Labour blasts Tory Tec-Unis as too little, too late

QUEEN MARY, University of London, is one of three new “Institutes of Technology” which the Government plans to set up across the UK to act as a vocational alternative to universities.

The UK has long been seen as a country with a shortage of higher level technical skills. To some extent, the gap has been bridged by high skilled migrant workers – but with the Tories planning to clamp down on immigration as they head towards their post-Brexit paradise, the need to train more UK labour is pressing.

Theresa May: turning back the clock

One of the reasons for the shortage is the long held belief in the UK that technical skills are worth less than academic ones. Theresa May hopes that these new Institutes will act as vocational universities and help to reverse this thinking.

The Prime Minister is again turning back the clock when it comes to education policy. The UK used to have a binary system of universities, which concentrated on providing degrees in academic subjects, and polytechnics, which focussed on providing equivalent vocational qualifications. This divide was abolished in 1992, with all institutions offering higher level qualifications becoming “universities” in a move designed to put all degree qualifications on an equal footing. Now Theresa May is trying to achieve the same aim – by creating a new vocational sector.

It is not yet clear whether the “Institutes of Technology” will be new buildings, with modern equipment – or whether they will be departments in existing institutions. Each will have a different specialism, which suggests that each Institute will be recruiting from across the UK. High costs of being a student have led to more students doing higher education closer to home, and it is not yet clear how these Institutes will attract well qualified and motivated students if those young people have to pay tuition fees and take out student loans.

Queen Mary’s Engineering Faculty, on Mile End Road, is bound to be a key player in the new Institute.

The East London Institute will involve a number of partners, with Queen Mary leading the group and Newham College and employers, including Siemens (the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe, based in Germany), joining in. It will concentrate on transport and engineering.

The Institutes will offer a new qualification: the T-level. They are due to open in the autumn – leaving little time for planning the new courses, finding the new staff and buying the new equipment. The project has been allocated £170 million (equivalent to just under £15 million per Institute) – but it is unclear whether this is capital funding or a new funding stream which will meet revenue costs.

The Prime Minister welcomed the move, saying, “we need an education and training system which is more flexible and diverse than it is currently.” The new system was also welcomed by the CBI, with Policy Director Matthew Fell claiming that employers will welcome the new investment.”

However, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner was not impressed. She pointed out that the “extra” funding for the new Institutes was very much less than the cuts in funding to existing colleges. She spoke up for the thousands of students already studying on the vocational pathway, saying, “this announcement will do nothing for the overwhelming majority of providers and students in technical education.”

Given the extent to which the entire Government has been bogged down with bickering over Brexit, this odd and ill-prepared announcement sounds as if it may be coming from the small group of Ministers working on preparing in case there is a snap General Election.

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