Andy to introduce new technical pathways for GCSEs in 2028(!)

[noblegiraffe]

Or perhaps not GCSEs but some other sort of qualification which will apparently tie into local industry, for students going into Y8 in September.

"The “prestigious” new technical pathways, which will pair skills training with work experience and connections with local employers, are set to be rolled out from September 2028."

Is Andy Burnham actually mad? 2028? Does he realise that it actually takes time to develop qualifications (or 'skills training'), resource them (particularly technical ones which require more equipment than a maths lesson) and then find the teachers to actually teach them? And the local employers to do the work experience? One of the major problems with setting up T-levels was problems with finding work placements, and that's for age 16+.

I know he has the MBacc in Manchester (although this seems to be merely a label for a set of already existing qualifications rather than new ones - does anyone have any experience of this?) but I expect it is easier to organise work experience for kids in a large city with good transport links than it would be in a more rural/coastal area - and the problem with a lot of those places is a lack of job opportunities for young people in the first place.

And he's announced this in the summer holidays, which one of his teacher relatives should really have warned him is what is considered a 'dick move' in education.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/schools-prime-minister-burnham-lucy-powell-ofsted-b1291512.html

https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/secondary/new-technical-pathways-for-students-announced-by-andy-burnham

Andy should also be aware that calling them 'prestigious technical pathways' is a noble effort, but there is, and always has been a massive issue with vocational subjects being seen as lesser than academic ones. If these prestigious pathways end up being for the kids who are not going to get decent GCSEs - which is always the kids who people think should do vocational qualifications - then they will not be prestigious and the middle classes will continue to steer their kids down the academic route.

There is no point in maths for a lot of people beyond a basic, functional level.

Any maths people need for a job can be learned on the job, and in many cases a lot more successfully than in school maths lessons.

There is a lot of point in getting a good maths GCSE. You can't 'learn on the job' if you can't apply for the job because you don't meet the basic entry requirements.

Apart from the issues of finding the physical resources, developing the course material and finding teachers with necessary skills before 2028, who are all these big employers?

Maybe he can link to BAE or Rolls Royce but in our area, apart from IT (where maths/computing/business degrees are required) there are very few large employers. Locally most companies might take one or two apprentices a year. We have food manufacture, the equestrian industry, agriculture, some tourism, and the usual public sector (NHS, council, police, army). We are not Manchester.

Having spent my career in IT in the Thames Valley, apprentices who don't have strong maths or computing skills are a non-starter.
My niece had an placement at Meta in the Thames Valley but she was offered it after she graduated with a first in Maths from Cambridge and before her PhD in AI. Competition for such places is white hot.

What is useful about the IT industry is its willingness to make appropriate adjustments for ND students because they can possess valuable natural aptitudes.

I think it’s a great idea. I have a daughter just finished Y10 who was recently diagnosed with ADHD- she struggles at school.

she is doing a childcare qualification as one of her GCSEs. It’s the subject she does best in because she wants to work in childcare and so she’s engaged.

while I would love her ro get a whole string of GCSEs and be able to go to uni etc that’s just not on the cards for her at the moment (who knows if she had been diagnosed earlier)

far better to get children engaged with something they can see a point too and come out of school with something than have them disinterested and failing for two years

There's a difference between kids taking a BTEC in childcare, health and social care, construction or whatever as one of their GCSE options, which is perfectly normal, and with saying at aged 14 that they're on the "childcare pathway" and have them link up with a nursery to work for, and train them in childcare skills while reducing the number of GCSEs they take to the core subjects.

Australian here - kids going into vocational paths while staying within the school system have been entrenched for years and yep, we have masses of people earning really well in our resources, critical minerals, construction sectors. Getting a nothing degree from a very ordinary uni when you take this path - if it suits you - is a no brainer.

I don’t disagree but as until she was medicated start of y10 that was the only subject she even had a hope in hell of hitting a 4 in and actually I would probably rather she was on that pathway of vocational plus the core subjects and come out with some benefits than nothing!

in her case she struggles with the school environment so again being out of it some of the time could well help.

They go into vocational paths at 14?

Exactly, this will benefit the bright who would have gone to uni anyway. If you can't get Maths and English GSCE, you aren't suitable for an apprenticeship

We have youth colleges in Kent that start at 14. The offer English Maths and a vocational education in catering / beauty / agriculture etc. They look great for kids that are not academic.
So it’s not entirely a new concept.

Educate the rich and skill the poor

It seems this sort of scheme has the potential to entrench class boundaries and limit expectations of you are not careful. Although we are a million miles away from grammar secondary modern models time wise there is an element here of perhaps getting an internal secondary modern type stream set up whereby there will be a cohort of less academic kids guided down a route which determines their futures at a relatively early age.....essentially setting the platform of working class careers of we can use that term. 14 is different to 11 but imho you may have schools with kids doing read GCSE routes alongside a cohort doing the more vocational route.....is this going to be divisive?.Are we going to have comps separated into the 'skilled head's stream and 'aspiring professional' groups? I don't know.

Also bear in mind kids will want to do the glamorous courses such as photogrpahy, fashion design, sound engineering, art and AM design rather than the courses where there is economic need but the jobs are less enticing.....do we have work experience in refuse collection or sewerage work? There are still shi t jobs out there that need doing and the cynic in me thinks it is the kids with this new 'prestigious' qualification type that may end up doing them.....(especially as we are limiting immigration)

This.

Kids on taking AI style courses at 14 aren't necessarily going to understand minimising loss functions or the use of calculus for the calculation weights and biases in a neural network. Real fundamental AI skills for the industry are going to be for Oxbridge grade as it's bloody complicated and it's patronising to think IT is going to be the natural go to career for kids failing academically.

I think this is a concern as well. Also private and grammar scholols.aren't going to be rushing to provide these courses in much the same way Cambridge Univeristy isn't going to offer a degree in nursing....no one is going to voluntarily compromise their academic prestige.

is this a secondary modern type stream in a conp...very possibly. We could have a middle class.a version to sending children to schools with a high proportion of vocational.kids and looking towards more 'academic' schools (vertically already with outstanding ratings).

the worst comps in my deprived town will probably end up offering this type of course to 90% of pupils i.e. it becomes a secondary modern in all but name due to local socio-economic factors in the carchment.

I don't think you go changing society very easily.....

They can select go to certain subjects as well (often what we call general maths and english) and combine it with a vocational pathway. This doesn't discount university as an option later on or on an alternate pathway. But it means they can attend vocational classes via our TAFE (adult education/technical education) courses wile still attending school. And vocational careers often involve people getting further education later. Its certainly seen as a very viable option.

I think two things are being conflated in a lot of minds (including, I suspect, the minds of some of the people at the top):

1. We need more people doing practical subjects.

1. We have some kids who are never going to get 5 GCSEs and at the moment the education system doesn't work well for them.

It is very tempting to assume you can solve both problems at once by pushing the kids who don't achieve academically towards vocational subjects, but it's not going to work for all of them (probably will for some). In addition, there's a temptation to make any new vocational quals "rigorous" by making them look more academic (e.g. "You're going to be a welder, so write an essay on welding through the ages.")

One concern I would have at least locally where a lot of children would be eligible for the pathway suggested is that there are a number of local.warehousing firms that are very keen to employ a new generation of low skill/low pay workers and would snap at the chance at forming links with schools to offer work experience to 'guide' kids to working in an Amazon team. There is low quality work out there and the companies are often massive in value and use profits to market their job roles in the most enticing way possible..We have a number of McDoanlds outlets in towns and I would think McDonald's would support students wishing to work experience in the hospitality industry to get a ready cohort of new staff. It is the mega corporations that might be the only ones with resources to back up these school schemes. Whether this makes the employers or the roles prestigious I will.let others discuss.

Also if we are to consider seriously significant work experience in local companies we need to dry careful about safeguarding especially for young girls. Most businesses have strict guidelines in interactions with under 16 s for not only protection of the vulnerable but also themselves. Schools have heard of experience dealing with safe guarding issues with dedicated staff but to open up the school gates to external contractors or having under 16s out in the community without robust regulation gives me pause for thought. Maybe this is possibly partly why people choose a non academic path at 16 as under 16 you are essentially pitifully looking at children in a workforce albeit in a training capacity.

I looked in detail at the Brit School (performing and creative arts) offer for 14-16 year olds, thinking it might suit my DC, and that's exactly what they do: those subjects, making up 5 GCSEs, then the student's choice of creative or performing arts subject making up 4 GCSEs. They don't have the issue of going outside the building for the practical part (I imagine they do have some kind of industry work experience but didn't look into that) but if you were on e.g. the stagecraft pathway then the students presumably e.g. light or do the sound for Brit School productions.

We have a local, non accredited, evenings/weekends/holidays model for this too, with West End coaches and (some) students continuing professionally at 18 whether at university or stage school.

So it can work in a formal school setting, but creative and performing arts have people queuing up to do them. The studio schools with a maths, engineering, space focus etc have struggled to fill spaces.

It is really important to learn from what went before. Our UK context is very distinct in some regards. We are not Germany or Switzerland.

Not sure about Amazon ( I doubt their training is, as you say, what they say it is) but McDonalds has long has an excellent training and apprenticeship scheme that is of good quality. Once you have a hospitality management or management qualification plus a maths and English qualification you have it. I agree we shouldn't be funnelling children into narrow pathways but all children being forced into doing 8-9 GCSES is unnecessary. As long as they have L2 qualifications- try GCSE English and maths twice for example then do functional skills which is much more graduated- then there is no reason why they can't do a couple of vocational choices. The L2 maths and English will open up more opportunities for them. Most employers don't care about much more than that but if you can't get them it is a huge barrier. I realise I've described the Btecs qualification but that's because it more or less worked.

The Maths and English and Science GCSEs are so hard these days too! Rightfully so for those who are able, but there needs to be more choice and choice costs money.

Sadly ALL Burnham's choices are going to be constrained by how much he can borrow.

They are, with a ridiculous amount of content, but may be manageable if kids just had to do them, and then could either choose 3 or 3 more academic or vocational subjects. 8 is unnecessary.

There is also a lot of misunderstanding of the german model in here…. the german model firmly targets children who are academically “average” for their more prestigious apprenticeship schemes - very capable of passing maths and german gcse equivalent (gcse maths is pretty basic!), just not interesting in university.
Kids who struggle with maths and german are very, very unlikely to get in unless truly exceptional in another area.
From the you g people i know in the good apprenticeship schemes, they are all driven, academically at least ok (5/6 in English grades), and very interested in the area.

I wanted to pick up the point earlier about the bin collection.

It is really important as a society that we move away from this stupid dichotomy of jobs and prestige.

If you're a refuse collector, a carer, a cook, a nursery worker - the training should be good quality and a clear progression pathway should be there for those who want it.

I think re-funding adult education would help a lot. It used to be pretty cheap to do a qualification at night school and the Open University was heavily subsidised. No longer.

I do think we are pushing a lot of education onto young people at an age when many entirely lack the maturity to see what it "for". And they are much less mature at 14 than in previous generations, on the whole.