Educational Selection at 14- New initiatives January 2011

In educational papers that I have written and in countless letters to newspapers, I have been campaigning against the crazy imbalance in British education, which came about because the model of Comprehensive Education that Labour imposed on Britain half a century ago virtually abolished the vocational sector. Left-wing theorists and politicians believed then and have continued to believe that only traditional academic qualifications such as “O” and “A” levels defined the educated man. This has been a disaster.
This week there has been a general recognition of this after publication of Coalition plans to create new technical and vocational educational centres for 14 to 18 year olds, across the whole country.
I am pleased about these proposals, but I am not happy about the disruption of a change of school at 14. I prefer the new centres to be alternative freestanding resources to be drawn upon as required by existing secondary schools. I explained this reservation in my posting on The Times Education Forum: SCHOOL GATE, which is copied after the following article, in which the brilliant Lord Adonis explains the new measures with typical clarity. (Taken from today’s “Times”.)

Opinion on the new Technical Schools in the Times 8th Jan 2011

A century late, the technical school is with us at last

Andrew Adonis
Among the manifold disasters of post-war English education policy, one of the greatest was the failure to establish more than a handful of the technical secondary schools promised by the Butler Education Act of 1944. Now, at long last, technical schools for 14 to 19-year-olds are being created on a systematic basis, thanks to a brilliant initiative by Kenneth Baker and the late Ron Dearing.
As Schools Minister under Tony Blair, I strongly encouraged and provided funding for the first of these institutions — called university technical colleges (UTCs) — within the academies programme, and I recently joined Lord Baker of Dorking's charitable trust with its mission to establish a national network of UTCs, sponsored by leading employers and universities with bipartisan political support.
If UTCs succeed, they will help to change the face of education as surely as the wider academy movement of which they are part. UTCs have three fundamental characteristics. First, they pioneer a technical curriculum alongside the "basics” and a full range of extracurricular activities. Last September JCB, the engineering company, opened what is in effect the first UTC on its site at Rocester, Staffordshire. At the age of 16 students take diplomas in engineering and business alongside GCSEs in IT, Maths, English, Science and German.
This is made possible by a longer school day and year, intended to mirror the adult work environment. The JCB Academy has a 41-week school year, with an 8.30am start and a 4pm or 5pm finish, with a week of work placement each year focused on developing engineering and business skills. There could hardly be a better preparation for the skilled jobs of tomorrow.
The second characteristic is that each UTC has a university and a leading employer among its sponsors. This ensures relevance, quality, prestige and good governance. The second UTC will open in Birmingham, next year, sponsored by Aston University and employers including Rolls-Royce and National Grid.
Business leaders have long complained that schools do not deliver. This is their chance to get involved. There is no reason why every leading industry should not have a UTC, including the performing arts, the specialism of the outstanding BRIT school in South London. Every region of the country should have its own version of the BRIT school.
Third, UTCs recruit students at the age of 14. Aptitudes and career preferences are more firmly established at the age than at 11, when children leave primary school. Each UTC will draw from a wide area —JCB academy recruits from dozens of secondary schools — so that they complement, rather than replace, existing secondary schools.
UTCs are not selective in the sense of having a format entrance exam. There is no "14-plus". Rather, they are self-selective in that only students willing to study their curriculum are admitted. They are part of the growing diversity of secondary schools flourishing within the academy movement, ending the old one-size-fits-all comprehensive model that failed so many young people and the country at large.
I hope that UTCs spread rapidly, with at least one in each city and large town. As they do so, a welcome debate will grow about the merits of students and parents choosing secondary schools and colleges at the age of 14 as well as at 11 and 16 as they do now.
Ignore the do-nothings who abound in the education world and who argue that no good idea should be tried unless one can say precisely how it would work if it became the national norm. A few dozen UTCs, or even a few hundred, will happily coexist with established secondary schools and strengthen the ability of the education system to foster individual talent and to meet essential economic and social needs. This is the comprehensive ideal at its best.
UTCs are an idea whose time came about a century ago. But the need for them has become more, not less, urgent with the passing years and this overdue initiative deserves the strongest political and business support.

Andrew Adonis is director of the Institute for Government

COMMENT
LETTER TO THE Times -Positive education

Sir,
We should welcome warmly this positive and progressive move within the education system ("Selection at 14 will drive revolution in schooling", Jan 7). The current system of secondary education is both unfair and unrealistic, providing non-academic pupils with little guidance or structure while prescribing an academic education at university for most students, regardless of whether they are truly suited to it.
The founding of several new technical colleges could also serve to reduce the severely bloated university system. By building such institutions, the Government has the chance to recognise and promote the equal status of a technical education, which is an opportunity not to be missed.

PATRICK BETTLE
Everton, Hants

From The Times education forum -School Gate

THE NEW CHOICE AT 14+ SHOULD BE CURRICULAR CHOICE NOT SCHOOL CHOICE

The threat of the introduction of a 14+ in the discredited tradition of the 11+ seems to have disappeared with the assurance that selection for the new science schools will be self-selection with pupils freely opting for the courses of their choice. However, the process of selection envisaged in these reforms still needs careful examination.
The change would indeed be massive as, three years after they have left primary school, the population of a school year is sorted out to move into separate categories and distinct schools. From past experience, admission procedure to a new school often entails trauma and the separation of segments of school population gives rise to issues of status and may lead to social divisiveness.
It is a major error to assume automatically that choice in education implies choice of school. Increasingly, with new approaches to school organisation with school partnerships, we have seen that the full range of educational choice can be provided through alternative progress paths across two or more educational establishments. Flexible curricular choice replaces the rigid principle of school choice.
In practical terms this alternative approach would mean that pupils would attend the secondary school of their choice from eleven to sixteen years, but after the age of fourteen, they would be able to opt for courses at a central specialist school on two or more days a week. These days should offer academic specialisms as well as vocational and technical. The pupils' own secondary school would remain responsible for the general education areas of the curriculum and for pastoral supervision of both the general and specialised studies of the individual pupil, arranging for any adjustments of career paths in subsequent years. In order for the efficient administration of this system, further evolution of another recent development in British education would be required - the voluntary grouping of schools into cooperative consortia. These groupings would then have the new specialist establishments at their core.

Similar concerns in letters to The Times. 1)Letter of the 11th January

Sir, I am very glad to read of Lord Baker's proposals. Let us hope that these are more than the educational flavour of the month. But why has it taken so long for governments to act on what engineers, technologists and businesses have been saying for many years?
What we do not want, however, is for the educational system to go back to the 1950s where, from my experience, students were split by selection into groups between the ages of 11 and 13. Some to grammar schools at 11, then some to technical schools at 13 and the rest then left to drown or stagnate in poor secondary "modern" schools until they might get a job.
In my view this was a very bad system and a disgraceful period of our educational history; and yes, partly created out of snobbery. So much potential was lost.
EDDIE BEDWELL Swindon,Wilts

2)

Letter to the Times of the 12th January
Vocational training

Sir, No one has recognised the massive contribution to vocational education provided by the further education sector (letters, Jan 10). The success of 14-16 Key Stage 4 vocational options for school-based students demonstrates how easy it is to provide breadth and choice for this age group through attendance one day or more per week at a local college.
Prioritising the needs of learners over the prestige of league table positions enables students to sample vocational learning, gain qualifications and, for many, start a rewarding vocational career. Why, then, create yet another type of educational facility when high quality colleges already exist with real work environments that mirror the workplace and enable 14-year-olds to sample the world of work away from the constraints of the classroom?
C. Drury
Windermere, Cumbria