What a snobby country this is. No wonder George Osborne’s apprenticeship scheme and training levy isn’t working. Because the government hasn’t quite grasped what a proper apprenticeship is, especially if it involves practical skills. To it, and the Department for Education, “practical” seems to mean “thick”.
Last week, my friend Olga, who is a potter, heard about a Somerset school that had a farm and taught agricultural courses. But the DfE has decided that no such courses shall count in the league tables. They are not academic or “rigorous” enough. A BTec level 2 in agriculture counts for nothing. So this excellent school has plunged down the tables. Olga was infuriated and nearly blew a gasket. She is sick to death of our leaders regarding anyone with practical skills as a comparative dimwit.
Lucky Europeans. They do not have our “damaging gulf between the academic and vocational”, as educationist Professor Alan Smithers wrote in 2002. Over there, nursery teachers, technicians, plumbers, builders, craftspeople and farmers are well trained, respected and have proper careers. Here, they are lesser beings, who ought to use the back door. Why bother to train them properly? It’s so expensive. The government and employers are whingeing about who should pay for it. Anyway, foreign plumbers, nurses, builders and other practical creatures are cheaper, because we don’t have to train them.
Once upon a time, we weren’t quite so snobby and stingy, or so keen to sabotage our industrial and technical abilities. We had industrial training boards, which also charged employers a levy for training, unless they were providing it adequately themselves. We had technical colleges, day release from work to learn something useful, and apprentices weren’t just tea-boys/girls or free slave labour.
It wasn’t perfect. “Technical” has never been as admired as “academic”, and “good with your hands” has always meant lumpen and brainless. Then Thatcher abolished most of the levies and we called all the technical colleges “universities”, to make everyone sound similarly clever. Because our leaders still don’t realise that there are differences in abilities, interests and aspirations. They just see clever or clueless, upstairs or downstairs, academic or nothing.
