Vocational diplomas: the end of the common secondary school in England?

• The New Labour government is implementing a programme of specialist vocational diplomas for 14-19 year old students.
• The first cohort with 45000 students is due to begin in September 2008, in 5 areas: Information Technology, Health, Media, Engineering, Built Environment. Other areas will be rolled out by 2013 and be available to all students.
• The diploma will take up over half of the timetable for 14 year olds, and almost all of it for Advanced students (17 and 18 year olds).
• Government hopes that 40% of 14 year olds will choose one.
• Schools will work in partnership, sometimes with Further Education colleges, to ensure that there is a ‘local entitlement’.
• The new diplomas will further accentuate divisions between schools. It is unlikely that academically successful schools will participate.
• Government also wants employers to play a leading role in diploma design and delivery.

Government justifies this move as part of their ‘skills’ agenda - part of the wider response to ‘globalisation’. In particular, they argue that while Britain has equalled, even surpassed, its competitors in the higher education/university sector, the performance of vocational education has been poor.

There has never been a coherent system of workplace training for young people. In the post-war years this tended to take place through craft apprenticeship schemes. The type of training and the amount of education varied from industry to industry. Often apprenticeships in particular manual trades served no more than a ‘time serving’ function.

According to Brown, Green & Lauder (2001), Britain (England) has pursued a ‘low skills’ route, while others working in the ‘Gramscian’ tradition have explained the backwardness in technical and vocational education in terms of ‘state formation’. They have emphasised the slow and parochial development of mass education and training in Britain (England) compared with elsewhere (Green 1990, 1997).

The drift towards ‘vocationalism’ is not exclusive to Britain (England). Certainly across Europe there has been an increase in vocational/technical/work-based courses sometimes extending into higher education. I want to argue however that the details of ‘vocationalism’ in my country also reflect English ‘peculiarities’. The main points I wish to make are as follows:

• A feature of post-war secondary education in Britain (England) was ‘early leaving’ by the working class. The growth of vocational courses in secondary schools has coincided with increased ‘staying on’ at school because of the collapse of the post-war youth labour market, the continued decline of manufacturing and the ending of the traditional apprenticeship system (in the 1970s 40% of young people still left school with minimal qualifications).
• Vocational ‘pathways’ in schools can be regarded as an important part of a policy of ‘education without jobs’. This follows a period in the 1970s/1980s of ‘training without jobs’ where unemployed school leavers were put on state sponsored ‘youth training’ schemes for up to two years (Allen and Ainley, 2007).
• Vocational courses are primarily ‘ideological’ rather than ‘technological’. They have reaffirmed employment trends rather than seeking to arrest them. They reflect the growth of a post-industrial service based capitalism with most students following ‘business studies’ type courses and those on full-time Engineering courses only numbering a few hundred.
• Courses have been delivered almost exclusively by teachers. Employers have had little input and shown little interest, still preferring candidates with academic rather than vocational qualifications. I would argue the new Diplomas reflect, rather than challenge this. Evidence shows that syllabuses have been drawn up by government consultants and that many employers know little about them.
• Vocational learning has often been based on models of ‘competence’ originating from US industrial psychology. Rather than developing holistic skills, activities are broken down into a series of separate tasks and recorded as ‘outcomes’.
• Students starting vocational courses generally have lower qualifications than those following academic courses Vocational pathways in schools can be seen as representing the latest attempt to create a ‘middle track’ between academic and ‘workplace’ learning. In many respects these new divisions have replaced the old manual - non manual divisions in the workplace and as a result, rather than creating new supplies of human capital, constitute new forms of social (class) control over young people (Allen and Ainley).

Vocational education in Britain (England) continues to fail as a strategy. Non-completion rates for lower level vocational courses remain high. Because students who have not been able to progress on the academic route increasingly use higher level vocational qualifications as ‘second chance’ certificates to access higher education (though not elite universities), content suffers from ‘academic drift’. This alienates the very students they have been designed for, while failing to attract those able to enrol on A-levels, the main academic qualification for 17 and 18 year olds taken by around 300 000 students each year.

The National Union of Teachers officially opposes the diplomas and supports policies for an integrated education post-14; but has not really promoted these alternatives, concentrating on giving practical advice to teachers about conditions of service implications and on campaigning for parity with the academic track.

References

Allen, M. and Ainley, P. (2007) Education make you fick, innit? London: Tufnell Press.

Brown, P., Green, A., Lauder, H. (2001) High Skills Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Green, A. (1990) Education and State Formation Basingstoke: Macmillan

Green, A. (1997) Education, Globalisation and the Nation State Basingstoke:Macmillan.

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