Vocational Education: The Point of Departure
It was a standard ministerial speech, but what Matthew Hancock, UK's Minister of Skills, said yesterday should be noted. Not that the ideas are anything new, educators like Ken Robinson has been talking about them for years, but this amounts to a Ministerial acknowledgement of some sort: That skills education needs to change fundamentally. ( See the transcript of the speech here ) The key idea that makes this speech notable is an acknowledgement that the education divide must end. Mr Hancock's point is to eliminate the divide between academic and vocational education, and the labelling that comes with it. As the credo of skills education spreads beyond Europe, this is an important message. One must acknowledge that this is a common refrain among Skills educators: They almost always complain being treated as 'Second Class Educators' by their Higher Ed colleagues. Mr Hancock, being the Minister of the department, may have only been giving voice to it. I am not claim...