Published: The Times (Public Sector supplement), 2 July 2010
I suppose I'm living proof of how to integrate vocational and academic education, work-based and classroom-based learning, and self-help with mutual help.
This is not solely because I undertook much of my study at evening classes between the ages of 16 and 22, when I went to the University of Sheffield to study politics, but because I benefited from what was then common practice in major industries: day release. I could attend college for one day (and one evening) provided I made a commitment myself. I went two evenings a week, taking A levels alongside the National Certificate in Business Studies.
The courses, particularly in economics and law, overlapped, enabling me to get a vocational qualification while taking A levels, which would stand me in good stead. I was doing the A levels one night a week for a year, so it's a miracle that I passed — although, when you love a subject (I achieved a B in economic history), you strive to succeed.
The National Certificate wasn't my sole foray into vocational training. I'd already taken a typing course to stage 3 (advanced) and Braille shorthand to 110 words a minute. Both were very beneficial, both in getting the job from which, for those two years, I obtained release from work, and in being able to progress to further study. In addition to my degree, I also undertook a Postgraduate Certificate in Education for teaching in a college of technology. Of course, the teaching certificate itself is a vocational qualification.
That is why, when I became Education and Employment Secretary in 1997, with responsibilities ranging from early years through further education and skills to universities, I was keen to try to combine commitment to high-quality academic scholarship with commitment to vocational learning, both on and off the job. We made some progress. The development of valuable, but too limited, learning out of school for teenagers who would benefit from it, through to the development of foundation degrees (work-based wherever possible), showed some modest improvement. The economic austerity programme makes returning to these issues even more important if we are to avoid the mistakes of the interwar years, when future skills were neglected on the ground of being "unaffordable". The truth is we cannot afford not to equip ourselves for the world of tomorrow.
If we are to progress at this time of stringency, there will be one absolute necessity: employer commitment. With limited government funding and the danger of the disillusionment that bedevilled disadvantaged areas in the 1980s — when often the mantra was "If there's no job to go to, why bother?" — we need that old commitment that allowed me to gain my qualifications, to enter university as a mature student and to succeed in later life.
I have always wanted for others any benefits that I have gained for myself. For me, education was the one benefit that transformed a potential life of underachievement and frustration into a life on the front line of decision-making and having the privilege of improving the lives of others.
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