money for the new school buildings. Second, they believe that the vocational programmes will meet local employers’ needs. Third, they also believe it will solve the problem of so-called ‘non-academic’ low-achieving and disaffected pupils in schools.

Every pupil is entitled to take any of the 14 Specialised Diplomas vocational programmes. No single school can offer all of them In fact, a school will probably only offer one or two. The government’s model is of local clusters of providers, comprising schools, a Further Education college or two, and perhaps private providers. The student could spend part of the week in her school, part in another school or an FE college, and perhaps part on a work placement in a company. A key role in this be played by a new type of school, an Academy.

Delivering the 14-19 agenda – the role of Academies
Academies are state schools which are publicly funded but controlled and run by private sponsors. The government’s aim for Academies is raising standards of attainment in socially deprived areas. They believe that external sponsors are necessary to achieve this because, as Tony Blair has said, ‘an external sponsor […] brings not only a financial endowment but also vision, commitment, and a record of success from outside the state school system’. There are currently 27 open, and the government plans to open 200 by 2010. The sponsors – each Academy has one or two – make a one-off donation of 3 million euros and the government  pays the rest: usually the cost of an expensive new building plus all the running costs. In return the sponsors gain control of the school, through being able to appoint a majority of the governing body. Ownership of the land and premises are transferred from the local council to the Academy governing body.

I must stress that this is not a profit-making arrangement. The sponsors cannot make profits from the Academies – their motives are different. Some sponsors are religious organisations – in particular the Anglican church - or multimillionaire businessmen with a religious motivation, in some cases of a fundamentalist Christian character. But the majority of sponsors are either multimillionaire businessmen or private companies. They have a range of motives – philanthropy, self-publicity promoting the company image, fostering good relations with government and local council and, in the context of the new 14-19 agenda, seeking to directly influence and shape the future workforce. They can do this because they  control the curriculum, the admission of pupils, and the appointment, the pay and the working conditions of teachers and other school workers. Every Academy, and the large majority of secondary schools, now has a specialism in a curriculum area. The most popular with Academy sponsors is ‘business and enterprise’. As a typical recent policy document from one city council (Nottingham) says, By careful links with the local business community, it is anticipated that the specialism of each Academy can be linked with local workforce demand and address key skills shortages’. In many areas Academies will be the hubs of local vocational networks of schools and other providers.

Ironically, one major obstacle the government may face is that schools may not want to cooperate with each other, since, as a result of other government policies, they are placed in competition with each other for pupils, funding and examination results.

3. How does the vocational agenda relate to the needs of employers and the labour market?

From age 14 the vocational curriculum will be driven explicitly by local employers’ needs. I will quotes from the Birmingham policy document:

…courses are planned using up-to-date labour market information about skills needs and employment opportunities in Birmingham, e.g.: construction, business and financial services, catering, retail and manufacturing.

And again:

Clearly there have always been some business links with the schools through the sponsorship and in aspects of specific subject curriculum support.  However we now intend for that link to be much stronger, particularly in terms of curriculum design, assessment and delivery.

Business will directly shape every aspect of secondary schooling:

It is our expectation that business partners will not only be able to provide role models for students but also a range of real life problem solving experiences for them, to invigorate the curriculum and an offer of partnership working with teachers to reconceptualise both curriculum planning and teaching methodology. 

Liverpool is planning to locate businesses on school campuses: ‘There is potential for the location of some Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) on a school campus for mutual advantage’. IN Sunderland private companies could sponsor teaching programmes: In Birmingham business will shape not just students but also teachers and school managers:

The partnerships will also benefit schools by exposing their management and staff to opportunities for CPD [continuing professional development] through experience of their Business Partners’ cultures and systems.  (Birmingham City Council 2006 p6)

Employers and the labour market
I have said that the aim is that around 40% of students will take one of the 14 Specialised Diplomas, each one based on a particular industry sector (such as Retail or Construction). This will occupy about half of each week. It raises two questions: will it meet the needs of employers, and will it meet the needs of students in terms of future employment?

First, do employers want the schools to provide their future workers with a general education up to 16 or a vocational education from 14? Of course employers want different things depending on the type of work, but there are two common themes in what employers say. First, they continually complain about the lack of basic skills. According to a recent survey by the Confederation of British Industry, one third of employers have to give their staff remedial lessons in basic English and maths. This applies to all workers, from those with low qualifications to those with degrees. The second thing employers want is a set of personal and social skills and attributes: adaptability, flexibility, self-presentability, communication skills, problem-solving skills, the ability to work in a team.

The question is, if this is what employers want, how much weight will they give to occupation-based vocational qualifications such as the Specialised Diplomas? I should say that there is an ongoing debate about the nature of the proposed diplomas, centring on the degree to which they will become more general or more applied and vocational. At the time of speaking the designs are still very fluid.

There is another question: if the Specialised Diploma courses do teach skills and knowledge related to particular occupational sectors, how likely are they to lead to jobs which require those skills and knowledge?

Recent labour market analyses show that there are shortages in certain jobs related to the Specialised Diplomas: for example, engineers, electricians, motor mechanics, and nurses. But the big picture is, as two recent analyses say, of a:

…polarisation within the labour market – the hour glass economy. On the one hand, a primary labour market – or the knowledge-based economy – covering about 21 per cent of jobs. On the other hand an expanding secondary labour market where the largest growth is occurring – in service-related elementary occupations, administrative and clerical occupations, sales occupations, caring personal service occupations and the like. (Jon Cruddas 2006)

...a polarising labour market means that while high-skilled occupations will expand, so too will a number of low-wage, low-qualification occupations. The middle of the labour market is expected to continue to ‘hollow out’, as polarisation increases. (Nuffield Review Annual Report 2006)

The high-qualification occupations will continue to be filled by school leavers with traditional ‘academic’ qualifications. The danger is that the vocational qualifications won’t lead to the jobs they are intended for, because there are a large number of entry level jobs with no specific qualification requirements, and in any case the role played by qualifications in employers’ recruitment and selection processes is often limited and sometimes non-existent. As one call centre employer said, ‘we recruit attitude’.

This raises the question of to what extent the real function of the vocational programme is preparation for specific job sectors, as against either simply developing a more general orientation to the world of work, or as a form of social control of low-achieving and often disaffected students in the school system.

Young people are aware of the realities of the youth labour market, and it will be interesting to see, as the Specialised Diplomas come on stream, what value they have and what choices students make. One possibility is that the Diplomas will become just another credential towards access to higher education.

4. What are the implications for the whole curriculum?

The government’s 14-19 White Paper says that every student is entitled to ‘A broad and balanced compulsory curriculum until age 16’.  What does this consist of?

‘We want young people to be well equipped to participate in society and the wider world. The KS4 requirements in RE [religious education], PE [physical education], sex education, citizenship and the non-statutory framework for personal, social and health education (PSHE) provide a foundation of knowledge and skills crucial to living, learning and working in modern society.’

The social sciences, the humanities, and the arts are not compulsory, they are optional, and many students will not take them, particularly as the Specialised Diplomas take up most of the time. It is laughable to claim that this is an adequate preparation for future life. In particular, students on the Level 1 vocational route will be served a curriculum based on functional skills and ‘vocational preparation’ leading to a life of  ‘McJobs’ - unskilled and casualised employment. It is the educational equivalent of the national minimum wage – appropriately so, since that is what it will lead to for many.

Reinforcing inequality
Of course the 14-19 agenda has profound implications for equality in education.
The more that the school system is brought into correspondence with the local highly unequal labour market, the more the school system itself will reproduce those inequalities, both between and within schools. And given the well-known relationship between social class and educational attainment, it will be largely students from poor and working class backgrounds who will be channelled down the vocational route, reinforcing existing patterns of class segregation in the school system. Furthermore, tying the school to the local economy will reinforce geographical patterns of inequality.

5. What is our alternative?

The fundamental reason to oppose the government’s vocational agenda is that it deprives large numbers of young people – mainly from poorer and working-class backgrounds – of the education they deserve. The vision of comprehensive education has been of a broadly common education for all till 16 because that is what is needed in order for every young person to enter the world of culture and knowledge and to be able to understand the social world, question it, and act in it. The very survival of this vision of comprehensive education is now at risk, not only because of the current attacks but because the last 20 years of Conservative and Labour education policies have reinforced a culture of working class educational failure, to which, for many teachers, young people and parents, a vocational curriculum seems to offer a solution. This poses us with a fundamental challenge: what is our alternative

Three principles for a broad common core curriculum at KS4
In a short time all I can do is the following three principles:

1. A common broad, balanced and critical education for all till 16
2. A pedagogy which combines the practical and experiential with the ‘academic’ and theoretical
3. The ‘world of work’ as one aspect of the curriculum, common to all students, with the aims both of developing a critical understanding and of opening up future employment horizons.

i) A common broad, balanced and critical education for all till 16
The aim is the construction of a common emancipatory culture, as much as is possible within capitalist society. We recognise that there is no consensus at present as to what that culture might be, though there are areas of agreement and common experience to build on, and that therefore we are talking about a political-educational process of working towards a common culture.

This would mean giving much more prominence to the sort of knowledge and skills needed to help students engage with the big issues of society – in other words, the ‘human sciences’: ecology, health studies, economics, politics, history, psychology, sociology, etc. – but in ways which connect with their own experiences and concerns.

What do we mean by a ‘critical education’? An example is the approach taken by a school in the United States, Central Park East Secondary School, a public school in a poor district of New York. Its curriculum and assessment are based on five questions, oriented to critical enquiry:

• How do you know what you know?
• From whose viewpoint is this being presented?
• How is this event or work connected to others?
• What if things were different?
• Why is this important?
  

Finally, a common core curriculum does not exclude an element of student choice of options, provided care is taken that they don’t reinforce patterns of inequality..

ii) A pedagogy which combines the practical and experiential with the ‘academic’ and theoretical
There is a damaging division between the ‘academic’ and the ‘practical’ which the government’s 14-19 agenda reinforces. Vocational education prioritises so-called practical knowledge.
The marginalisation of disciplinary and theoretical knowledge – exemplified by the relegation of school subjects in favour of ‘skills’ and competencies - is deeply conservative. It deprives students of access to the systematised bodies of knowledge which are indispensable to emancipatory educational aims. But this is not to defend uncritically existing ‘academic’ school subjects. One major criticism of them is their separation from practical and experiential forms of learningIt is not a question of the privileging of either ‘academic’ or practical forms of learning but of the integration of both as the basis of ‘deep learning’, in the Vygotskyan tradition. Gramsci, speaking in the 1920s, criticised schools which were designed ‘to satisfy immediate, practical interests’ and noted behind their egalitarian and democratic watchwords a refusal to develop the capacity ‘to reason, to think abstractedly and schematically while remaining able to plunge back from abstraction into real and immediate life, to see in each fact or datum what is general and what is particular, to distinguish the concept from the specific instance’

iii) The ‘world of work’ as one aspect of the curriculum, common to all students, with the aims both of developing a critical understanding and of opening up future career horizons.
We want students to develop a critical understanding of the ‘world of work’. Its scope would include, for example, a concern for ‘the nature of commodities and services themselves, and their technology, whether they are weapons, pollutants, unsafe deodorants, unhealthy food or unresponsive public services’, and also a concern for the ‘quality of working conditions’ and systems of power and control in the workplace (Hilary Wainwright, quoted in Jones 1989, p176).

The second aim of including the ‘world of work’ as one aspect of the curriculum is to help students become more aware of the range of occupations in society, so that they can begin to make informed decisions about their future employment possibilities and therefore their post-16 education and vocational training options. This would be a common curriculum element for all students designed to avoid premature employment choices and to disrupt patterns of social reproduction, in terms of class, gender and ethnicity, which limit students’ career horizons.

It could certainly include an element of practical occupation-based learning, provided this was part of every student’s education, covered a range of occupations, and was designed to widen horizons, not narrow them.

It would lead on, from age 16, after the end of compulsory schooling, to a coherent system of high-quality education and training options.

Both these aims entail opening up the ‘world of work’ to educational enquiry. There is an increasing understanding of the need for workplace institutions, whether private or public, to be attentive to their social responsibilities, as in the case of their ‘carbon footprints’. Among these should be their educational responsibilities, and specifically their responsibility to contribute to school education by opening themselves up to teacher-led critical educational study. Workplaces should become the object and site of teaching and learning across the whole curriculum, combining subject knowledges, practical and experiential learning, and students’ own meanings and interests.

Finally, I wish I could report to you that there is a mass campaign against the vocational agenda, but there isn’t. We are just at the beginning of developing opposition. The one issue where there is a national campaign of opposition, including important local campaigns involving parents and teachers, is against Academies. Next week we shall be holding a national conference in London aimed at strengthening that campaign. We know that Tony Blair’s education policies are a model for other countries in Europe. In return, your campaigns and mobilisations in Italy are a model for us.