‘Burnham has the vision for technical education, here is how he can support schools to deliver it’

When Andy Burnham announced his expectation that schools should offer technical education from the age of 14, he was greeted by broad agreement across the political spectrum. This is exactly the type of long term issue that people elected a Labour government to address and one which can be truly unlocked by a simultaneous commitment to devolution.

Given that the Tories best critique is to say that we’re not being bold enough to solve a problem they couldn’t in fourteen years, we should be confident that we are onto a winner. However,  for those of us working in schools, this announcement has the potential to ruin more than a few summer holidays.

There are very few school leaders who don’t understand the challenge facing young people today. We all see the impact of the myriad failures of the last Tory government on the communities we serve every day.

We want to work together with political leaders, both national and regional, to create a system that supports our students to gain the meaningful qualifications and essential soft skills that will allow them to thrive in their futures. But delivering this fundamental shift will require a true partnership built on collaboration and trust.

READ MORE: ‘This Labour Government needs to fix the Tory student loan fiasco’

And if we want this government to deliver something tangible and longlasting, we need to heed the words of President Obama. He reminded us that politics is full of “people who are very good at describing problems … or why something can’t get fixed” but that successful people “just learn how to get stuff done”.

In that spirit, here are some ways in which the government can support schools to make this happen. The Prime Minister has stated that he wants the expansion of technical education to begin from 2028. Each idea, therefore, is designed to work within the system we already have rather than one that we could dream might exist.

Firstly, we should reform Progress and Attainment 8. This is the key way that secondary school performance is measured and, as the name suggests, is based on an average performance across eight subjects. It had two overriding aims: to ensure every child mattered rather than only those on the C/D borderline; and to ensure every child received a broad and balanced curriculum as an entitlement.

Whilst the current system has ensured that schools have to focus on the grades of every child – and we shouldn’t step back from that – it has created a more narrow curriculum for some students. By forcing schools to enter as many students as possible for traditionally academic subjects through the EBacc, it prevented schools from doing what was right for every student.

As a result, we should reduce Progress and Attainment 8 to five subjects which would include English, Maths and Science. This would provide the flexibility for schools to facilitate greater time for technical education, provide additional support in English and Maths for those who need it and allow students to continue on an academic pathway.

Secondly, we need to reduce the content that schools are expected to deliver in the national curriculum. From September this year, all schools will be expected to deliver the national curriculum with no exemptions for academies or free schools. And this is right.

The national curriculum should provide a foundational entitlement of knowledge that we want every child to have. It should be a cultural rosetta stone that means all British people, no matter their postcode, have the same fundamental understanding of our country.

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But to allow schools to do this properly, alongside providing more time for the development of skills for technical and future employment, we need to reduce the vast amount of content that schools are expected to deliver. This will allow us to think seriously about what knowledge we believe is an entitlement and where we can leave space for schools and teachers to make the right decisions for their cohorts.

Thirdly, ensure young people are able to access an equitable system of work experience. Many of you reading this will have fond memories of your two week work placement. But whether you did it in a cafe, shadowed one of your mum’s mates or made tea in an office, you need to understand that it doesn’t happen anymore.

Schools are expected to provide students with experience of work rather than work experience. This semantic shift has been largely driven by the financial reality of schools no longer being able to afford the staff required to find, safeguard and quality assure work experience placements after a decade of Tory austerity. But it also recognises the difficulties that students had in finding work experience placements without having family connections.

As a result, we should provide funding to schools and businesses that enable equitable work experience for all. This fund, with responsibility given through devolution, should be used to fund employers to host students and for schools to have a dedicated careers team. Furthermore, it should be managed in a way that gives every student an equitable chance of experience in the sector that interests them.

Each of these proposals would provide schools with the space to make the Prime Minister’s ambition for technical education a reality for all of our pupils. The ambition is welcome. We need to ensure that technical subjects are given parity with traditional subjects. But unless we do it carefully alongside the education sector, we risk creating a grammar school and secondary modern divide by postcode. And we can’t go back to that.

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