A new generation of schools offers a cure for jobless youth
Artist’s impression of the new Hackney UTC at the Shoreditch campus
Youth unemployment, over a million now, is the most painful feature of the recession; a breach of the promise one generation makes to the next. But it’s not new – unemployment among the young was rising even in the tail end of the boom years.
There’s a deeper change going on here. The brutal truth is that in the 21st century, Britain has no jobs for young people without qualifications.
There’s a real shortage of first jobs for young people with all levels of education. Only 6% of employers offer jobs to 16 year old school leavers and only around 10% offer jobs to 17 and 18-year-olds fresh from school or college, according to 2009 data held by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills. Increasingly, the jobs which are on offer to young people are not particularly good ones – they are more likely to be temporary or part-time, and they are less likely to receive training than older people.
But what about the future? Two of the most successful sectors of the economy – professional and scientific jobs, and IT – employ a below average proportion of young workers. Both of these sectors are significant in employment terms – employing around 1.9m and 1m people respectively. If we’re going to get more young people into work, here’s where the growth could come from.
Here’s a puzzle: the employment rate in Hackney, east London, has been rising over the past three years to nearly 71%, which is above the national average. But Hackney’s unemployment rate has barely been whittled away. Meanwhile, the percentage of the borough’s population with degrees rose dramatically in the past decade, from 33% to 46%. (Nationally, the figure is 25%).
In other words, the jobs aren’t going to local people. There’s been an influx of graduates which has transformed Hackney but left untouched a layer of young people without a future.
Even after years of investment, thousands of teenagers across the country are leaving school without the basics. School league tables published by the government last week highlighted the fact that just under 60% of 16-year-olds achieved five A* to C grades at GCSE including English and maths, in last summer’s exams.
Just 34% of those in care or on free school meals achieve this benchmark.
For those who fail to get these qualifications, the prospects are bleaker than ever.
How do we fix this? Improving school standards is part of the answer, but it’s obvious that there are thousands of young people who fail to be switched on by a traditional academic education.
One solution can be found in a new generation of vocational schools, backed by firms such as BlackBerry and Toshiba, which will open across England from September. The first of these schools, the JCB academy, opened in Staffordshire in 2010.
The first in the capital will open in Hackney this autumn. And while the University Technical College scheme is the brainchild of the former Tory education secretary Lord Baker, the chairman of the Hackney project is a prominent figure on the left, Anthony Painter.
Education secretary Michael Gove has announced today that 13 more UTCs have been approved to open from September.
Hackney UTC is sponsored by Hackney community college, whose principal Ian Ashman sketched out to me how a “radical strategy of closing down schools” had transformed the borough’s GCSE results. But he believes this will now have diminishing returns.
“The strategy of doing more of the same has been successful but is not going to carry on being successful,” Ashman says.
“There are young people capable of being successful at 16, but who don’t at the moment because they’re not motivated by the academic programme.”
The problem in Hackney is not necessarily one of a lack of jobs, but a mismatch of skills. On the doorstep of the new UTC is Tech City, the cluster of tech and digital companies that began at ‘Silicon Roundabout’.
Health, and the way that technology is going to change healthcare is another source of potential growth. There are three hospitals in the vicinity; Barts, the Royal London, and Homerton.
Austerity means these workforces are unlikely to expand, but they will change shape as the way that health services are delivered changes – making greater use of remote diagnostics, for example.
But even in a bleak economic climate, employers say that they can’t recruit young people with the necessary hi-tech skills.
Annie Blackmore, who will be headteacher of the Hackney UTC, says: “What the UTC is doing is sitting down with these employers and saying: ‘what are your skills needs?'”
Partners including BT and Homerton hospital will help draw up specifications for the curriculum – and the the children’s schoolwork will include employer-led projects. The school day will be based on the working day, all part of channelling young people into work.
But equipping them with skills for work doesn’t mean that they should be pigeonholed, Blackmore says. After all, children will be 14 when they start.
Instead, they’ll be encouraged to do the core curriculum – GCSEs in English, maths, science, a humanity and a language – alongside a vocational qualification in either health, or information and creative technology.
There will be a strong “bias towards” the use of technology in class, and students will be expected to blog on what they’re doing in the curriculum.
That will be an essential preparation for the future.
“They’re going to be working freelance,” Ashman says. “The way in which they’ll find work is through Linked In, Twitter.”
The new school’s immediate challenge is to find 100 pupils, to start in September – all of whom are currently at other schools.
The UTCs won’t be selective. To start with, Blackmore is working with schools to identify students who might, as she puts it “benefit from a change of curriculum”.
Though based in Hackney, its catchment area extends across a swath of east London. It is wide because its envisaged that the UTC won’t recruit large numbers of students from any one school.
But how will the new school ensure that it isn’t seen simply as a second choice – a second class education fit for someone else’s children?
Blackmore says: “I don’t want schools to think this is a programme for students they don’t want, don’t necessarily want to keep in their schools – the curriculum will be challenging.” The aim is to rercuit children “who are capable of succeeding but are switched off by what’s on offer.”
Painter advocates a “hybrid and high-quality academic, technical, personal and work-linked curriculum” that should exist alongside the traditional academic route.
He says: “Student strengths are varied and so should the education system be: status and quality however must be universal.”
The question, Painter says, is whether its children from Hackney who benefit from the new opportunities on their doorstep.
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