Vocational Education - a first class alternative

With all the recent attention being given to university education in the UK, the best way of funding it and the right balance of home and international students, there is alongside the traditional routes through secondary education (GCSE and A levels) an ongoing debate about the focus for 16-19 education, the best balance of academic and vocational education and what kinds of qualifications are most appropriate for the coming decades.

The UK government has been wrestling with this issue for many years now. In 2003 it set up a working group headed by Mike Tomlinson to look at reforming secondary education, with the aim of making sure that all young people stayed at school and in so doing fulfilled their potential. He proposed replacing GCSEs, A levels and vocational qualifications with an overarching diploma, with fewer exams but at an advanced level, tougher questions which would stretch the brightest. The diploma would also cater for work-related learning and have an emphasis on basic skills.

While both Tomlinson and the government would no doubt agree that all young people should be able to fulfil their potential they have described quite different ways of achieving this. The government has chosen to continue with the traditional GCSE and A level routes, with a separate stream for those students who want to follow a more vocational pathway, and students able to choose for which route they are best suited. Critics of the government argue this would make the vocational element a ‘second class’ option, which could reinforce a class divide in our society while the government consider it as keeping the best of what we now have and are familiar with but with the addition of a structure to the vocational training.

Over the next few years the government is introducing, alongside the traditional academic route through A levels, more emphasis on the vocational training options with both more GCSE subjects and more young apprenticeships. Some schools are also being given a special status in teaching vocational subjects, leading to a ‘centres of vocational excellence network’. This will in turn lead in 2008 to the first four (of 14) vocational diplomas, 12 skills academies being opened and there being 200 vocational leading schools with an aim of all 14 diplomas being available for all young people by 2015.

Regardless of the position one might take on the broader issues the government is attempting to lead and respond to, there seems little doubt that many people feel the emphasis on traditional exam pass rates and the failure young people can sense if they are not successful at school is bringing into consideration other educational choices. These are not necessarily the traditional vocational training courses (apprenticeships of old) – but are also increasingly a range of training and qualifications which will help people get on in the modern world. One of the key factors in the government’s overall education policy is to increase the number of students going on to study at university to 50% of all students. This is generally seen as a potentially good thing but, along with an increasing level of student debt and the level of jobs which are of graduate level not matching the number of graduates, the decisions to take on some vocational training are now no longer reserved for the 16-year-old who is not able to cope with the academic route.

These very real choices facing a 16-year-old now: to carry on with A levels and university, to be faced with a student debt of many thousands of pounds and to then have no certainty of finding employment which carries ‘graduate’ level responsibilities and an equivalent salary; or alternatively to leave school, take up some training which will get them into a job, then to follow this up, if appropriate, at some later stage with further training and study.

Increasingly we are finding that students come to us having taken these kinds of choices and having decided that the academic route is not for them. These are not people who feel that vocational training is second-best but people who feel that want to go a different route into their chosen careers. They are not prepared to wade through years of further study but want to get on with their working life now. Alongside the traditional FE colleges, these students are choosing to study at private vocational colleges, and finding in this a balance which gives them in a relatively short time a training and qualification which can get them out into the workplace.

Oxford Media and Business School (OMBS) is one of the many private vocational colleges and is a well-established institution. It is accredited by the British Accreditation Council and thus able to reassure students that outside the mainstream of state funded colleges there are standards, guarantees and regulations. The BAC accredits nearly 200 institutions and the UK government has also recently agreed to include by default all BAC accredited colleges as genuine and serious institutions for the purposes of issuing visas for overseas students.

OMBS runs a range of courses – some of which are self-contained while others offer students the choice of going on to further study (and in some cases to university) or of moving straight into the workplace. One of the most popular and longest running courses is the Executive PA course which, over a nine-month period, trains for careers in PA work office management. The typical student is 18 having finished school and now looking to a job which with a nine-month training can bring in over £20k pa.

There are occasionally younger students as well as university graduates who feel that although they have enjoyed their time at university are not particularly well equipped for a working life. Courses in fashion design can be taken either as a nine-month stand alone course for those who want a general background to the fashion world or can be used as a step in a university-based education (leading to a BA in Fashion Design) at a number of universities. The marketing courses offered lead to qualifications awarded by the Chartered Institute of Marketing and again enable the students after nine months to go out and get a good job (as the qualification carries its own weight) in marketing or to stay and continue on the academic route. Similarly with the business studies courses, each level can be taken as an experience in its own right or can lead onto something more, in our case to a degree and an MBA.

The one thing all these courses have in common is that students can build up their portfolio of qualifications and at the end of each step can choose to go and get work or choose to stay on and study more. The choice is theirs and is a real choice. What is particularly interesting is that the students are not labelled as either ‘vocational’ or ‘academic’ but are able to develop through a range of choices which open doors and opportunities at each step rather than close them off. Surely this is what the aim of any education policy should be?

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