Your editorial (5 August) argues convincingly for investing in technical education in schools and colleges as a means to improving the UK’s poor performance in raising productivity. If history is to be believed, this would be a total waste of money, as any initiative would be closed down within a few years, especially if it were showing signs of success. Technical high schools were an integral part of the 1944 Education Act. Industrial training boards were meant to promote skills training. Youth training scheme were meant to be a permanent feature as a gateway to working life. The technical and vocational education initiative was meant to transform the secondary school curriculum. All gone. It is possible to find similar concerns and proposed solutions dating back at least to the Napoleonic wars.
Until we get rid of our obsession with the superiority of the “academic”, whatever that is, over the “vocational”, with its concomitant insistence on a 19th-century curriculum designed to prepare posh young people for colonial service, we shall make no progress, with worthy initiatives as suggested by you being treated as mere sticking plasters to hide a perceived temporary problem before the world returns to normal.
Roy Boffy
Former senior adviser for further education, Dudley LEA
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