‘Education is like trying to run up a down escalator’

If Michael Gove gets his way, more teenagers will fail their GCSEs and A-levels.  Gove intends to make exam questions harder which will mean pass rates will fall after increasing every year for a decade.  At GCSE level, coursework will be phased out and more emphasis placed on written tests. Modularisation will be ended and schools will return to linear, end of course assessment. 

The Independent (22/2/12) quotes Gove on his intentions. He says that ‘Education is like trying to run up a down escalator’, strangely the same phrase we use in our book ‘Lost Generation? New  strategies for youth and education’ 

http://radicaled.wordpress.com/review-of-lost-generation-new-strategies-for-youth-and-education/

 For Gove ‘there will be years when, because we are going to make exams tougher, the number of people passing will fall. There are headteachers who have been peddling the wrong approach to teaching for too long, who are going to lose their jobs’

Unlike Gove, ‘we confront economic realities to show how the recession has intensified longer term changes in the relationship between education qualifications and the labour market. Even if there is a partial recovery, there will be a ratchet effect which will raise the bar to worthwhile employment at the same time as qualification inflation continues to devalue all qualifications with the effect that participating in education is like running up a down escalator.

Rather than the endless opportunities offered by the “knowledge economy”, for many young people – even many of those with qualifications – casualised, low-wage, contract and unskilled jobs are increasingly the only ones available; if they can find those! So, any increase in ‘high skilled’ and well-remunerated professional and managerial employment has not been able to absorb the increase in the level of educational credentials held by the population. The corollary is that people are overqualified for most jobs that remain.’ (p. 3 introduction)

Patrick Ainley and Martin Allen                    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrVncCFG8rY

Regeneration e-book now available

Martin Allen and Patrick Ainley                                                                                                                                                    

‘Overqualified and underemployed’ : young people, education and the economy

http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/ebooks/Regeneration.html    

 

Regeneration focuses on the question of intergenerational justice. Defining the world’s young people as those born after 1979 – a hugely symbolic moment in the history of globalisation – it reflects on the massive growth in generational protest across the globe thirty years later. At its heart is an analysis of politics though the prism of generation.

New e-book: Why young people can’t get the jobs they want and the education they need

 

New  free to view  e-book. 

Why young people can’t get the jobs they want and the education they need  

Martin Allen and Patrick Ainley       

Download  here  e-book -why young people….

or from the sidebar Pages menu                                                      

Already referred to as a ‘Lost Generation’, after almost two years of Coalition government, young people now have even less to look forward to and are likely to end up worse off than their parents. This publication builds on, develops and updates arguments from our book Lost Generation? New strategies for youth and education (2010) and, in particular, those in our previous  e-pamphlet Why young people can’t get the jobs they want (2011)

 Paper version also available @ £3 per copy.  mar.all@btinternet.com  to order

 

Labour market prospects – no comfort for the young.

Figures  for the final quarter of 2011 show unemployment up by 48 000 at 8.4% or 2.67 million – with significant increases in female joblessness being the result of local government cutbacks.

Of course, ONS statistics are just one (narrow) measurement of labour market activity. Using broader indications –including those taking part-time or temporary work because there is nothing else - the TUC puts the real jobless figure at 6.4 million (www.tuc.org.uk/economy/tuc-20616-f0.cfm).  The ONS data also reports a 60 000 increase in employment, but this is the result of a 90 000 increase in part-time working.

While the official unemployment rate for 16-24 year olds may have crept up by 22 000 to 1.04 million or 22.2%,  this includes over 300,000 students looking for work. Excluding those in full-time education however, there are still 17% of 18-24 year olds unemployed, up 2% from a year ago – with another 15% ‘economically inactive.’  The limited involvement of young people in the labour market as a whole is strikingly apparent – 44% of all 18-24 year olds are not working.

 Worsening figures for unemployment take place against increasingly pessimistic predictions on the state of the labour market, with the highly regarded Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s (CIPD) monthly survey on employer expectations concluding that the first quarter of 2012 will be the most difficult period for the jobs market since the recession. (That is if, we are not already back in recession!)

Despite a significant contraction of the economy during 2008/9 unemployment did not reach the levels expected by many forecasters  as employers ‘held’ labour, using short-time working, ‘voluntary’ lay-offs and in some cases by making pay cuts. CIPD report an end to a ‘wait and see’ attitude and instead employers ‘pushing the redundancy button’. Nearly a third of its respondents in the private sector plan to make redundancies.    It also reports that six out of ten are not planning to create any new jobs in the next three months months(www.cipd.co.uk/pressoffice/_articles/LMOrelease130212).

This is hardly the sort of news that young unemployed people will want to hear. If young people looking for work find themselves at the end of the jobs queue, then those in work will also be more vulnerable to the risk of redundancy –being both less established in their workplace and less expensive to get rid of  - a  survey  of young workers by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) showing  that few had the savings they needed to survive a redundancy and 40% of 16-24 year olds had debts of £5000 or more (www.ippr.org/images/media/files/publication/2012/02/young-people-savings_poll_Feb2012_8650.pdf)

With CIPD (and the IPPR) continuing to predict unemployment approaching 3 million by the end of 2012, prospects for the creation of more apprenticeships also look bleak.  Government supporters may argue that 163,000 new apprenticeships have already been created – more than double their original proposals of 50,000 and that George Osborne has pledged an extra £150 000 million bringing the total apprenticeship budget to £1.4bn by 2012.  It is now clear however (Guardian 28/10/11) that only a minority of these new placements have been for young people. Only 11 000 new places have gone to 16-18 year olds and only 16% to those under 25.

 It is also evident that employers have repackaged or are ‘converting’ or ‘rebranding’ existing jobs as apprenticeships so as to meet targets and qualify for money. Neither is it clear how many of them may be short-term – maybe for a few months at best. Under the Coalition many  ‘apprenticeships’  exist in name only and are certainly not the legally binding indentures of yesteryear that guaranteed employment on completion because again, employers, benefiting from plenty of applicants, including plenty of graduates, do not require such ‘time serving.’ The reality is that most do not require apprentices at all!

 With the US unemployment rates levelling off as a result of the mildest policy turn away from austerity,  a Plan B (+) for the UK couldn’t have greater relevance.

Martin Allen

Gove, vocational qualifications and league tables

Michael Gove’s decision to limit how vocational qualifications are included in school league tables is consistent with recommendations in the Wolf report. Wolf proposed restricting vocational learning to no more than 20% of a key stage 4 student’s curriculum, but her proposals   brought her into conflict with the still influential  Lord (Kenneth) Baker -  the creator of the original National Curriculum and more recently the driving force behind the University Technical College. For Baker, Wolf’s proposals ‘did not go far enough’.  

Baker favours   the continuation of the ‘pathways’ approach developed by Sir Ron Dearing in the 1990s – where students specialise in either academic or vocational learning, post-14. This is a return to the ideas of the 1944 Act. While it’s true that many students have been able to use Advanced level vocational qualifications as alternative entry qualifications for some universities,   schools often use   vocational   courses to accommodate students with ‘behaviour’ problems.  Few schools offer courses in horse care, nail technology and fish husbandry –the qualifications that have been given media attention, but many offer BTEC certificates and diplomas in areas like business and social care at key stage 4.  After  2014, most of these courses which are given equivalent value of two, sometimes four GCSEs will not be eligible for league table inclusion.

BTECs and the now defunct GNVQs   are sometimes said to develop important ‘generic’ skills and competences necessary in the modern ‘post-Fordist’ workplace, where workers are supposed to be more flexible and to multi-task.  In contrast, Wolf argues most level 2/GCSE equivalent vocational qualifications are ‘worthless’. By this she means that employers don’t   value them. She argues that in the present economic climate all young people need to gain established qualifications, particularly in maths and English. With skilled manual employment no longer available for most young people, she is probably right – but  it is highly questionable whether the workplace has ever really been ‘post-Fordist’   or whether many new jobs in the  service economy do require major changes in skills.

 Wolf’s arguments about  qualifications overlap   with Gove’s attempts to  make  the English Baccalaureate subjects the new ‘core’ curriculum.  But if Wolf’s reasons are economic or about enhancing ‘employability,’  Gove’s are as much cultural and historical – and are supposed  to represent  a  return to the ‘proper’  traditional subject basket of the post-war grammar school. Gove’s decision will inevitably downgrade vocational qualifications further. Yet because the division between academic and vocational learning is as much political and ideological as it is educational – they can never ever enjoy equal status.  We need to campaign for a good general education for everyone.

Martin Allen

Turning the Tables?

 

The publication of the 2011 league tables sees a substantial increase in the amount of data on school performance – in particular, figures for ‘low’, ‘medium’ and ‘high performers.’ This year’s tables also include more statistics for the English Baccalaureate – with many inner city multi-cultural schools finding that despite continuing to improve their GCSE results, they are back in single figures for E-bacc entries and particularly E-bacc passes.

If Michael Gove originally emphasised that the E-bacc is just one measure of attainment; this is not how his favourite newspaper The Telegraph sees it. With only 21.6% of students from state schools being entered for the 5 E-bacc subjects – and only 16.5 % passing, it complains that ‘eight in ten students are being steered away from tough academic GCSEs.’ (www.telegraph.co.uk/education/leaguetables/9041349/GCSE-league-tables-pupils-shunning-tough-subjects.html)     

In fact extolling the values of post-war grammar school education has continued to be one of the Education Secretary’s most enthusiastic activities and Gove is gradually imposing this on all schools as the true indicator of academic success. The Telegraph goes further still, however, welcoming this as a return to the ‘old school leaving certificate’ (awarded to those who ‘matriculated’ from the pre-war grammar schools).

If Gove’s ‘traditionalism’ is a key focus of the White Paper The Future of Teaching, it has also been central to the new National Curriculum proposals for Key Stage 4, where the E-bacc subjects form a new ‘core’. It’s  also the driving force behind the proposals for replacing ‘modular’ assessment with linear end of course exams, his attacks on ‘resits’ and his insistence that particular GCSE  subjects should include marks for punctuation and spelling.   

But Gove is  launching  a more general ‘curriculum war’ – undermining the  comprehensive idea that teachers should develop a type of learning that meets the needs of their students and  which  tries to relate to the lives they lead, allowing teachers not only to innovate, but also to cross traditional subject boundaries. Gove is not only specifying which subjects should be taught but also the content – most apparent in history where, disturbed about young people’s   apparent lack of knowledge about their national heritage, he wants a return to a ‘Kings and Queens’ curriculum.

Labour have attacked Gove’s attempts to narrow definitions of ‘success’. Stephen Twigg arguing that the E-bacc will ‘crowd out’ other subjects not part of it.  However, Labour didn’t do its cause any favours by reducing the compulsory core curriculum to ‘basics’ and   encouraging the growth of ‘vocational alternatives’ at key stage 4.  It was Labour’s box-ticking ‘standards agenda’ that also destroyed teachers professional autonomy and allowed Gove to be able to claim that he is restoring it.

Gove and the Tories accuse Labour of ‘dumbing down’ learning – and worse still, diverting ‘talented’ working class students into easier and less challenging subjects. Turning it into a mandatory requirement will inevitably mean that passes in E-Bacc subjects will increase.  Even if it may now be harder to for them to do so – though there is no conclusive evidence that today’s exams are any easier – millions of young people and thousands of teachers will learn how to jump through these new examination hoops.

Will having the ‘proper’ education Gove insists on enable the increased social mobility that the Tories say it will?  In a stagnant job market and with demand for places at top universities hugely disproportionate to the supply of those available, the answer is no!  Like Labour before, the Coalition faces unsolvable contradictions.  For most young people education will continue to be like trying to move up a downwards escalator – running faster and faster, but finding you are barely standing still.

Meanwhile – unsurprisingly given tripled fees, overall applications to English universities are down by 8.7% but particular subjects and particular institutions will be down by much more, leading to redundancies, mergers and closures, even if the number of applications from 18 year olds appears to have held its own.

However, at the top of the university tree, government now allows institutions that compete for AAB grade A-level applicants to expand, increasing the emphasis on academic cramming all down the line.

Higher education presents a model of independent institutions competing on their various specialist course options that Gove wants to see replicated in schools that are becoming independent of Local Authorities. Soon he will have real vouchers for them in place of the virtual voucher represented by uni’ fees.

Martin Allen and Patrick Ainley