Forget gender, race, or whether you will or won’t wear a mask in polite company. The biggest dividing line in the UK is education. The new focus on non-university routes could be the healing balm we need.
Picking over the pieces after the 2016 referendum, pollsters discovered the single most dramatic split between Leave and Remain voters was education. Britain splintered into two societies: graduates who, by and large, voted Remain and those who tended not to have been to university, who did not. Nancy Mitford’s division of U and non-U language was finally slain by the big U of university.
Of course, any splintering involves rough edges rather than perfect splits. But the patronising labels placed on Leavers — from ‘left behind’ to ‘uneducated’ — demonstrate the potency of education in the Brexit divide.
I spoke to one school leaver this summer who applied to university ‘in case I didn’t get the apprenticeship I wanted’
Boris Johnson may appear an unlikely bridge builder. Few better embody the university man, the gentleman amateur who values knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Who else wears Latin and Greek like a badge of pride? But his speech on further education on Tuesday is the closest thing we’ve had to a blueprint for patching things together.
For too long, non-university routes have been the poor cousin of the academic. According to the OECD, the UK has one of the largest funding gaps between university and vocational education in the developed world. The billions committed to the National Skills Fund can help plug that gap.
The private sector has of course spotted what works much earlier than Whitehall. There may still be a graduate earnings premium, but this is being undermined by the increasing number of top employers like Google, Apple and IBM, who don’t require degrees. Now a fifth of graduates never earn back the cost of their tuition, and the evidence shows that apprenticeships are more likely to lead to a job or further training.
This is not to say we should send fewer people to university. Gavin Williamson may have dropped the informal 50 per cent target, but it’s quite another thing to artificially restrict places. Universities, working in partnership with firms, will always be the places where outstanding research and scholarship takes place. But they cannot be a one-size-fits-all model. We need better options for those who do not go.
What matters is where the extra funds actually end up. Under a clinical eye, the current approach could be diagnosed as ‘scheme-itis’. We’ve already had additional investment for traineeships, the kickstart scheme, T levels and apprenticeships, now college courses and boot camps. All these schemes have merit and meet people at different levels of their prior education. They all have their champions across government. But to be transformative some schemes will have to trump others and get full-throated backing.
So how to spot a winner? Educational outcomes take a notoriously long time to measure, so the quickest sign we will have is prestige. What will young people, and those looking to retrain, view as valuable to their careers and choose to spend their time doing? Some apprenticeships these days are as competitive as a place at Oxbridge. I spoke to one school leaver this summer who applied to university ‘in case I didn’t get the apprenticeship I wanted’. That needs to be more common.
Even more importantly, employers will decide what counts as proof that potential recruits have the skills they need to power their businesses. Here again, apprenticeships have seen government work in partnership with companies to set curriculums and determine results.
Prestige for non-university routes can be determined by the actions of those at the top. The PM has already appointed five ministers without traditional degrees to the cabinet. His commitment to ending the ‘pointless, snooty, and frankly vacuous distinction between the practical and the academic’ should be delivered across civil service recruitment.
Education may divide our society when distributed unequally but it is the magic ingredient for aspiration and ambition. If the promise of the government’s words is delivered, Tuesday’s announcements will not be seen as a charitable handout to those in need but a route to greatness for individuals and the first step in bringing the country closer together.
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