Educational Opportunities: Working Classes

Lord Glasman Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Glasman (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Morris for initiating this debate. I have always respected her enormously for her ethics, her commitment and her consistency. I am honoured to speak in this debate, with so many people who have great knowledge and with whom I agree. I also offer my congratulations to the Minister; she and I worked together on religious freedoms, and it is wonderful that she has been given the opportunity to do this work.

I will concentrate on something that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, has been working on, and that is technical or vocational education. I want to talk about the changes which I think are necessary in relation to this. I completely agreed with the first two points made by my noble friend; this relates to the third point.

Somewhere in the 1980s, despite evidence that the growth areas in employment were in relational care, building and maintenance and cooking and cleaning, it was decided that we were moving towards a knowledge economy. I would strongly argue that it was a great mistake to abolish the polytechnics and turn them into universities. Essentially, it was an exclusively academic concentration on the pathway which, as my noble friend Lord Knight mentioned, is not for everybody and is not what is wanted. There was also a definition of social mobility as a velocity concept that judged you by how far you moved away from your mum. That led to the denigration of place and of belonging, particularly in relation to working-class communities. There was no way out of abandoning those communities if you wished to pursue your career. In 1974, the funding for apprenticeships and university places was at parity; 14% went to university and roughly 14% did apprenticeships. The apprenticeship system has been decimated, whereas now about 48% or 49% go to universities.

What is required is to look at the concept of vocation. The noble Lord, Lord Lingfield spoke about the cadets, but generally the vocation is good work. In the labour market, the rise in jobs is in the vocational sector—social care is one example where there has been an enormous rise in jobs, which are low-grade but should be dignified work. Building and maintenance, plumbing and all these areas were assumed to be a relic of the past—a bit like the working class, the ultimate relic of the past but a very decisive force in our society and our politics and rooted in those areas.

I suggest we look carefully at pathways from the age of 14. If you look at the bottom third of the educational cohort—a bit like social class—in terms of Cs, Ds and Es at GCSE; there is a real failure at the bottom end. If you look at the UTCs and what is being done by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, there is an alternative, but the pathway should be towards genuine vocational colleges. In those colleges, we should think quite radically about putting medical schools, dentistry and—heaven forbid—accountancy, in those vocations. Remember, vocation is linked to virtue, and virtue is not “do-gooding” but “good doing” or being able to do things skilfully, which is essential for our society.

I urge the Minister and the Government to look very seriously at those educational pathways, at the skills we need and at the low attainment at the bottom end of schools. We need to give genuine dignity and vocation to working-class communities.