Don’t believe Starmer’s spin on skills
Keir Starmer has abandoned the target of sending 50 per cent of young people to university, but he risks extending the worst failings of universities into further education, says Iain Mansfield
Last week, to great fanfare, Keir Starmer tore up Tony Blair’s target of sending 50 per cent of young people to university. He is not the first person to reject it: the target had been previously criticised by Vince Cable in 2010, and Gavin Williamson in 2020, each at the time the secretary of state with responsibility for universities. But for the target to be rejected not just by the Prime Minister, but by a Labour Prime Minister, is a welcome symbol of change.
Some good practical measures have also been announced. Further investment in Technical Excellence Colleges, where students can learn the cutting-edge skills needed for the modern economy. New bursaries for children from poor backgrounds to study the most valuable subjects at university – funded by a new tax on international students, too many of whom are effectively buying immigration, not education. And applying the lessons of our successes in schools to FE colleges, with more support, higher standards and tougher accountability.
But dig beneath the surface, and the truth is more complex.
For a start, the numbers don’t add up. The new target is for 67 per cent to go to ‘higher-level learning’, which the government defines as being any of academic, technical or apprenticeships. However, the target for the technical and apprenticeship elements is only 10 per cent. Far from abolishing the target of sending 50 per cent of people to university, Starmer has, in practice, increased it to 57 per cent!
There is also an undue focus on ‘higher-level’ learning, a term which refers to a formal classification in which each qualification is assigned a ‘level’, and ‘higher-level’ learning refers to Levels 4 or above. In practice, the level system is a snobbish and outdated approach that ignores the real difficulty of achieving a qualification, the level of skill required – and, crucially, how much it is in demand in the economy.
Apprenticeships
Many valuable and highly paid apprenticeships that the country desperately requires, from train drivers to electricians to heat pump installers, are at Level 3 or Level 2 – and will therefore not count towards this new target. The Growth and Skills Levy, recommended by Policy Exchange in Reforming the Apprenticeship Levy and one of the best parts of the government’s manifesto, has been kicked into the long grass and has not yet been reformed to give employers the flexibility they need. Although the inclusion of apprenticeships in the new target is welcome, unless this element is changed, it risks further distorting our education system away from the skills the country really needs.
But the make-or-break element of the government’s announcement will be the ambition to create a genuine tertiary system, with a single funding system for both higher and further education. This is a worthy ambition, but the devil will be in the detail.
With the exception of a small number of genuinely world-class universities, our university system is in crisis. Uncontrolled expansion, minimal quality oversight and galloping grade inflation have led to a proliferation of dead-end degrees that leave students with nothing but a lifetime of debt. Students, taxpayers and the country as a whole are paying the price.
A genuine reorientation would see government take back control, reorientating our regional universities to deliver the skills the country needs. This would mean reimposing rigorous standards, externally validated qualifications and employer-orientated courses – alongside greater investment in, and new partnerships with, further education. The government’s new Technical Excellence Colleges could be anchor institutions in this transformation.
Instead, government is suggesting that colleges will be given new powers to award their own qualifications and that Ofsted oversight will be handed over to the Office for Students, a much weaker regulator. Startlingly, there is no corresponding plan to strengthen accountability in our bottom-tier universities.
Starmer’s speech was presented as a new focus on technical education. His objective is the right one. But the details of the government’s plan suggest that far from achieving this, they may instead be preparing to do the opposite: importing the worst parts of our failing university system into colleges. This would weaken standards, lower accountability and increase young people’s debt.
It is a mistake that the UK has made once before, in 1992, when John Major destroyed a world-class vocational education system by converting the polytechnics into second-rate universities. Under Starmer and Phillipson, is history about to repeat itself?
Iain Mansfield is head of education at Policy Exchange