Only selection can save technical colleges

We must send a signal that vocational education is prestigious, not a place to shunt hard-to-teach pupils

Among those students celebrating their A-level results tomorrow, do not expect many to be from University Technical Colleges (UTCS) or studio schools. Specialising in technical and vocational subjects and aimed at 14- to 19-year-olds, they are the black sheep of the Government’s education reform programme.

Since 2011, 112 have been set up and, to date, 35 have either closed, converted to other types of school, or announced their imminent closure. Those that remain open are woefully undersubscribed. Even Michael Gove, who oversaw their roll-out, has disowned them. Last year he pointed out that their pupils have lower GCSE scores, make less progress and acquire fewer qualifications than their peers at comprehensives.

I have just written a report for the Centre for Policy Studies arguing that the way to save these schools is to let them select pupils according to aptitude for their technical and vocational specialisms. They nearly all have links with major employers – in some cases, prestigious companies like Rolls-royce and Dyson – but because they can’t select they have ended up being used as dumping grounds by neighbouring secondary schools.

Headteachers who want to shore up their school’s position in the league tables have shunted their most hard-to-teach children into these schools, with no thought as to how suited they are. Meanwhile, the 3D printers and flatbed lathes gather dust.

If the Government wants to save these schools, it must allow them to select. England’s two most successful technical and vocational schools – the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology in Croydon and Birmingham Ormiston Academy, both catering for 14- to 19-year-olds – are 100 per cent selective. They are also popular, get above-average GCSE results and the vast majority of their students find employment in the creative industries.

The lesson is clear if you look overseas. Whether it’s the career magnet academies in New Jersey or the Meister Schools in South Korea, the most successful technical and vocational schools are also the most selective. Children aren’t dumped in them because they’re unable to cope in mainstream schools. Rather, they actively seek out places because they have a flair for their specialisms.

It is widely assumed that the Government could not increase the number of selective schools without an Act of Parliament. Not so. UTCS and studio schools could be made 100 per cent selective by aptitude with the powers already at the disposal of the Education Secretary, Damian Hinds.

The Prime Minister has made it a priority to revitalise this type of education, pledging £170 million for new Institutes of Technology. They’re certainly necessary, given that an additional 3.6 million vacancies in skilled trades and occupations are predicted by 2022. One of Hinds’s key decisions has been to green light the introduction of T-levels – new technical qualifications to rival A-levels.

Not only would allowing UTCS and studio schools to select save them from closure, it would complement these reforms by sending a clear signal that the Government regards technical and vocational education as a prestigious route in its own right, rather than an “alternative pathway” for those children who are “not academically bright”.

For the past three months I have immersed myself in the sad history of Britain’s efforts to create a prestigious tier of specialist schools and concluded that the only way it can be done is if we break the Gordian knot linking technical and vocational education to academic failure. We should not regard children as being suited to this type of education simply because they are unsuited to studying academic subjects. Instead, we need to think of their aptitude for practical subjects as positive rather than negative, and encourage those who possess it to consider applying to these schools regardless of their academic track record.

Unless we abandon the prejudice whereby we think of these schools as only appropriate for “other people’s children”, Britain will languish behind its competitors in technical and vocational education.

‘Technically Gifted’ is published by the Centre for Policy Studies