In recent years we have seen a big focus in education on the development of social and emotional skills and their importance for the achievement of outcomes beyond school. And as we start a new year, I reflect again on the centrality of skill development in building a ladder of opportunity that everyone can get on.
I have always believed that there are other routes to sustainable success for those who do not want (or who are not seen as qualified for whatever reason) to study an academic discipline at university. If we leave aside the increasingly cheese-paring distinctions between academic and vocational education as we enter the third decade of the 21st century, I suggest that these routes include and intermingle, but are not limited to:
- Formal apprenticeships
- Preparatory learning-on-the-job
- Employment with a significant element of professional development built-in
Sometimes just sheer hard graft (although I would argue that one would not have to look too deeply into the biography of any individual who succeeded through graft to find an informal mentor, inspiring figure or advocate)
My strong belief is that these routes are equally valid to the traditional school –to university–to workplace ideal. But am I correct? Are these other routes (and here I deliberately avoid the word alternative) equally valid? My answer is that, on this issue at least, I appear to agree with the views of some of our largest businesses and employers.
There is an increasing number of major companies that actively promote case studies of high-influence individuals who have succeeded without following the traditional university route, aiming to motivate candidates and highlighting the possibility for success for employees for all backgrounds.
To name a few, business and political figures from such backgrounds include:
- Former Prime Minister Sir John Major (now a great advocate of apprenticeships) who left school at 16 with three O-Levels
- Lord Sugar who famously also left school at 16
- Baroness Karren Brady, Vice Chair of West Ham FC and an advisor on Lord Alan’s The Apprentice show