Vocational courses

The SMF is calling on the Government to raise the national profile of vocational and apprenticeship courses by improving careers education and widening pathways ...

“Some people in the education debate want to frame this issue as a choice between helping white working class youngsters or those from ethnic minority backgrounds. This approach has the potential to make education fairer and help everybody achieve their potential.” SMF’s analysis – for the 2022 report on careers provision – showed that advice is “socially-patterned”, where affluent schools tend to push students towards university, whilst poorer schools tend to favour vocational routes. In the north east, 35% of white working-class students went to university solely on the basis of their BTECs; and 37% of all black British youth go to university with only BTECs. The Education Committee’s report also highlighted the Department of Education’s “insistence that pursuing the same policies will somehow provide a solution”. The SMF, a cross-party think-tank, said that political debates framing education policy as a choice between helping white working class or ethnic minority students are misleading.