On Technical Education
... hard hat and graduation cap
TL;DR: Technical education merits greater recognition, but not because it is the alternative to academic education. Much of higher education is already technical, preparing students for skilled professional practice grounded in rigorous scholarship. The real challenge is to build an education system with no dead ends, where people can move freely between work and learning throughout their lives.
I once received some valuable 360° feedback: “@profserious thinks he is capable of disguising when he is bored or irritated but it is, in fact, very obvious”. I have since practised dissembling but am not convinced that I have much improved. Thus, if you have met me over the past few days, you would have sensed that I was irritated. The reason: an account of education that crudely opposes technical and academic routes. You may think this is a somewhat eccentric matter to get quite so irritated about, but I believe it makes the UK’s skills challenges worse – and, with them, its prospects for growth and prosperity. It also reveals a profound, albeit common, misunderstanding of our education system.
To avoid any doubt, I believe it is vitally important that we provide students, from the age of 14 onwards, with pathways that allow them to develop skills and connect them with employment opportunities. The number of young people in the UK who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) is, as Alan Milburn has correctly identified in his recent interim report, indicative of a serious system failure. It requires addressing. Recent government announcements have rightly renewed attention on technical education and routes into skilled employment. This is a welcome development and I would expect many of them to be predominantly technical in character.
What I do not accept is the implication that technical education and academic education occupy opposite ends of some educational spectrum. The distinction is, at best, an unhelpful simplification and, at worst, actively misleading.
I am using ‘technical’ here in its broadest sense: education that develops the knowledge, judgement and skills required for competent practice in a discipline or profession. Indeed, what defines technical education is the judgement it develops in practice, over and above any particular skill it conveys.
A very large proportion of those who pursue what are described as ‘academic’ routes into higher education are, in reality, intending to undertake technical education. Looking at a typical university, these students are enrolled on professional programmes: engineering, physiotherapy, nursing, actuarial science, computing, law, pharmacy and many others. Virtually all of these programmes adhere to curricula, and deliver outcomes, specified by Professional, Statutory and Regulatory Bodies (PSRBs). Some of these prescribe facilities and staffing; most conduct accreditation visits. Education is delivered by suitably qualified professionals, and fitness to practise is embedded throughout the student journey.
Many of those who are not pursuing programmes directly associated with regulated professions are nevertheless undertaking studies with significant technical content and clear routes into employment. The physical sciences, mathematics and economics are the obvious examples. Much of design and the performing arts is fundamentally concerned with developing the knowledge and capabilities required for expert practice. Even disciplines that are less obviously vocational equip students with demanding technical capabilities: analysing evidence, constructing arguments, interpreting data, designing investigations, acquiring languages, and so on. The proportion of higher education that is wholly detached from practice is substantially smaller than is commonly believed.
The underlying error is to confuse the purpose of education with the way in which it is delivered or who gives the award. Technical education is not defined by whether it takes place in further or higher education, nor by whether it is pursued by way of an apprenticeship or a degree. It is education directed towards the development of capability in skilled practice. Academic education is education grounded in disciplined inquiry, critical thought and the creation and transmission of knowledge. These are not alternatives and the highest forms of technical practice depend upon precisely the qualities that academic study seeks to develop.
This should not come as a surprise, after all universities have always educated for the professions. Law, medicine and theology lay at the heart of the medieval university. Engineering, architecture, pharmacy, computing and many other professions followed. Their common characteristic is that competent professional practice requires far more than the acquisition of particular procedures or techniques. It depends upon conceptual understanding, judgement, evidence and the capacity to continue learning throughout a career.
Technical education can be liberating, liberal and intellectually ambitious. It provides opportunities for individuals to grow, inculcates responsibility, equips them for rewarding careers and enables them to contribute to society. There is nothing narrow about mastering a profession and nothing anti-intellectual about learning to apply knowledge well.
I firmly believe that different forms of education should be held in equal regard. That does not, however, require us to construct a false opposition between them. A great many people will earn a graduation cap before putting on a hard hat; others will wear the hard hat first and return later for the graduation cap. Increasingly, many will wear both during the course of a single career.
Britain undoubtedly needs more and better technical education. It certainly needs stronger pathways into skilled employment and greater recognition of the value of practical capability. Universities have long been amongst the UK’s largest providers of technical education because contemporary professional practice rests upon research and scholarship. The task before us is to connect technical and academic education more effectively.
To achieve this we should seek to build an education system with no dead ends. Learners should be able to move easily between technical education, higher education and employment as their aspirations, interests and circumstances evolve. Beyond parity of esteem between routes the objective has to be permeability between them. Knowledge, technical capability and professional judgement are accumulated over a lifetime, not acquired once. The education systems that will best serve individuals, employers and the UK will be those that make lifelong learning the default.
I agree with the diagnosis, but I wonder whether we're still treating the symptoms rather than the disease.
For over fifty years successive governments have introduced new qualifications, agencies and funding models—MSC schemes, NVQs, GNVQs, Diplomas, Apprenticeships, UTCs, T Levels and more. Many contained good ideas, yet few survived long enough to become embedded.
My concern is that the root cause is institutional rather than curricular.
Schools optimise for the measures by which they are judged. If university progression is the dominant measure of success, it is entirely rational for schools to devote their effort to that pathway. As the old management adage says: you manage what you measure.
Likewise, governments repeatedly redesign qualifications because qualifications are politically easier to change than institutions.
Perhaps the real challenge is not designing a better qualification but creating enduring technical institutions that command genuine parity of esteem and are sufficiently stable to survive changes of administration.
Until we address incentives, governance and institutional stability, we'll continue to redesign the labels while leaving the underlying system exposed to political fashion and short-term funding cycles.
Perhaps the question isn't "What should replace T Levels?" but "Why have fifty years of well-intentioned reforms failed to produce a technical education system with the same confidence and permanence as our university sector?"
An excellent essay. Thank you.
Sadly, the prejudice against learning a vocational skill at university remains prevalent. With our encouragement, one of my children pursued a vocational course lasting eight years. She is now a doctor!
In 1997, my book 21st Century Schools: Educating for the Information Age was published. In it, I highlighted the value and importance of high-quality vocational education and training. Yet the debate between vocational and academic education has changed remarkably little.
Perhaps I should design a new cover and try to sell the remaining copies gathering dust in my garage.