If we want to take vocational work to be seen as important as it is, we should make everyone try it.
The battle of improving the status of vocational training has a long history. It is why, after all, we got rid of the term ‘polytechnic’. The latest move has been the introduction of T-levels to provide technical training routes alongside the more academic A-levels. All these things move us in the right direction, but a faster route to get to an equitable society might just be to get everyone doing more vocational subjects to start with.
As it stands at the turn of the first quarter of the twenty-first century, the system attempts to provide a robust, academic education to every child. It is only when a child doesn’t succeed on this track that we offer them something else: you can’t do A-levels, so how about Ts? In such circumstances, it is difficult to get away from the deeply-ingrained culture of our nation: vocational training is second best.
Vocational training isn’t second best. Becoming a chef, a nurse, a brick-layer, a plumber, a surgeon, a teacher,… so many careers require vocational training. What we’re really down on, of course, is vocational training starting too early. Our thinking is that once a child starts laying bricks, we’ve cut off her other options. But we don’t have to think like that. Experience of laying bricks, caring for animals, doing the accounts, modelling resuscitation, chairing meetings and unblocking toilet pipes can be as useful to the budding surgeon and tomorrow’s teacher as to those who won’t go on to university (still the majority of us).
One reason that experience of things other than books and the insides of classrooms is of benefit to all is that it stands a good chance of improving how we work with each other. There are too many bad bosses in this country and too many miserable places to work, not because of the job per se, but because of thow the people in charge do things. It would also give us a better view of what the world is and the challenges others face. That puts us in a much better place from which to set out on our career paths, one of the most important decisions we each make in life and one which is woefully supported by schools. As it stands today, we often have to choose to be a paramedic or a brick-layer before we get a proper chance to do it. Not surprising that we so often follow our family members into their professions. A few careers events in a lifetime of school doesn’t fix the issue – the entirety of our secondary education should be geared towards getting the right people into the right work for them. Getting out and doing vocational training is the best way (we currently know) of doing this.
Remember too, as it stands at the turn of the first quarter of the twenty-first century, that it isn’t clear that delaying vocational training improves your satisfaction with work. There are many academic routes that lead to unsatisfying positions in offices. A cabinet-office survey in 2014 showed that the correlation between pay and job satisfaction is not as high as you might expect. Browse through the results and notice the high satisfaction of the relatively low-paid farmers, fitness instructors and supervisors of metal workers. Consider that some professions for which vocational training tends to begin at an earlier age are more likely to be active and out-of-doors (potentially increasing mental and physical health) and some give more opportunity for self-employment (potentially increasing autonomy).
The government produces long lists of things a child should be able to do at various ages but it is based on the assumption that we need a very general, abstract and academic preparation before we come later to figure out what we want to do. We pack too much into the academic curriculum and traditional subjects are outdated. We offer vocational routes for those that aren’t so successful on the normal route. To value all roles in society properly, we should give the opportunity for every child to become what would suit them best. Those that are good at exams should also have the opportunity to learn vocational skills from a young age.
Shorten the academic curriculum and complement it with a much shorter list of the kinds of vocational experiences a child should have had by certain ages, designed to help them understand the variety of work that is out there and how best to carve out their future in that world.