The future of vocational education
Peter Cuthbertson19 November 2009
At a roundtable hosted by the think tank Reform, the former conservative education Secretary Lord Baker today discussed the new University Technology Colleges which have opened in a number of locations around the country.
Lord Baker argued that in recent decades, Britain has neglected technical education. When Germany’s post-war education system was being established, it was a based on the system in the UK and included technical schools. But Britain itself was soon to move away from this system. As a consequence, he said, Germany has emerged as a very strong industrial nation, in sharp contrast to Britain.
A new wave of University Technology Colleges have the potential to put this right. Students begin at UTCs at the age of 13 or 14 and learn a range of technical skills to prepare them for careers in engineering or the building trade. UTCs open adjacent to existing university campuses, and while remaining separate institutions, they gain much status from this link, and students take them seriously. They have proved extremely popular, with little or no problems of truancy, and many students making special requests to stay working late. Employment rates for those who complete their education at UTCs have been very encouraging.
With UTCs enjoying strong political support from across the parties, there is potential for a much wider network of technical schools to open in the future. This, Lord Baker argued, had the potential to transform Britain’s education system. He noted that David Cameron has welcomed his work to support University Technology Colleges, which he sees as part of the solution to problems of mass truancy and educational failure in Britain’s “broken society”.
