Burnham: 'We will rebuild a system of comprehensive education'

The prime minister has pledged to “rebuild a comprehensive education system” to create parity between academic and technical education.

Andy Burnham told the Labour Party conference that too many young people had been “cast adrift” by a school system “overly focused on the university route”.

One week after his appointment, Mr Burnham announced that vocational pathways for 14- to 16-year-olds would be made available in all schools from 2028, including new vocational GCSEs from 2029.

He said this afternoon that the government would create “good-quality pathways for all” and provide the “right support for young people when they need it”.

This includes a 45-day work placement for students aged 16-18, apprenticeship opportunities for 18-year-olds and shorter wait times for mental health support.

Student support has been ‘stripped away’

Mr Burnham said: “Just as growing up has become harder in the social media age, their support has been stripped away.

“Youth services were practically abolished in the early 2010s. Children’s mental health services were cut. Families were left to battle for support for children with special educational needs and disabilities.”

Mr Burnham accused politicians of “failing to give young people the support they needed as they grew up in a tougher world”, asking: “How is that fair? How does that build a strong society?”

Referring to the Milburn Review - which is due to publish its final report on young people and work in the coming weeks - the prime minister said the government will change both the education system and the welfare system.

Responding to the speech, Matt Wrack, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, said Mr Burnham was “right to highlight the need to invest in children’s services and improve access to mental health support”.

He added: “Teachers know that without proper investment and early intervention, too many young people are often left without the help they need.”

New vocational qualifications

Questions have been raised over the government’s flagship technical education pledge, particularly on the role of Ofsted, how the plans would be funded, whether and how they would be assessed and how they would be staffed.

Skills minister Jacqui Smith told a panel at the Labour conference that the government was at “quite an early stage in the development of our thinking and our delivery of that 14-16 vocational stage”.

Baroness Smith said the new vocational qualifications need to be introduced in a way that does not “completely upend the system” after facing calls for more radical reform.

During the panel discussion, the government faced calls from former Downing Street adviser and headteacher Peter Hyman to reopen the curriculum review.

He called for the government to create a new qualification framework, which he referred to as a “Tomlinson 2.0”. When Labour was last in power, the 2004 Tomlinson report called for a unified 14-19 diploma framework to replace GCSEs and A levels and introduce core functional skills.

Mr Hyman said that the world was “moving too fast to have the tired old arguments about academic and vocational” and that the government should avoid “baking in” labels around vocational qualifications.

Baroness Smith said that what the government needed to focus on was “building on what we’ve already done in the first two years with the principles of Tomlinson, particularly around how you enable young people to have genuine courses that give you the opportunity to do ‘the head, the hand and the heart’ - but you do that in a way that doesn’t completely upend the system”.

Myles McGinley, managing director of the Cambridge OCR exam board, told the panel that there was a need for a national strategy for vocational education from ages 14-19, covering curriculum, assessment and pathways for young people.

He added that “vocational GCSEs can’t sit on their own”.