Technical schools could provide a suitable route to educational success for many “very different young people” who do not attend grammar schools, Justine Greening has suggested.

The education secretary was discussing with TES how a modern system that included grammar schools might work. She said that while she would not herself have suited a University Technical College (UTC) education, she believed the schools were a “good option” for students who are more suited to a “technical education-based route”.

The education secretary’s views were reinforced following a recent visit to Didcot UTC in Oxfordshire, where she witnessed students learning at a “phenomenal rate”, she said.

But, in the interview, Ms Greening sidestepped the opportunity to express her full personal support for the grammar schools policy.

“I wouldn’t have fitted in at a UTC; I loved my economics and I loved my geography, but these are kids who just loved science and practical stuff,” Ms Greening said.

“All that time in the laboratory that, for me, I was ready to [get out of there]. It’s about having that breadth of offer for very, very different young people.”

Ms Greening denied that she was advocating a return to an academic education for grammar students and a vocational one for the rest. But she did say that UTCs - currently 14-19 schools - were part of the solution in offering parents more choice at a time when the government was considering introducing more grammars.

‘It’s unjustifiable’

Mary Bousted, general secretary of the ATL teaching union, said that Ms Greening’s vision was reminiscent of the tripartite system (see box, below) proposed in the 1940s.

“The problem with the tripartite system is it didn’t work,” said Dr Bousted. “The reason is that a high-quality technical education is very expensive.”

She pointed to Germany, a country that is viewed as having a high-quality vocational education system, which she said was now looking to move away from a tripartite system after it performed badly in international rankings.

“There is nowhere Justine Greening can go to that can give her any evidence that will justify the unjustifiable,” Dr Bousted said.

UTCs by the numbers

In an interview with TES last week, Lord Baker - the former Conservative education secretary and founder of the UTC movement - admitted that it was a “struggle to keep [UTCs] going” because of the difficulty of attracting students to switch from mainstream schools.

Schools are reluctant to see their students leave at 14 because it means they will lose the funding attached to them. Similar concerns have been expressed about the idea that pupils could move across to grammar schools at different ages, under a new selective system.

September’s Green Paper says that the government plans to “ensure that there are opportunities to join the selective school at different ages, such as 14 and 16, as well as 11.”

Ms Greening told TES that she was aware of the challenges and that other schools needed to do more to make their students aware of the opportunities that UTCs offered.

She said: “At the Didcot UTC, a student said their school had set out why they did not think it was a good option to go to the UTC.

“I think that is a problem that we need to look at how we fix because those young people were learning at a phenomenal rate [at Didcot]. I could see why they were going to do better at the UTC.”