There is something about Andy Burnham that feels a bit too on the nose: isn’t being northern good, football with lads, pint of bitter, remember when people had proper jobs and deep fat fryers.
His is a politics of nostalgia that looks toward the past and wants some of it back. But, that said, his critique of the last forty years of the privatisation of economic power and centralisation of political power is a reasonable one.
Nobody looks around the UK today and worries regional economies may be too strong, or mayors may be too powerful, or there should have been more privatisation of rail, water, or whatever next utility fails.
The problem is that this reasonable critique can lead a politician down some odd rabbit holes. One is in a recent speech on education reform where he said that:
I want an education system based on parity between academic and technical which gives all young people a clear path in life. From today, Britain will value the hard hat every bit as much as the graduation cap.
It’s Keir Starmer’s parity of esteem argument, reheated. If people want to do a technical qualification they should be rewarded, in some cases even encouraged, to do so. Although Burnham talks here about education reform at the age of 14 it shouldn’t be forgotten that a sizable number of people each year take level three technical qualifications.
The problem for Burnham is that they are likely to choose something that does not require a hard hat.
Knowing me knowing VTQ
Last week over one million A levels, AS, and Vocational Technical Qualifications (VTQs) were awarded to students. For more coverage from the big day DK has you covered.
Within that, around a third of all awards were VTQs. The 421 qualifications range from a “City & Guilds Level 3 CPD Module in Dealing with Interwoven Stems and Part Blown Trees”, to the “Pearson BTEC Level 3 National Diploma in Animal Management”, and to qualifications in solid plastering, countryside management, health, tourism, and much else besides. The most popular vocational subject cluster awards were in business administration and law, followed by travel and tourism, and then by social sciences.
For fans of the T level – those academic and work hybrid A level equivalent qualifications – there were 19,665 awards. This is a big increase from 11,909 in 2025, but still represents just a modest proportion of all level 3 awards. T levels are difficult to run, but it is good to see a genuine attempt at education reform show signs of promise (it is important no lessons are learned and similar thinking is never applied to higher education).
The number of T level qualifications is up, the number of providers is up, the pass rate is up, the distinction award rate is up, and the industry placement completion rate is up too. As the Guardian points out the drop out rate for T levels is higher than some comparable qualifications but they have only been in place since 2021-22. The most popular T level pathway is education and early years, followed by health, followed by management and administration.
The cause of and solution to all of our problems
None of these qualifications require students to wear a hard hat (though I have not been in a classroom for 15 years now, and it may be that the teaching of administration has changed over that time) It turns out that, given the choice, students – regardless of age – will pick things that interest them.
On results day, only 213 students received a T level in onsite construction. Of the over 421 VTQs 18 include construction in the qualification title while 74 sit within the construction, planning and the built environment sector subject. According to JCQ this programme family accounts for 19,865 awards, almost all of which are made to men. This is ten thousand fewer awards than science and mathematics, half as many as health, public services and care, and 34,000 fewer than business, administration and law.
The significant number of learners being awarded qualifications in health, public services, and care, can look forward to an employment landscape where they are in high demand even if their wages do not reflect the need for them. Critical demand in manufacturing and production is 42 times higher than the total number of learners awarded a qualification in the field. It is 13 times higher for construction by the same measurement.
The diversity of qualifications is clearly not the problem. Take a moment to scroll through JCQ’s results dashboard to find a feast of qualifications to satiate the demands of even the greediest labour market. The eternal problem is that people tend to study things they are interested in, skilled at, or believe will pay them well even where data suggests otherwise. There are undoubtedly parts of academia that do not show technical education enough respect. It is also true that being nicer about technical education won’t change the inevitable labour market mismatching in a largely supply led education system.
It is a noble ambition for Burnham to aim for “high-quality technical education that’s linked to the jobs available in [ 14 year olds] area.” He might be surprised to find that the technical education they go on to doesn’t just include hard hats but suits, scrubs, stirrups, clippers, aprons, and as many uniforms as there are BTECs.
