The language used in education shapes policy, practice, and perceptions. Edge’s series asks, What's in a Word? and scrutinises the impact of the terminology we commonly employ.
Practice across the globe separates vocational and academic education into different pathways, with vocational pathways regularly positioned as suitable for those who are deemed not capable of success in ‘general’ ‘academic’ education. In policy discourse, ‘parity of esteem’ embodies a vision of equality of status between these two different pathways. From the 1944 Education Act through to the 2025 Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper, governments in the UK have repeatedly called for parity of esteem between vocational and academic education, whilst maintaining separate and different pathways. And in the 21st century, VET is positioned as the preferred future internationally. Andreas Schleicher of the OECD argues that VET constitutes a ‘strategic bridge’ between education and the economy, furnishing young people with ‘job-ready and transferable skills’ and enabling adults to ‘pivot when industries change’. The EU and UNESCO likewise champion VET above general academic pathways, claiming its centrality to the AI revolution, digitalisation, and the transition to a green economy.
Yet evidence repeatedly shows that vocational education does not enjoy the same standing as general ‘academic’ education. Even though academic credentials are no longer a certain route to future success and social mobility, they are still seen as a more secure way to get ahead for increasingly aspirational young people and their parents. They function to socially select and signal eligibility for entry to higher level education and professional employment.
The disparity of esteem between academic and vocational education has a deep history in England. Assumptions about aptitudes for different forms of education go hand in hand with perceptions of suitable education for people from working class backgrounds. While the Taunton Report of 1868 openly ranked educational provision according to social class, the 1944 Education Act was considered a progressive policy step. It nonetheless institutionalised selection, dividing young people of different aptitudes into three types of secondary schools: technical schools, secondary moderns, and grammar schools, the latter being the only type deemed suitable for academic study. This logic persists today, with academic education functioning as a mechanism of sorting and selection, separating ‘the best’ from the rest. Qualification reforms have further entrenched the separation between academic and vocational pathways. Three routes for three different ‘aptitudes’ are clearly visible, from the introduction of GNVQs as a supposedly ‘separate but equal’ middle pathway between occupational NVQs and academic qualifications in the 1990s, through to the proposal for vocationally related ‘V levels’ in the 2025 Curriculum and Assessment Review to form a third pathway between A levels and occupationally focused ‘technical’ T levels, introduced in 2020.
While the aspiration behind these qualification reforms may be to offer high quality vocational options, the constant revisions and renaming of vocational qualifications – now ‘T levels’ and ‘V levels’ – do not magically transform them into pathways that have parity with ‘A levels’. For as Susan James Relly emphasises, underlying these divisions is a historical and continuing class divide in England, and a hierarchical labour market structure, making parity of esteem an impossible dream. The vexed unequal positioning and esteem accorded to VET pathways is mirrored internationally beyond England. Across countries with both developed and developing economies, VET is regularly perceived as ‘a dead-end track and a second-choice education’.
But what would it mean if vocational education and training had genuine parity of esteem with general ‘academic’ education? The following key indicators highlight what shifts would need to take place:
- People are able to reach equivalent levels of qualification and therefore employment having taken different (academic and/or vocational) education and training routes.
- Society values equally these different choices, which would mean, for example, that families would make a positive choice of vocational routes.
- Higher Education institutions accept both vocational and academic awards as entry qualifications.
- Employers recruit candidates with both vocational and academic qualifications to similar levels of employment and financial reward.
These indicators point to the complexity of the challenge and the need to address factors at individual, institutional, labour market and political level to have any chance of achieving parity of esteem. A key question, therefore, is why pursue parity of esteem between vocational and academic education? Does holding onto this comfortable cliché help raise the quality of vocational education and training and ensure equitable provision that meets the needs of all young people and adults?
A focus on equitable provision of vocational and academic education would shift attention onto the need to invest in parity of funding, parity of resources, parity of advice and guidance, parity of high-quality learning of knowledge and skills – forms of parity that are fundamental but are not the same as parity of ‘esteem’
Parity on these terms would not resolve the standing – the relative position of vocational education in relation to academic education – and the value attached to VET, nor overcome underlying inequalities of social class that play out in patterns of who goes where and who gets what. But it would shift policy attention onto the pressing need to invest consistently in high quality, well-resourced vocational education, that supports all learners to participate in forms of education and training that may enhance their future lives.
Written by
Ann-Marie Bathmaker, Professor Emerita of Vocational and Higher Education at the University of Birmingham. Her research is in the fields of vocational and higher education, in particular understanding and addressing in/equalities in educational provision in these contexts. Her work has focused on Higher Education and social class, the Further Education/Higher Education interface, the governance of further education, teaching and learning in vocational and higher education, and professionalism and professional identities in further education. She is a trustee of the Edge Foundation; Chair of the Singapore SkillsFuture Expert Review Panel for Workforce Development Applied Research; Extraordinary Professor at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa; former editor (2017-2021) and now member of the Editorial Management Committee of the Journal of Vocational Education and Training (JVET); and she was the specialist advisor to the House of Lords Select Committee on Social Mobility School to Work (2015-2016).
Next time: A March double bill - Eddie Playfair from the Association of Colleges, and Fran Wilby from Rethinking Assessment consider two different angles on the meaning, purpose, and governance of ‘Enrichment’.