Technical pathways: the multiple hurdles facing rural schools

Jack is 15 and due to sit his GCSEs next summer at a small comprehensive in a picturesque corner of Dorset. He wears his school uniform with the swagger of a boy who is rapidly outgrowing it - and school itself.

I’m here in my capacity as chair of governors to interview him about his career ambitions, and I ask him whether he enjoyed some recent work experience with a family member’s roofing company, working as a roofer.

His eyes light up. “I loved it.”

Jack’s progression into a career ought to be straightforward. Through work experience, he has found something he loves; there are plenty of job opportunities and academic barriers to entry are low.

In practice, however, the path is quite a bumpy one. No local college offers a roofing qualification, so he will need to find an apprenticeship.

Even if the firm is willing to undergo the bureaucracy and expense of taking him on, he will then need to find a provider to deliver the classroom-based component of the course.

Meanwhile, at school, he follows a curriculum that is essentially academic - English language and literature, maths, science (two GCSEs) and a further three optional subjects - and designed for progression to A level and university.

Helping more students with career routes

With a year group of around 100, the range of options the school can offer is heavily restricted, so courses like food technology and business studies are a non-starter.

Even a work experience programme has been abandoned due to the difficulty of persuading a staff member to put in the hours building and massaging the local business networks.

Given this, prime minister Andy Burnham’s technical education proposals could have much to offer the Jacks of this world. Certainly the impact of the Manchester Baccalaureate (MBacc) makes it clear why he believes it could work elsewhere.

Devised in partnership with employers, the programme aims to deliver 50 hours of work experience and a standalone IT qualification.

Even now, a Mancunian Jack attending a school like North Chadderton School, whose headteacher is a vocal supporter of the MBacc, could choose a combination of vocational and academic qualifications including Cambridge Nationals in sports studies and enterprise and marketing, or a Btec in IT.

He would have the opportunity to experience work in the construction industry and to explore other related fields.

Studying subjects he had chosen with a link to a future career would help him to stay engaged and motivated through the challenge of GCSE.

Crucially, he would have the information and experience to make an informed choice about his next steps: he might choose an apprenticeship, or a T level in construction; he might dream of becoming a thatcher, or a heritage conservator; of working for a big company, or the public sector, or starting up on his own business.

Many schools will have students who would benefit from these opportunities.

The rural versus urban challenge

But the MBacc was designed for the Manchester conurbation, an area of high population density, excellent public transport and big local employers with HR departments.

Here in Dorset, the population is scattered and public transport is next to non-existent. Our students are predominantly white working-class, a demographic whose educational attainment is sufficiently concerning to have provoked a recent review.

Prosperous local businesses are typically on a smaller scale, far less well-equipped to cope with the Byzantine demands of risk assessments and health and safety legislation.

It’s also hard to see how a school that can’t afford food technology will be able to lay on engineering, business, and imedia - even if they could find someone to teach it, which is by no means a given in rural Dorset.

Even if a teacher could be found, budget pressures may mean adding one subject means removing another - and which head wants to abolish geography? Or erase modern foreign languages from the curriculum entirely?

After all, many students and their families will still expect the “broad and balanced” curriculum (also mandated by the Department of Education), especially if they have the aim of university and a professional career thereafter.

Accepting parity between academic and technical

Add to that the reality that we still struggle as a nation to accept parity between the academic and the technical route.

Technical schools, City Technology Colleges, Studio Schools, University Technical Colleges, National Vocational Qualifications, General National Vocational Qualifications, Diplomas - all have launched to great fanfares, and all have been undermined by the assumption that technical study is second rate.

Maybe this time will be different. If it is, though, it will need to come with an assurance that all schools - urban, rural or coastal (another DfE area of focus) - and their students have the same opportunities to benefit from what a technical education route could provide.

Otherwise we risk creating another educational divide that means the options facing students like Jack are determined, once again, by their postcode, and not their ability.

Dr Caroline Spearing is chair of local governance at two Dorset academies and trustee of a MAT