Let’s not write off teens who learn at university of life
UNDERPERFORMING, disadvantaged white teenagers are less likely to go to university says a recent report, citing only 16 per cent of white pupils on free school meals going to university and only 18 per cent getting average grades in English and maths. Every other ethnic group on free school meals does better, including 59 per cent of black Africans going to university.
So much for the “white privilege” espoused by left-wing commentators obsessed with “systemic racism” in our society. But although politicians like to find “victims” everywhere so they can claim yet more taxpayers’ money to help them, this disparity is not necessarily a bad thing and may reflect an alternative aspiration among working people.
At my comprehensive state school in Essex, most of my mates left school at 16 and while I was happily pursuing academic studies, they were out working and progressing with their lives. They had houses, cars and families before I’d even left university.
They didn’t feel unprivileged, but simply preferred a practical working education rather than days of seminars and libraries. It was only when Tony Blair massively expanded university education in the 2000s that more and more young people felt they should delay their entry into the real world to go to college.
BUT with average student debts of £50,000 and 52 per cent of university leavers failing to find graduate level jobs with high pay within six months, many people are rightly questioning the wisdom of higher education just for the sake of it.
“For decades we have been recruiting too many young people on to courses that do nothing to improve their life chances or help with their career goals,” said Universities Minister Michelle Donelan. “Social mobility isn’t about getting more people into university.”
Tony Blair’s misguided target of 50 per cent of young people in higher education – finally achieved in 2017-18 – has done little to improve real opportunities. A fact intuited by many working families who see it for the racket it frequently can be.
It is that gut feeling that lies in part behind the apparent lack of white working class people achieving higher grades.
Not everyone wants to sit at a desk all day. Better to save the money and get hands-on experience in a vocational trade that leads to a real job.
Family and friends can often provide a path to work experience and then a proper paid position. Part-time jobs taken on while still at school allow young people to learn real-life skills, such as prompt timekeeping and becoming part of a team. For more technical careers, apprenticeships are frequently the answer, but have been poorly supported.
Last year, Ofsted claimed that this was the “weakest” area of further education with 10 per cent of courses judged “inadequate”.
THIS year, the provision of such training was still considered “troubling” and watchdog Ofsted’s head Amanda Spielman insisted that the “quality of apprenticeship training needs to improve”.
Funding for the training of 16-18 years olds needs special attention as this can be the gateway to a trade.
More flexible apprenticeships allowing young people to work across several projects with a range of employers is part of government reforms to the
system this year. But employment experts say that though this is welcome, it is the apprenticeship levy, in which companies contribute to the education costs, that needs changing.
“Without reform it will act as a handbrake on employer investment in skills, damaging firms’ ability to recover from the pandemic,” says the chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Peter Cheese.
Billionaire Sir James Dyson is certainly a fan of more practical orientated education, having founded the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology. There, students work side by side with professional engineers solving real problems while being given a good salary and with no fees to pay.
Of course, some of the lack of academic attainment by white working class pupils is down to a challenging home life, but many of these teenagers should not be written off as failures as there are many paths to success in life and they don’t all begin with school qualifications.
Testing their drive and ability in the real world can be equally rewarding and freedom from the classroom is frequently the spur they need.We’re not all the same and sometimes young people just need to be allowed to get on with their own lives.
‘Social mobility isn’t about getting more people into university’