Schools are not just 'feeders' for local job market

[mids2019]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jul/27/burnham-to-tell-schools-in-england-to-adapt-teaching-to-local-business-needs

Andy Burnham says schools should be looking to feed the local job market when he I is in charge of the most Oxbridge weighted cabinet in years whose children presumably are aiming for university and certainly not looking to enter any local job force.

Which proportion of the school should be dissuaded from university entrance to make this plan work.? Is there any counter message for the bright kids at state schools (presumably this message isn't aimed at grammar or private) to aspire to university including Oxbridge to look ultimately at non regional roles?

Maybe we could bring back the grammar school system while sale so we have a university capable cohort with new secondary moderns catering for local business .....would that suit Mr. Burnham.

it's frustrating as my children are fairly academically capable but it seems state schools are being pushed to hear career advice to local non graduate jobs to fulfil government agenda which is leaving them confused.

Fwiw.. I dont think GCSE maths and English are fit for purpose in their current form, and should be replaced with functional Literacy and Numeracy qualifications, Pass /Fail which can be taken at any age. So the very capable can do those in KS3, then move onto the more complex Maths etc in KS4 where as the struggling ones can have more time on the basics. There is no point teaching Shakesphere or Conflict Poetry to someone is still mastering phonics.

Work experience is 3 days to a week in year 10 normally. It doesn’t define your future and placements are normally student sourced. It is a taster of the responsibilities of the world of work. I’m not sure why telling some students to avoid professional roles is helpful. Experiencing a healthcare setting could be helpful for lots of roles with different entry barriers.

You seem to prefer grammar to comprehensives. That seems central to your views - not disliking looking at how education segways with the local job market.

It's comps though that are going to take the pressure of offering vocational and more academic qualifications which is a huge ask of a pressured school. Someone will still need to make decisions about the routes children take academically and could there be an argument a school intimately starts to look like an internal grammar alongside a secondary modern school in realtiy?

I wasn't questioning the professionalism of teachers just pointing out there may be a culture set up where the prime driver of the school is to provide the best vocational routes for children into local jobs rather than pursuing academic excellence.

I really don’t understand your fears.

You honestly think that recognising that some young people would do better with more vocational education means that academic young people will be pushed to become labourers?
This is a potential solution to decrease the huge number of NEETS, not a way to stop young people going to University if they can and want to.

I’m beginning to like Burnham. I’m a Tory voter but a lot of what he says makes sense.
Far too many young people are getting into debt that will never be paid off for useless degrees that don’t help them get jobs. That debt is a cost to the government that won’t be recouped.

I live somewhere with a very specific industry (yachting) that can actually be very lucrative and doesn't need academic skills but does need you to have the right experience to find a way in

I find it continually astonishing that the schools and industry don't seem to have any links. It can be an amazing career which can pay well and give you opportunities to travel too, but doesn't require you to be academic. Yet it remains largely the preserve of wealthy young people who already have the family ties.

I think you are right but here has to be acknowledgment as you say different children take different routes drowning in ability. There just seems to be a lack of transparency on this issue as schools do not want to be seen purchasing different pupils down different routes for ideological reasons (our school sets but does not steam for instance).

It's difficult I grant you and I don't envy teachers .

I think a lot of people haven't realised that trades out earn many traditionally "academic" jobs. Lecturers, Accountants, Solicitors, Doctors - few of them can afford multiple homes these days, unlike most tradespeople I know.

Our (excellent) local comprehensive sends a large proportion to RG universities every year with 4-6 to Oxbridge and also runs a series of seminars for parents and kids on apprenticeships. It’s not impossible to do both.

Where you do give me pause is in considering that teachers might be reticent in pushing a kid with lower predictions down the vocational route. I think the answer to that would be to bring alumni in to talk about their good job at Rolls Royce, Siemens etc.

They already do though.
The "top set" experience in a comp is wildly different anyway.

I have one child in top sets who is being given the chance to do extra GCSEs .

One who is bright enough for top sets but has been told he won't be moved up unless his behaviour improves - which we are trying to tackle (suspected ADHD) but which also shows that the top sets are cushioned from bad behaviour

And then both my nieces are at the same school and aren't very academic and are doing a number of far more vocationally focussed GCSEs.

No. Schools don’t have to make the decision. Students and families make an informed choice after discussions with teachers. At 14 not 11. That is the difference between choosing options at Y9 and an 11+ in Y7. At my DD’s school it is a choice. You can take all academic options or multiple vocational options. There is information, an options evening, info on post 16 routes etc., but ultimately it is down to students and families to decide. A parent must sign off the form.
By 14 young people have interests and aptitudes. They are aware of their attainment levels.

The ‘internal grammar’ system is an interesting point, but actually it works the other way round in practice.

We’ve ended up with a system (at my school) where the vast majority of children can access all of our lessons, because they’re ’inclusive by design’. It’s recognised that a small group of children cannot read nor write, and they are getting all of the readings/maths interventions, help, small group work, ‘step up’ functional skills. They still struggle to get to lessons. Giving them and others who struggle a ‘different’ curriculum could really benefit them and play to their strengths.

So instead of an ‘internal grammar system’, we have an ‘internal SEND offer’ (for cognition and learning difficulties).

By 14 you don’t need to ‘push students down different routes’. You talk honestly about current and likely future attainment and how that fits with different options. Students do have an understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses. Some schools do pigeon hole students into streams and pathways rather than using flexible setting. I dislike that approach.
Students need to make informed choices with knowledge of potential future pathways and discussion of their interests and aptitudes. Good schools, including good comprehensives, do this.

At the moment schools seem to be focussed on academics to the exclusion of practical subjects. There’s a small proportion of pupils who will truly achieve academic excellence and of course there should be routes to achieving this. However a society where academic excellence is seen as the be all and end all, where less academic children are deemed to have failed is never going to work for the vast majority. Just look at the pressure around exams results at 16 and 18, and the fear that young people won’t amount to much without a decent clutch of exams.

Anything that redresses that balance is a good thing. We should actively be telling young people there’s more than one route to success, and that all of those routes are equally valid. I had this conversation with my DS13 who was anxious about a poor result in his Maths end of year exam. He passed it well but with not as a high a grade as he hoped. At 13 he was worried he won’t get to university, won’t get a good job and his future will be ruined - 13 years old. That message is coming from school, not home.

The pressure on young people is immense, and unrealistic. There’s no one route, and diversifying education might relieve pressure on teachers to achieve stellar exam results, allow them to encourage learning for pleasure and broaden the curriculum for those many children who won’t achieve academic excellence.

Please don’t defend the grammar school system. As someone who made the switch from secondary modern to grammar at a late stage, it is so wrong to set people off on life changing events at 10 or 11. Some people just develop late.

A child is clearly not Oxbridge material, if they think that there being a more vocational and practical route through school aimed at learning trades, is aimed at them when they haven't even taken the right subjects to do it. The issue then is some kids not realising other people exist, not someone else trying to reduce youth unemployment.

I have one academic child and one who probably could go to university but would be much happier working with people and his hands, it's no lesser and by high school kids know how academic they and their peers are, they don't need something as horrible and socially destructive as the 11+ to tell them.

There's nothing hypocritical about AB going to university to study English, it's a good degree for the career path he's on, he's obviously talking about all the young people who are kind of stuck and going nowhere, surely you recognise this is a problem?

You appear to be desperately looking to be angry about something completely benign. That's not normal behaviour, I'd consider trying to figure out why it's hit a nerve.

I thought Andy's idea was for 14-16?

I dont know many secondaries in my area that are offering much by way of genuine level 2 vocational courses for many of thier GCSE cohort. They might be allowed too, but they generally offer gcses and maybe one or two non gcse option for a tiny percentage of pupils.
Your daughters school sounds really good that apart from core, a wide range of solid vocational alternatives are available for a bigger part of the cohort to take. This isnt very often the case. Vocational courses tend to be very expensive to run. I work with around 16 secondaries in part of my role, and you get the odd pupil released to do an introduction to building course at an FE college but thats really unusual. The vast majority are doing gcses with perhaps one qualification in sports or food that isnt a gcse but very similar, like a vcert.

Schools tend to put pupils in for functional skills alongside gcse not instead off.

This doesn't make sense, only about a quarter of local authority areas even have grammar schools. We don't in our area and our bright children have done fine. We need to do something! Have you missed all the news stories about how many NEETS there are?

Yes - I would agree with all of that. I don’t think Burnham is suggesting GCSEs in core subjects are abandoned at 14-16, just that more vocational options are considered with an eye to the local job market. That can be possible while retaining the academic offer.
Too often vocational options are an after thought. At DD’s school there is a broader range than some others. They have economies a of scale. As ever resourcing matters. Workshops and retaining specialist teachers costs.

Until last year some lower attaining pupils took functional skills as you say alongside core GCSEs. They dropped an option to enable this. I’m not sure if this is happening this year.

I looked at the ' Manchester Baccalaureate' - core subjects plus a voc subject with some work experience. The voc subject delivered in context within the local area. Not exciting, not new. I have taught for 30 years and was doing this with CPVE, DVE, BTEC, T levels..without funding or real expertise, working with FE providers again - it is just lipservice.

In our LA there are no grammars. There isn’t in most areas. There is not much visible angst about school choice, because there isn’t much :-). In DD’s Y6 class of 33ish one child went to a selective private in the nearest city, one to catholic comp (generally considered better, but needed £1000+ bus pass & baptism) everyone else to local comprehensive. There really isn’t any viable choice for 99% of families. To be fair it is not without problems, but does try to maintain a balanced curriculum offer that serves all of its large cohort.

@mids2019I’m intrigued by what your own educational experience was (obviously you don’t need to say!) because you come across as very scared of comprehensives!

Same. The school caters for everything from children aiming for highly competitive degree courses (Oxbridge/LSE etc) to children wanting very vocational qualifications.

I think you’re worrying about nothing. What school system did you attend? I went to a true comprehensive with no grammar schools in our area and I barely knew anyone from primary school that went to private school for secondary. Throughout school we were taught to our abilities and those who were less academic took more vocational GCSEs / BTECs / NVQs and ultimately went to college or found jobs from 16. Those who were more academic stayed and took A Levels at sixth form and even those were a mix of more vocational and more academic subjects.

I don’t think anything is changing and certainly not for the worse. It will just legitimise and remove any stigma from a path that doesn’t follow the university route which can only be positive for many young people and the country (more skilled workers and less student debt not being repaid).

I agree with Burnham on this. The core output of leaving any level of education should be a higher level or to go into a job. The same applies to school as much as university. Too many young people are leaving education without the skills they need.