Summer Debate: Are vocational courses soft options?
Published:
26 August 2005
Alan Smithers and Geoff Barton
Yes says Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham university Current school vocational qualifications are not so much a soft option as a bit of a con. GNVQs, and the A-levels and GCSEs derived from them, confer almost no job advantage. Instead, they have become a way of getting into those universities that have the most difficulty in filling places.
The charge of “softness” stems mainly from the qualifications’ role in helping schools to show up well. Ofsted inspectors have said schools are not devoting enough time to applied GCSEs to justify their status as double awards. Incredibly, the intermediate GNVQ counts as four GCSEs – on the grounds that it was intended as a whole programme of study.
NO says Geoff barton, headteacher at King Edward VI School in suffolk Amid this year’s August pantomime of exam results, there was a new headline: “Car repair diploma beats A-level”. A new system of “equivalence” means vocational achievements are being ranked alongside A-level grades. As BBC Online noted: “A car repair diploma will be worth far more points than a grade A in a physics A-level: 420 compared with 270. Colleges say this will more fairly reflect their work. Independent schools say it devalues A-levels.”
This highlights the snobbery towards vocational qualifications that is as deep-rooted as it is distasteful. In making a case for vocational subjects, let me first dismiss some of the easy targets. Of course some schools have besmirched the value of vocational courses by playing the GNVQ league table game. But no one should be too surprised if, in an age when schools are judged by league table, some resort to a desperate scramble to boost their position.
