People are quick to condemn vocational qualifications as "dead-end" if they fail to lead directly to jobs, but have rarely subjected A-levels and degrees to the same test. This could change as degrees become more expensive and people question whether the qualification is worth the cost.
As colleges gear up for the autumn intake from schools, and send tens of thousands of students on to higher education, it is surprising so little has been said about this. After all, while the Wolf report praised some vocational qualifications, it claimed there were 350,000 young people on "dead-end" courses. Meanwhile we saw a hike in university fees to £9,000 maximum.
So how do you judge the value of a qualification? It is always assumed academic studies are valuable in themselves; people would never say an engineering degree is a dead end if you ultimately become a banker. So why should an IT qualification be a cul-de-sac, if you become a care worker?
The Wolf report struck chords, not least because people recognised the perverse incentives that drive schools to use so-called dead-end courses: school league tables and the contested idea of GCSE equivalence. But the assertion begs two questions. Are "dead-end" courses only available in vocational education? And can cul-de-sacs be changed into part of a highway to success in life?
In 2003, the government calculated that graduates earned an average £400,000 more during their working lives than non-graduates. There was an acceptance that it didn't really matter what the subject was because the degree itself said something about your value.
However, expanding the number of graduates is certain to reduce the dividend of a degree. And though some young people may be persuaded that the loan repayments are acceptable, others won't, and the number of applicants for HE will fall.
While the way degrees relate to jobs is not yet a subject for public anxiety, it's a different story for other qualifications at lower levels of the qualification tree. What value will A-levels have in a world where they are less needed – where progress to HE is seen as an expensive investment and not necessarily cost-beneficial? And what about A-levels that do not lead to HE? Another "dead end"?
There is a different way of doing things and it means being less obsessed with certificates and more concerned with education. The world ahead for young people is one of increasing need for high-value skills and the capacity to be entrepreneurs. We will never be able to match future job-specific needs to the supply of young people via training, in a democracy. So we need to develop a thrust in our curriculum, teaching and learning that promotes the wider skills essential to success in work.
We need courses and teaching that provide skills, nurture attributes and encourage ingenuity. The "dead end" is avoided if a person can transfer these things to their next stage in learning. The answer is not just to dump tranches of vocational courses or restrict A-levels – so long as they deliver these greater goods.
In 2007, Professor Michael Shayer of King's College London published research showing that as test scores for 11-year-olds had risen, cognitive abilities had declined: they passed tests better but they could not think as well. Our future prosperity depends on young people who can think. We do not need perverse incentives to drive schools to put certificates ahead of capabilities, school targets ahead of individual opportunities; the need to fill places ahead of the needs of young people.
We need the potential of our young people to be liberated, and while there is a focus on liberating institutions we risk losing this much greater good in yet more dead ends.
• Andrew Thomson is former CEO of the Quality Improvement Agency and currently interim CEO of the Association of Colleges in the Eastern Region
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