MANCHESTERISM IN SCHOOL

Lucy Powell, our education secretary, has promised to explore qualification pathways for vocational courses within the existing GCSE structures. If this happens it could be the first time that government has stepped away from a totally academic shape to GCSE qualifications at the end of many pupils educational journeys. Many of these technical awards, equivalent to GCSEs, already exist and many schools offer these to a few pupils who find the academic and school life difficult. This initiative is likely to increase the availability and the status of the awards across the country.

The government identified that one of the reasons for the increase in NEETs across the country is the absence of a pathway from a narrow academic school life and the world of work. That discrepancy seems to create a cliff edge for some students who plummet in confidence and in opportunities to enter the world of work. Some of the proposals are scheduled for introduction in late 2027 and major changes will follow in2028. Some might call this an example of “Manchesterism” where a baccalaureate has been established to support this transition to work from school. That “MBacc” model will have a large influence on what happens nationally as a kind of pilot project for the whole country.

The MBacc aims to provide five opportunities:

1.      Technical learning,

2.      Work experience,

3.      Employer encounters,

4.      Digital enrichment, 

5.      Careers conversations.

The shape of these learning patterns will have some consistency across the country but will have marked regional variation according to the needs of local industry and the availability of learning partnerships. The local Mayoral authorities will also have an opportunity to shape this vocational provision. Then there are plans in the making to introduce “V” levels alongside A and T levels for post 16 students.

Ken Robinson, a well-known educational thinker, accused secondary education of aiming to make everyone a University Professor and structuring itself like a mini university with departments and a focus on a narrow form of intelligence and ignoring other aspects of human knowing that are much more applicable to life. Thing like honesty, empathy, teamwork, creativity, practical problem solving, drama, sport and spirituality. All of these things can wilt away in the shadow of academics and never see the light of day, never receive recognition that leads to their growth.

As Salesian educators we should welcome this initiative because it takes us back to our roots in Turin in the 1840s. It was there that Don Bosco opened schools for academic learning alongside workshops in key skills like printing, woodworking, construction, and book binding. He was always thinking of two pathways into life and work. To that curriculum he also added music, drama and sport and catechesis to complete a rounded offer to his young people. He went out into the town and found placements for his students in settings that would grow into permanent employment. In addition, he followed his students up and drew up contracts for them and followed the up into the future to ensure they were not exploited.

The experience of many educators such as Don Bosco, Froebel and Pestalozzi point to the need for a broad spectrum of education to capture the talents of the young, to help those talents grow and to build youthful confidence for a changing world. Ken Robinson suggests that we have turned our secondary schools into factories that crush the life of young people through interminable testing, league tables and narrow views of the role of schools. He suggests that the factory model should be dropped in favour of a farm model where nurture, varying growth rates and individual needs are all recognised. In the helterskelter search for academic excellence according to expected levels at specific ages we have turned young people into cohorts, outputs of a mass production system that is no longer fit for purpose. I hope that this move towards the vocational aspects of education will help to heal our secondary school pupils from the tyranny of testing and competition.

DON BOSCO, A TEACHER AND A TRAINER FOR LIFE