The government’s post-16 education and skills White Paper has finally been published, but it was a pre-released announcement about the introduction of another new vocational qualification that made headlines. The announcement that the government will be consulting over new V (Vocational Level) awards has sent alarm bells through the post-16 sector, not least because it’s feared that many BTEC type qualifications are scheduled to be defunded before the new Vs will be up and running.
Even more confusing, the new Vs will sit alongside the T (Technical level) qualifications introduced in the Tories 2016 Sainsbury Review as a ‘middle’ pathway between academic A-levels and workplace-based apprenticeships. They will be smaller than the Ts – each being equating to an A-level – compared with the 3 A-level equivalent Ts.
It’s argued that they will allow students to ‘mix and match’. This is true, but BTECs already enable this – with many students taking a single BTEC award alongside 2 A-levels or completing a standard BTEC alongside one A-level. There is also an earlier historical parallel. As part of New Labour’s Post-16 Curriculum 2000 reforms, the GNVQ (General National Vocational Qualification) was modularised and rebranded as a Vocational and then an Applied A-level. This did increase choice, but it also made students think that rather than sign up for an ‘applied’ A-level then why not stay with the real thing. Young people are more than aware of how the qualifications system works!
But the White Paper’s justification for introducing Vs goes far deeper than extending student choice. It argues that there’s a crisis in ‘intermediate level’ skills – that there are too many young people wanting to go to university and not enough taking alternative technical/vocational pathways.
There are not enough individuals choosing to study qualifications at a higher technical level (levels 4 and 5), despite their positive economic returns and increasing demand in the economy for workers with these skills. We strongly support expanded participation in higher education, but the traditional 3-year degree is not the only option (Page 7).
Nigel Williamson, the shifty Tory minister responsible for education in 2021, said more or less the same thing in his White Paper.
Our skills system has been very efficient at producing graduates but has been less able to help people get the quality technical skills that employers want. Only 4% of young people achieve a qualification at higher technical level by the age of 25 compared to the 33% who get a degree or above
Williamson’ s arguments appeased the Tory right who wanted to restore universities to being institutions for a small minority. Four years on, it’s probably the failure, or at best the slow progress of the Tories Ts that is a significant reason for bringing in something new.
But is there really a ‘missing middle’ in the way the Labour White Paper imagines? On the contrary, it’s increasingly accepted that ‘middle jobs’ are disappearing as a result of technological innovation. The first wave of automation swept away many clericals, administrative as well as skilled manual roles and while some of the predictions about the implications of AI may be overly pessimistic, it can’t really be denied that this process won’t continue.
So, in an age of uncertainty and facing a climate emergency (the White Paper makes no reference to Ed Miliband’s new green jobs), rather than fiddling around with and introducing more vocational qualifications, policy makers, college representatives and teacher unions should be arguing for a good general education for everybody – one that necessitates disbanding both the current academic and vocational tracks.
While there are some constructive proposals in a White Paper that seeks to cover everything from universities to apprenticeships and NEETs – far more than be covered here, arguments that economic growth and prosperity are closely linked to the supply of ‘human capital’ (which is also mistakenly equated with ‘qualified’ labour) are spurious. A serious analysis of why the UK economy isn’t growing would not start with education and skills, certainly not that there are too many graduates!
Rather than looking at the jobs market in terms of matching skills with vacancies as conventional economic theory does, it’s more useful to see it as a ‘labour queue’ where, with the exception a small number of highly specialised occupations, employers recruit candidates based on generic characteristics, rather than narrow job attributes, or the ability to perform distinct tasks – many of which are learned in the workplace anyway (V-levels, like T-levels don’t /won’t teach these and it’s just as likely that the young people who complete these courses will use them for university entrance).
Rather than there being ‘too many graduates’ there are not enough jobs to match young people’s qualifications. Graduates are forced to downsize into ‘non graduate’ jobs and others lower down in the labour queue are displaced. In contrast, those at the end of the line have nowhere to go, the reason why over 50% of NEETs have never worked.
The White Paper’s ‘Ministerial Foreword’ asserts that “too many people lack the skills to get into work and to get on at work” but it’s a lack of employment opportunities which is the real issue facing many of generation Z.
Education, Economy and Society 
Good analysis.
But it’s basically saying England should follow the education system in Scotland, where a broad general education to secondary year 6, based on multiple National and Higher subjects in a public sector qualification awarding framework, is followed by a much larger proportion of the population going into vocational colleges offering HNC/D and lower technical qualifications or genuine apprenticeship schemes, alongside the more internationally-standard four year ‘tuition free’ university degrees with significant articulation/exemption without loss of time from many university level institutions. You don’t have to look far to see where England should be going!
Unfortunately UK Labour will be arguing Scotland should instead follow England in the Holyrood election next May, though it seems likely they will go down to yet another ignominious defeat as voters realise what a mess they are making of running the overall UK state and England’s main public services.
The level of investment that the Scottish Parliament/Government can afford to put into this superior system is however limited by the facts that, unlike the UK government, they have to run a balanced budget with limited taxation options, unlike the UK government for England, and the ‘temporary’ Barnett formula means that reductions in public spending in England (by choice) result in consequential reductions in Scotland’s take from UK-wide taxation (not by choice) – producing an utter basket case of fiscal controls over policy driven public service devolution. The current SNP could do a lot better by prioritising the college sector, having taken their eye off the ball rather badly over the last couple of years. But Scotland’s better-structured education and skills system is held back by being shackled to the UK’s and England’s fiscal framework.