EDUCATION

We need more role models to champion apprenticeships

This year's A/AS-level and GCSE results have brought with them two hardy annual stories that simply won't go away.
One is little more than an irritation for thousands of hard- working students whose grades outstripped those of their predecessors.

The other story, however, has a more sinister impact. It is reassuring students who fall short of their target grades, that they can always follow some good vocational options.
Although well-intentioned, this sends out the unhelpful signal that learning a skill for a job is second-best to academic study.
Positioning vocational education as the low road to the future echoes an entrenched view among parents, teachers and young people themselves.
Unfortunately we have a chicken-and-egg situation. If peer pressure and guidance from parents and teachers steers the more able students away from vocational routes, there will be fewer high-achieving role models to encourage other youngsters.

The reality is that work-related education today is a sophisticated and structured learning pathway encompassing training in transferable skills such as IT, team working and communications, which are valued by employers.
A further reality is that many youngsters pursuing vocational routes subsequently get the opportunity to take their knowledge and skills to a higher level through employer- sponsored degree courses.
So, if that's the case, why aren't more of the brightest teenagers developing themselves through these routes?
It's the prestige, or lack of it. Parents seem less enthusiastic telling friends that their son or daughter has begun an Advanced Modern Apprenticeship than they would be saying he or she is heading for university.
Teenagers also attach greater kudos to university — not just from an academic perspective but also from the social and personal development standpoint.
Where does this view come from? Can it be that they were far more likely to have heard great tales of old boys and girls doing well at university than stories of those who have built excellent career foundations through apprenticeships?
Perhaps it's through such former pupil tales that greater esteem can begin to be achieved.

I welcome the Assembly Government's decision to appoint a Vocational Skills Champion to raise the banner.
But we also need more grass-roots vocational champions — young people who have excelled in job-related education — being held up as role models.
It will be like turning around an ocean-going oil tanker but, if we begin to tackle the image of vocational learning and start attracting more of the top stream towards it, we stand a chance of getting the educational balance we need for a better economy.

Daniel Davies
25 August 2005

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