route of GCSEs and A Levels, the other half will take vocational qualifications (soon to be the new workbased Specialist Diplomas, of which the first five, in construction and built environment, creative and media, engineering, health and social care, and information technology, will start in September 2008).
The BSF-promoted model is of clusters of schools each offering a vocational specialism, often with an Academy playing a lead role, in partnership with FE colleges, private vocational providers, and local businesses. From 14 students would spend part of their time off-site, in an FE college or workplace.
This is a class strategy, in two senses. First, it is driven by business interests - very directly since local provision is to be driven by local employers. Second, it will create further class and ethnic segregation in the school system, since it will be mainly students from working class backgrounds who will take the vocational pathway, while middle class students follow the traditional 'academic route.
"The government's rationale tor this radical reform is two-fold: that employers need a more skilled future workforce and that work-related Icarning can mouvale alsaneclea and low-achieving students. How should the left respond to these arguments?
First, what are the realities of the labour market? It is increasingly polarised, with two growth areas. One is in well-qualified and relatively well-paid professional, techniIt will be mainly students from working class backgrounds who will take the vocational pathway, while middle class students follow the traditional 'academic' route. cal and managerial jobs. This labour market sector is well provided (though there are some areas of shortage) by the traditional 'academic route. especially by the schools serving middle-class areas.
The government motivates its work-based secondary curriculum by claims that it is necessary for a competitive 'knowledge economy' in which employers are demanding a more qualified and skilled workforce. This is largely a myth.
lhe other. and much larger. growth area in the 'hour-glass' economy is low-qualification, low-skill, low-pay routine jobs mainly in the service sector, including cleaning, distribution, retail and social care, many of them part-time, and many oI tnem tradinonaly women s Jods
What emplovers want the schools to produce is workers with 'functional' English, maths and computer skills, soft' skills such as communication, team-working and 'problemsolving', and the 'right' personal qualities - motivation, flexibility, reliability, and self-presentation. As one employer put it, 'we recruit attitude'.
So some vocational pathways will be geared directly to this low-level 'employability' agenda. Their students will receive, from age 14 if not before, a narrow and impoverished education, the educational equivalent of the national minimum wage -which is what it will lead to for many of them.
Other work-based pathways will lead to higher-level vocational qualifications, but with no guarantee that laughable to believe that a 14-plus subsistence diet of work-based learning together with 'functional' English and maths and a hotchpotch of 'citizenship', religion and sex education is anything like adequate.
The compreensive vision is in great danger, not only because of the cument government attacks bur because the experiences both of the last 20 years of Tory and Labour education policies and of the halfhearted compreensive education they replaced have made a vocational curriculum an attractive alternative for many teachers, young people and parents.
This poses a fundamental challenge to the left to rethink what schools offer at present and develop a credible radical alternative based on a connon oroao core curaculum tor all till 16, integrating both theory and practice, including a common work-related dimension for all which is in a critical education, not a halling, perspecuve, nol uca lo a limited occupational sector. and under the control of teachers and communities not employers. Sources The DES BSF website gives details of which Local Authorities are in which funding waves. Councils' BSF plans can usually oe touno on mel weostes. Look in meir 'Strategic Business Case' document for the LEP and outsourcing. Look in their 'vision of the SBC) for vocationalism. See Dexter Whitfield's new book New Labour's Attack on Public Services (Nottingham: Spokesman Books) and the European Services Strategy Unit website http://www.european-servicesstrategy.org.uk/) for publications from the union campaign in Tyne and Wear. On the labour market see Jon Cruddas (2006) Neo-classical Labour, Renewal, vol 14 no 1. May (http://www.renewal.org.uk/issues/vol14no12 006neoclassicallabour.asp) and Ewart Keep (2005) Reflections on the curious absence ot emplovers. labour market incentives and labour market regulation in English 14-19 policy: first signs of a change in direction? Journal of Education Policy Vol. 20, No. 5, September, pp. 533-553. Contact: [email protected]