Rebalancing the

UK’s Education
and Skills
System
Transforming capacity
for innovation and
collaboration

Louise Bamfield
September 2013
Contents

Foreword 3

Introduction 4

1. A divided education and skills system 6

2. Improving basic and functional skills 9

3. Enhancing vocational teaching and learning 11

4. Building collaborative and innovative capacity  12

Conclusions 14

References  15
The RSA in
partnership with
Foreword

This thinkpiece was commissioned by the British Council to inform our

joint policy dialogue on “The Quest for Excellence: the Skills Revolution
in the UK and South Asia”. Held in September 2013, the event engaged
over 130 senior policy makers from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh,
Sri Lanka, Nepal, Afghanistan and the UK. It is one of four papers
commissioned for the event, including the latest benchmark research into
Skills in South Asia from the Economic Intelligence Unit. All are available
on the British Council’s website.
With a focus on 16–24 year olds, this paper aims to give an objective
view on the skills challenge in the UK, and how skills can meet
generational and labour force challenges. From a UK perspective, we
know that the ‘skills challenge’ is a combined problem of certain types
of skill apparently being underachieved or under-supplied, and others
being under-utilised. Achieving a better match between supply and
utilisation demands a higher quality of provision across the board.
In reviewing the future prospects for the UK skills and further
education sector, we know that there is much to learn from other parts
of the world, including the dynamic and diverse economies of
South Asia, which in many cases appear better attuned to meeting
the demands of European consumers and business sectors than their
own economies. South Asia’s emerging demographic dividend also
raises challenges about how the state and private sector can meet the
aspirational demands of new generations.
RSA Education seeks to realise the potential of all learners by
developing human capabilities and creating conditions for human
freedom and flourishing. Our programme of policy research and practical
interventions seeks to find innovative solutions to entrenched educational
problems, based on our core principles of tackling educational
disadvantage, democratic participation, and open-minded enquiry.
Throughout its 250 year history, the RSA has maintained an interest
in young people, vocational education and broader skills development.
We hope that this paper makes a useful contribution to discussions both
in the UK and beyond, and look forward to working with the British
Council and other partners to shape debate, inform policies and, above
all, change practices to help more young people fulfil their potential.

Joe Hallgarten
Director of Education
The RSA

Foreword 3
 Introduction

One of the most important questions for any democratic society is

in what does the nation’s wealth consist, and how can it be utilised for
the benefit of every citizen? While nations rich in natural resources,
such as oil and valuable minerals, may have the luxury of investing in
consumption rather than education, countries without such reserves
cannot afford not to invest in their most valuable natural asset – the
skills and knowledge of their people (Schleicher 2012). This view is
substantiated in the British context, where recent UK Governments have
pledged to achieve prosperity for all citizens by becoming a ‘world leader’
in skills, with the aim of promoting growth, prosperity and employment,
at the same time as breaking cycles of poverty and inter-generational
disadvantage (Leitch 2006; BIS 2011). While the financial crash of 2008
and subsequent recession has intensified pressure on government to
restore economic growth and rebalance the UK economy – away from
over-reliance on financial services and the public sector and towards
technology and knowledge-based industries – it has also strengthened
calls to move away from a consumption-based and debt-fuelled way
of living.
Partly driven Partly driven by new economic realities, there are signs of a renewed
by new economic belief in the power of creativity and innovation to enrich people’s lives
realities, there are (Lent 2013). As expressed by the UK Business Secretary, Vince Cable,
‘most people have a fundamental need to work’, not only to earn a
signs of a renewed
wage to support themselves and their families, but also as a vital way
belief in the power of ‘releasing their own creativity and capacity to innovate’ (BIS 2011).
of creativity and While policy has traditionally focused on investment in human capital,
innovation to enrich we suggest that forms of social and creative capital represent equally
people’s lives significant sources of hidden wealth (Halpern 2010). This personal and
collective capacity speaks to a deeper human need – to be recognised and
valued for what one produces for oneself and others, rather than simply
accumulating more material goods, and to contribute to a more socially
useful range of outcomes (RSA and LSIS 2011).
Creating the conditions for a richer social and economic life will
not be easy, not least because the new enterprising and collaborative
spirit challenges some deeply ingrained British attitudes about the
nature of individual ability and the value ascribed to different types
of learning. By comparison to other nations (such as the Pacific Asian
societies), people in the UK are more likely to take a ‘fixed’ view of
people’s abilities, seeing them as static or innate, rather than open to
growth and development (Barber et al 2012, Spencer et al. 2013). The
continued prevalence of such a mindset partly accounts for the long-
standing socio-economic gap in pupil attainment at all stages of English
schooling. British attitudes also reveal a lingering anti-entrepreneurialism,
from which enterprise is still compared unfavourably to the professions,
as a less safe or respectable career choice for the ‘brightest’ and ‘most
talented’ young people (Lent 2013). This stems in part from a deep-rooted
preoccupation in English schooling with core academic knowledge,

4 Rebalancing the UK’s Education and Skills System

reinforced since the 1990s by a regime of intensive testing, which has
squeezed out space for developing the wider range of skills vital for life
and work in the twenty-first century.
The next section begins by discussing the real skills gap at the root
of the UK’s divided system, before proposing a whole system framework,
which offers a useful tool to use in assessing current policies and practice.
The following sections then review progress in ‘raising the floor’ in basic
and functional skills, improving the quality of vocational teaching and
learning, and building capacity for collaboration and innovation.

Introduction 5
 1. A divided education
and skills system

The most prevalent Is the government on track to build a world class skills system? Although
issue is not actually the specific targets set by the Leitch Review1 under the previous govern­
skill shortages or ment have since been abolished, they still offer a way of comparing the
UK’s progress internationally. According to the most recently available
skill gaps but the
projections, attainment of higher skills is likely to reach or slightly exceed
under-utilisation 40 percent by 2020, thus meeting the original target for university-level
of people’s skills qualifications. By contrast, the relevant targets for intermediate and low
skill levels are unlikely to be met, with a particular shortfall anticipated
in the number of adults qualified to the lower level.
As Professor Alison Wolf observes, measuring progress against precise
targets only makes sense if the need for different levels of qualifications
can actually be predicted (Wolf 2011). The government’s strategy for
promoting skills and employment therefore must start with the realities
of the current labour market – understanding how it functions, what skills
individuals and employers need and what qualifications they actually
recognise – but without pretending that specific future skill needs can
be forecast with any accuracy. The recession has accelerated structural
change within the economy. The last decade has witnessed significant
growth in knowledge-intensive industries and occupations, whilst job
losses have primarily focused on the lower skilled and young people.
In difficult economic circumstances, it is even more important that
skills and qualifications are aligned with employer and customer demand.
Data highlight the apparent mismatch between skills gained and those
needed in the economy: for example, in 2012, 194,000 hairdressers were
trained for just 18,000 jobs, while only 123,000 people were trained for
274,000 jobs in construction (LGA 2013). Nevertheless, the most prevalent
issue is not actually skill shortages (lack of skills amongst those recruited
to the labour market) or skill gaps (amongst those already in work),
which concern only one per cent and fewer than ten per cent respectively,
but rather the under-utilisation of people’s skills, which affects between
35 and 45 percent of the workforce (Wright 2010).

1.  The Leitch Review of Skills was an independent review by Lord Leitch, the Chairman of
the National Employment Panel, commissioned by the UK Government in 2004, ‘to identify the
UK’s optimal skills mix for 2020 to maximise economic growth, productivity and social justice,
set out the balance of responsibility for achieving that skills profile and consider the policy
framework required to support it.’ The final report, published in December 2006, recommended
that UK should urgently invest in raising achievements substantially at all levels of skills, with
a longer-term goal to become a ‘world leader’ in skills by 2020, as benchmarked against the
upper quartile of the OECD – effectively a doubling of attainment at most skill levels.

6 Rebalancing the UK’s Education and Skills System

 At the heart of the skills debate is the argument that the provision of
‘employability skills’ in this country is poor and that vocational education
is divorced and considered inferior to academic education (Wright 2010).
Continued As Roberts (2009) argues, ‘the emphasis on a set of core academic skills,
confusion about and a culture of intensive testing, has too often squeezed out another set of
the objectives skills – how to think creatively, how to collaborate, how to empathise – at
the very time when they are needed more than ever’. Further education
of vocational
in the UK has historically been the ‘everything else’ sector, serving the
education helps needs of school leavers not destined for higher education, adults lacking
explain why basic skills and participants in active labour programmes, as well as
vocational pedagogy other adult learners who seek to advance their skills and qualifications
has for so long been (Coats et al. 2007). In this sense, it has been defined by what it is not:
under-researched ie the established academic route followed by generations of the highest-
and under-theorised attaining students, typically from middle-class backgrounds, destined for
professional careers in the civil service, medicine, the law and other highly
esteemed occupations. While this image of a class-ridden society may seem
old-fashioned, what is striking about the nature of British society in the
21st Century is the extent to which social inequalities have in many ways
become more entrenched rather than less (National Equality Panel 2010).
Continued confusion about the objectives of vocational education helps
explain why vocational pedagogy has for so long been under-researched
and under-theorised. To help fill this ‘yawning gap’ in conceptual thinking,
Lucas et al. (2012) have developed a theory of vocational pedagogy, based
upon three domains of vocational learning (physical materials, people
and symbols) and six broad outcomes: functional skills, applied skills
& expertise; craftsmanship; resourcefulness; business-like attitudes and
wider skills for growth. We believe that it is important to show how
such a framework is relevant to all learners, regardless of whether they
follow predominantly ‘academic’ or ‘vocational’ pathways. Thus, we
have modified the Centre for Real-World Learning’s framework, to show
how it captures a broad range of skills, knowledge and personal qualities
that are vital for life and work in the 21st Century:

Figure 1: A whole system framework for skills, knowledge

and capabilities
1. Functional and basic skills: including language comprehension & communication,
numeracy & digital literacy.
2. Specialist or advanced knowledge (knowing how and knowing that):
encompassing practical, technical, craft-based and theoretical/conceptual.
3. Craftmanship or Professionalism: a set of attitudes and dispositions towards ones
work, especially the sense of pride in a job well done; the capacity to exercise informed,
expert judgement drawing on a wealth of relevant experience.
4. Relational and emotional intelligence: relating to and empathising with other people;
knowing how to present and communicate to different audiences.
5. Business and enterprise skills: understanding the economic and social sides of
work, eg being able to spot and take advantage of market opportunities; managing time
and resources effectively etc.
6. Innovative and collaborative capacity: being inspired to collaborate and innovate,
enquire and investigate, adapt and respond to changing circumstances.

1. A divided education and skills system 7

There is much By capturing a richer set of skills, knowledge and capacities,
here that schools a framework for the whole of education – vocational and academic –
can learn from offers a powerful way to inform the design of future policy and practice,
as well as a revealing way to assess the current set of curriculum,
FE colleges
instructional and organisational policies and practice. Readers will
on innovative doubtless wish to add certain items to the list, but it provides a helpful
approaches to beginning to such a conversation. Some may question the grouping
teaching and together of all specialist and advanced capabilities – including abstract
learning or conceptual knowledge, as well as applied craft or technical skills, into
one broad category. Whilst scholarly debate on conceptualisations of
‘knowledge’ continues (Pring 2004), we deliberately seek to challenge the
dualism between the ‘practical’ and the ‘academic’ (‘knowing how’ and
‘knowing that’) which continues to be such a prominent and arguably
damaging feature of the UK education system (Pring 2013).
What this framework (or others like it)2 usefully highlights is the
range of learning experiences that are needed to develop this broader
and arguably richer set of skills, knowledge and personal qualities.
There is much here that schools can learn from FE colleges on innovative
approaches to teaching and learning, including how to introduce children
to the world of work, in age appropriate ways, from a much younger
age than is generally done at present.3 Although space precludes us here
from evaluating progress in every category, we focus below on the extent
to which UK government policy is set to increase the level of basic and
functional skills, as it intends; before going on to consider what changes
are needed to achieve a broader set of innovative and creative capacities.

2.  Other organisations have developed similar frameworks: for example, the Studio
Schools Network has developed the ‘CREATE’ framework, comprised of a wide range of
skills: Communication, Relating to people, Enterprise, Applied skills, Thinking skills and
Emotional intelligence.
3.  The final report of the Suffolk Education Inquiry, ‘No School an Island’ (Bamfield et al.
2013) sets out a number of recommendations on how this entitlement to engaging with the
world of work might be realised in schools.

8 Rebalancing the UK’s Education and Skills System

 2. Improving basic
and functional skills

Achieving significant improvements in basic and functional skills is a

central part of the UK Government’s strategy for improving the skills
of the current and future workforce, as well as being a significant
strand of its ‘fairness’ strategies – those aimed at reducing inter-
generational poverty and disadvantage and improving social mobility
– where the emphasis is on ‘raising the floor’ in the level of basic skills
and qualifications, whilst ‘narrowing the gap’ in children’s learning
opportunities and outcomes.
To date, the According to the Government’s own estimates, the education policy
hoped-for gains in with the greatest potential to close the gap in children’s early development
children’s learning is the entitlement to 15 hours of free childcare available for all three
and four year olds.4 To date, the hoped-for gains in children’s learning
that have been
that have been demonstrated elsewhere have yet to materialise – a fact
demonstrated that is widely attributed to the relatively poor level of staff pay, status
elsewhere have and training of the early years workforce. Particular concern has
yet to materialise been expressed about the low level of staff competency in literacy and
numeracy and lack of preparedness to work with children with special
educational needs and disabilities (Nutbrown 2011). The current
proposed response is to introduce a minimum requirement of upper
secondary (level 3) qualifications by 2022.5 It is striking both how modest
an ambition this is – especially compared to high-performing systems
such as Finland, where early years staff are trained and qualified to the
same Masters level as other teachers – and also how uncertain it remains
that even this low threshold will be achieved at a time of continuing fiscal
austerity. The important lesson here for all phases of education is that
a system cannot achieve excellent outcomes, particularly for the most
disadvantaged students, without adequate investment in professional-level
qualifications, training and employment conditions for the workforce.
The second main plank of the Government’s strategy is the
introduction of a new Pupil Premium targeted at ‘disadvantaged children’
(worth an extra £900 per pupil per annum, with total funding rising
to £2.5bn each year in 2014–15), aimed at securing basic skills and
meeting the wider learning needs of low-attaining pupils from deprived

4.  Official impact assessments have anticipated considerable long-term benefits, including
increased lifetime earnings from improved attainment at the end of schooling, amounting to an
estimated net value of £1.6bn to £2.5bn between 2013 and 2022.
5.  Over recent years the proportion of staff with an upper secondary (level 3) qualification
has grown to approx. 65 per cent in England, whereas those with a first or higher degree are still
a tiny minority (approx. six per cent).

2. Improving basic and functional skills 9

 backgrounds.6 With scrutiny from the Ofsted inspection regime, schools
are under pressure to show that they are using their Pupil Premium grant
wisely – including referring to the latest evidence on ‘what works’ to
narrow the gap in pupil outcomes. Although significant money is being
invested in new research through the Education Endowment Foundation
(EEF 2011), the missing link is that teachers do not necessarily have the
support network to collaborate and test new ideas and revise practice
accordingly. Without a research infrastructure of this kind, it is likely
that the EEF investment will prove fruitful, but not transformative.

Maximising Post-16 participation

Maximising participation in education, training and employment
for those aged 16–24 is a particular priority at the present time, when
young people have been hardest hit by the recession, and policy-makers
are anxious to prevent the well-documented ‘scarring’ effects of long-
term youth employment (Gregg 2004). From September 2013, a new
requirement for those aged 16–17 to continue in education and training
has come into effect, extending to age 18 from 2015. By ‘Raising the
Participation Age’ (RPA), the government aims boost attainment of lower
and upper secondary qualifications (level 2 and 3), based on evidence
which shows that young people without level 2 qualifications who
continue in full-time education are four times more likely to attain this
level by age 18, compared to those who go onto a job without training.
Whilst the policy may lead to a small increase in the participation rate (it
already being fairly high, at approx. 85 percent for those aged 16–18), the
main concern is whether it will produce any substantial improvements
in the quality of teaching and learning outcomes for lower-achieving
students. This is a particular worry at a time of limited resources, when
the ‘unit cost’ for continuing students has been cut, making it harder for
colleges to invest in specialist, expert provision for the young people who
have yet to secure the basics in literacy and numeracy.
The missing link is The Government’s employment and skills strategy is underpinned
that teachers do not by a £1bn Youth Contract, which aims to provide 410,000 new work
necessarily have the places for 18 to 24 year olds over three years from April 2012, including
a mixture of wage subsidies, work experience placements and employer
support network to
incentives to take on young apprentices. However, research suggests that
collaborate and test this more diffuse package of employment support, which offers lower
new ideas and revise levels of resource per person to a higher number of unemployed young
practice accordingly people, is unlikely to achieve better outcomes than its predecessor strategy
(Gregg 2009). This poor prognosis appears to be born out in reality: all
wage subsidy schemes have suffered from low take-up from employers
and high levels of ‘deadweight’ (ie helping to fund jobs that would have
been created anyway). Outcomes from the Work Programme have been
particularly disappointing, partly due to the poor state of the economy,
with only 3.4 per cent of young people referred to the scheme in its first
year (fewer than 6,000 out of 240,000) finding sustained employment
(LGA 2013).

6.  ‘Disadvantaged pupils’ are defined as those known to be eligible for Free School
Meals (FSM) or who have been eligible for FSM in the last six years, children who have
been continuously looked after for six months and children whose parents are currently
serving in the armed forces.

10 Rebalancing the UK’s Education and Skills System

 3. Enhancing
vocational teaching
and learning

The current dearth Improving the quality of vocational teaching and learning is a second key
of research on priority. The education and training arrangements for VET teachers and
vocational pedagogy trainers urgently need to be strengthened, from initial teacher training
through to continuing professional development, including developing
urgently needs to
the role of ‘dual professionals’ (Robson 1996, CAVTL 2012). Vocational
be addressed teachers and learners require professional, managerial and organisational
support to develop their dual identities as occupational specialists and
pedagogical experts – and to keep both types of expertise up to date. The
need for a ‘two-way street’, based on genuine collaboration between FE
providers and employers is particularly pressing here, since vocational
teachers cannot keep their occupational expertise up to date without
access to real-world learning – which depends upon employer engagement
to secure relevant placements (CAVTL 2012). Worryingly, when the
Institute for Learning recently reviewed provision for CPD in FE colleges
it found no evidence of a provider that routinely sends vocational tutors
into industry for updating (IfL 2012).
In terms of strengthening the pedagogical expertise of vocational
teachers, problems arise due to the under-researched and under-theorised
nature of vocational pedagogy (Lucas et al. 2012). The current dearth
of research urgently needs to be addressed, through a systematic
programme of research to investigate the effectiveness of different
models and approaches. In light of which, the Commission’s proposal
to establish a National VET Centre with responsibility for research and
development is highly welcome, if long overdue. With sufficient backing
and resources, such a centre could develop regional networks ‘to showcase
and experiment with new ideas for excellent vocational teaching
and learning’, including research into the ‘optimal use of learning
technologies’ (CAVTL 2013, p. 31). But as the example of introducing
the Pupil Premium into English schools demonstrates, even a well-
resourced R&D Centre cannot alone ensure that tried and tested ideas
are taken up, interpreted and adopted effectively. This depends on
building much broader and deeper organisational capacity for research
and innovation, to embed the principles of enquiry-based teaching,
learning and leadership.

3. Enhancing vocational teaching and learning 11

 4. Building
collaborative and
innovative capacity

The government has taken steps to encourage collaboration: for example,

through a new ‘Innovation Code’ and a new ‘Growth and Innovation
Fund’, providing co-investment to encourage employers to collaborate
within their supply chains, business clusters and with FE providers, to
find innovative ways of removing barriers to skills (BIS 2011). Whether
or not such grants are taken up – and used effectively – will largely
depend on the role of local stakeholders including Local Authorities and
Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs). Local councils have an important
role in helping to broker forms of employer engagement and reduce
the mismatch between training courses and local jobs, eg by creating
apprenticeships targeted at specific local growth sectors (LGA 2013).
However, on-going cuts to local authority budgets are making it difficult
to carry out this role, while the pressure of meeting individual targets
can make it difficult for organisations to work together effectively.
Local councils have The creation of strategic partnerships and alliances is also being
an important role actively encouraged through wider government policy, with a plethora of
in helping to broker new governance and organisational structures rapidly emerging, including
federated models, mutualisation and social enterprise hubs and strategic
forms of employer
alliances between universities, FE providers and other partners (BIS
engagement and 2012). At the same time, sweeping changes to the school system through
reduce the mismatch the third wave of ‘Academisation’ is ushering in a whole host of new
between training relationships with businesses, charities, universities and other partners
courses and (DfE 2010). Within this highly diversified (and arguably fragmented)
local jobs system, there are some emerging examples of innovative practice, such as
the introduction of University Technical Colleges (UTCs),7 specialising
in technical subjects such as engineering and construction , whilst
integrating learning with wider skills such as business and enterprise.
Also of note is the model of enquiry-based learning being followed by the
growing number of new Studio Schools,8 (including inspiring partnerships
such as the Space Studio Banbury, sponsored by the National Space
Centre), in which students work on enterprise projects commissioned

7.  University Technical Colleges (UTCs) are technical academies for 14- to 19-year-olds.
They have university and employer sponsors and combine practical and academic studies.
8.  Studio Schools are innovative schools for 14- to 19-year-olds, backed by local businesses
and employers, which often have a specialism, but focus on equipping young people with a wide
range of employability skills and a core of academic qualifications, delivered in a practical and
project-based way.

12 Rebalancing the UK’s Education and Skills System

 externally (such as a health report for a local hospital or a business brief
for a local employer), with the aim of creating learning that is authentic
and integrated into the local community.
While these programmes are in their infancy, established models
such as High Tech High in San Diego, a partner of the Studio Schools
Network have demonstrated considerable success in using hybrid learning
to stimulate innovative solutions amongst students and staff. What
is striking about such examples is how much broader and richer the
curriculum can be for students when they are given the chance to take on
real-world challenges and come up with innovative solutions to problems,
rather than focusing on rote memorisation of concepts.
All schools and Whereas ‘islands of innovation’ may emerge within existing systems,
colleges will need the education system of the future will need to develop a systemic
to experiment with capacity to innovate. As Michael Barber expresses it: ‘In essence,
education systems need to think like the ‘lean start ups’, becoming ‘more
original approaches
adept at generating, identifying and scaling innovation internally’ (IPPR
or become early 2012). All schools and colleges will need to experiment with original
adopters of cutting approaches or become early adopters of cutting edge practice elsewhere,
edge practice so that they can get better at responding to changing needs more quickly
elsewhere than ever before.
In industry, different phases of product development tend to be
highly polarised, with a high skills trajectory during the R&D, design
and launch phase, and then a period of exploitation and maturation
requiring a low skills trajectory. Education is fundamentally different in
nature: the realities and complexities of teaching and learning in diverse
settings for diverse populations do not allow for an easy dichotomy
between a high-skilled innovation phase and low-skilled implementation
phase. It follows that all educators need to be involved in testing,
experimenting, monitoring and refining their own practice in line with the
findings from external research and their own enquiries. Even when robust
evidence exists about ‘what works’ – there is always a need for educators
to consider whether what worked somewhere else is likely to work in their
own setting – and then to test whether it actually does work as intended
(Cartwright and Hardie 2012).
The challenge then is how to integrate this learning into the wider
system – without falling back into the trap of thinking that ‘best practice’
can be neatly packaged up and prescribed to teachers in other settings.
Changing teaching practice in ways that have a significant impact on
student outcomes is not easy. A common scenario is one where, ‘educators
end up trying to implement innovations that they do not fully understand
in organizations that do not fully support their efforts’ (Guskey, cited
in Timperley et al. 2007, p. 12). Successfully developing and sharing
innovative ideas across organizations depends on achieving the right
balance between innovation and consolidation. At a policy level, staying
power is needed so that priorities do not continually shift to the ‘next big
thing’, undermining the sustainability of changes already under way.

4. Building collaborative and innovative capacity 13

 Conclusions

To be truly Ensuring that every child and young person achieves a broad and rich set
innovative and of skills, knowledge and capacities calls for a significant re-imagining of
‘world class’, the the role of educators and the functioning of the education system in the
21st Century. The important lesson for all phases of education is that
system of the
a system cannot achieve excellent outcomes, particularly for the most
future needs to disadvantaged students, without adequate investment in professional-level
learn more from qualifications, training and employment conditions for the workforce.
integrated models But transforming the system demands even more than excellent teachers:
of vocational it depends on genuine collaboration to generate new ideas, inspired by
learning real-world problems and solutions, and to test and refine new learning
models in practice. While policy-makers can offer grants to encourage
business engagement and find more ways to cut red tape, none of this
is sufficient to bring about a transformation in the culture of education
and learning. To be truly innovative and ‘world class’, the system of the
future needs to learn more from the integrated models of learning that are
starting to flourish in more vocationally-oriented settings, whilst steering
away from more rigid academic models that fail to capture the richness
of human needs and capacities.

14 Rebalancing the UK’s Education and Skills System

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16 Rebalancing the UK’s Education and Skills System

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