Youngsters without skills and companies without workers: something is rotten in the state of Britain. Could a new type of school help? Samantha Laurie asks its champion, former Education Secretary Lord Baker
Imagine a school where 14-year-olds spend 40% of the week working with their hands – learning how to draw, build and design their way to becoming entrepreneurial engineers or computer scientists. A school where every child wears a suit and attends from 8.30am – 5pm, 40 weeks a year. One so closely linked to industry that virtually every student goes on to an apprenticeship or university at 18.
Sound like Germany? Actually it’s Scarborough, Heathrow, Reading, South Bank, Greenwich and, soon, Guildford. There are now 47 University Technical Colleges, funded by the state, non-selective and free to attend. Each is sponsored by a university with support from local business. Most specialise in engineering and technology, though some address the creative and digital industries: Global Academy in Hayes, near Uxbridge, opened last month.
Sometimes a whole host of local businesses are involved, designing projects based on real life industry problems and helping shape a specialist curriculum that includes GCSEs and
A levels in English, maths and science, alongside technical qualifications in engineering, construction or computing.
More radical than free schools, and far more relevant to our current educational travails – an academic curriculum that fails and bores roughly half our young people – than the endless debate on grammar schools, this is a quiet revolution, driven almost single-handedly by one man now in his 80s: former Secretary of State for Education, Lord Baker of Dorking.
“I first persuaded David Cameron to back UTCs in 2010,” he explains. “But Gove really wasn’t interested. He was all for a purely academic approach, which I think is quite wrong.”
Undaunted, Lord Baker focused his efforts on the Baker Dearing Educational Trust, a charity he founded with the late Ron Dearing, a former chairman of the Post Office. Its aim was “to do what the government should be doing, but to do it more dynamically”.
“We have got to give students skills they don’t currently get in schools – problem solving, working in teams, talking to lots of different adults. It’s a disgrace that so many leave school without workplace skills when our businesses are crying out for creative engineers, technicians, designers.”
So why have we waited so long to come up with a plan for technical education?
“Snobbery,” says Lord Baker, unhesitatingly. “In 1945 we had 300 technical schools but everyone wanted their child to go to the school on the hill, not the shabby one in town with the reputation for dirty jobs and greasy rags. The Germans didn’t make that mistake – they adopted our system and never looked back."
“In Austria, which has the lowest youth unemployment and the very best technical education in Europe, the national curriculum stops at 14. After that it’s all specialist colleges – technical, catering, agriculture, liberal arts.”
By involving universities, Lord Baker has helped banish the suggestion that this is a low status option. And the results speak for themselves: UTCs send more students to university than the national average: 42%, as against 37%.
“Clearly we are not dealing with dull students. We have a wide range of abilities, high commitment levels and high attendance. A few pupils are disengaged, others have difficulties such as autism or dyslexia, but we find they make remarkable progress.”
Crucially, UTCs may even be closing the achievement gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers – at some colleges students eligible for pupil premium are outperforming those who aren’t, possibly thanks to the increased structure in their lives of a longer school day and less holiday. Over four years, UTCs gain a whole teaching year.
True, some colleges have fallen short of Ofsted expectations; a couple have actually closed. But outstanding colleges like Reading generate considerable interest from students from a wide catchment area.
“Our target is full employment or further education. We have 97% of students in apprenticeships or at university at 18. We’re turning out some very employable youngsters with maths and physics A levels, as well as a BTEC in engineering, sustainability or health. Many go to university, but a lot more now are choosing apprenticeships with Rolls Royce, National Grid and the like. They start on £18,000 and immediately begin a part-time degree paid for by the company.”
Opening in 2018, Guildford UTC is backed by Surrey County Council, Royal Holloway, University of London and cyber security giant, CGI. Its mission: to train a cohort of youngsters in the skills needed for a digital economy.
It’s a fine legacy for the man who, as Education Secretary in the 80s, set out to ensure that every school had at least one computer. Thanks to him, many youngsters can now make a living out of them.
Check out another article from our education-themed October magazine cycle, like Victor Smart's discussion with Toby Young about free schools
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