Why we should stop talking about 'pathways' in education

The more Andy Burnham or Lucy Powell talks about technical education, the more loudly we hear a new warning - that in giving young people greater choice from 14, we will trap them on a pathway that will limit opportunity.

While neither of us would ever tolerate a system that sorts children by background, perceived ability or class, there is an uncomfortable truth that is largely ignored: almost every 14-year-old in England is already stuck on a pathway, whether they like it or not.

Our accountability system has made a narrow academic suite of GCSEs so dominant - although it is not actually compulsory - that we don’t even see it as a pathway at all.

Young people need a common entitlement, not identical experiences. And identical experiences are not the same as high standards.

Before 2010, performance tables placed little value on vocational courses. This time around we must reject cheap equivalences and assumptions that pupils who struggle academically must instead be “good with their hands”.

The assertion that reimagined technical education should be intellectually ambitious and create “no dead ends” is right - technical education requires specialist teaching, facilities, employer involvement and core knowledge.

Where we part company with some sector voices is on whether the language of “pathways” from 14 should be used at all. Choice is not selection, and a pathway need not become a tramline.

Alan Milburn’s interim review found that 55 per cent of young people felt education did not suit people like them. Having read some of these heart-breaking stories, we know that protecting the status quo is indefensible.

Economic growth, health, transport and job opportunities matter. But using problems in those areas to absolve education is wrong.

No sudden ‘fork in the road’ at 14

Milburn calls education and skills a “faltering foundation”. We have institutions for education and for employment but no coherent system carrying young people between them. It is high time we replaced “or” with “and”. Solutions will not be found in the economy or education - they will be found in both.

And we should start before age 14, with strong foundations in primary school. Enrichment, skills development and encounters with the world beyond school should build progressively, so that pathways at 14 are not a sudden fork in the road but the next stage of a journey already underway.

That is the thinking behind the West Midlands Baccalaureate (WMBacc), developed by the CEO Futures Forum, where several multi-academy trusts - including Alpha Academies Trust, Potteries Educational Trust and Three Spires Trust - have worked closely with local employers, universities and wider partners to establish a collaborative model that brings education and industry together to shape a curriculum that is relevant, ambitious and closely connected to the local and regional economy. A strong academic core remains an entitlement, alongside high-quality technical and creative learning, meaningful encounters with employers and routes connected to local opportunities.

Those routes remain permeable, leading to further study, apprenticeships, skilled employment or higher education, with a line of sight for young people to a range of high-skilled jobs, ending the historic hierarchy of the single pathway.

Accountability must change to make this possible. Progress 8, including the revised version, values a particular collection of qualifications, and leaders understand which choices the system rewards. Parity of esteem requires parity of space. A different model could protect a rigorous core while creating room for technical and creative depth.

Before the government even published a model for new vocational qualification, critics conjured up an imaginary system in which disadvantaged children are diverted into inferior courses at 14. Rebutting proposals nobody had made is a neat way to protect the existing model from scrutiny, because the effect is to welcome technical education in principle while preventing the changes it needs in practice.

All reform, including the announcement of new vocational GCSEs, should be examined seriously, with the expansion of opportunity, promotion of rigour and the furthering of credible routes into adult life as the measure.

Young people do not need another tiresome culture war in which any challenge to the existing settlement is caricatured as an attack on knowledge or standards. The greatest danger is not that some young people might be trapped on a technical pathway at 14. It is that we continue to trap too many within a system that mistakes uniformity for equity - and then describe those who fall out as somebody else’s problem.

Emily Verow is CEO of Three Spires Trust. Jonny Uttley is the founder of Jonny Uttley Education and visiting fellow at the Centre for Young Lives