Paving the way for tomorrow’s artisans in today’s schools

Perhaps the single most effective place-shaping organisation in Britain is the secondary or high school. It correlates with house prices, it correlates with wealth and class. Teachers will tell you that school results are determined largely by the intake; that it is the neighbourhood that makes the school. And most politicians will tell you that schools are not good enough, they should be better, and by implication the neighbourhood will improve as well.

But I want to suggest here that the whole discussion, left or right wing, has gone down a dead end. We obsess about free schools, about PFI programmes, about the national curriculum, and about whether reading lists of novels sent out by Whitehall’s new Napoleons are too American or too English.

I had a conversation with an academic, about to retire after 30 years of teaching. His frustration was plain: ‘We fail over 60% of young people,’ he told me. ‘Most young people, when they leave education, leave us having been told they have failed.’ Not good enough. Not what we were looking for. Sorry, but there it is, you failed.

His challenge was to keep asking, ‘but where have the artisans gone?’

There is a respectable view that Britain lost its artisan class in the First World War. This carnage was followed by the mechanisation of work, starting with farming and the use of tractors and milking machines. As oil became more plentiful, so mechanisation expanded, becoming cheaper than paying wages. We continue today with IT, also cheaper than wages. But we risk becoming stuck as a low pay, low skills, low productivity economy, serving coffee to a minority of well-paid and well-protected individuals.

So how can we encourage schools to recreate an artisan class?

Well, first by avoiding gimmicks. Such as six-week ‘apprenticeships’ which are just a legal excuse for sub-minimum wage induction periods. Or vocational ‘qualifications’ which are handed out like sweeties so that a training provider can get paid more for ‘results’.

Another conversation, this from a manager of an uber-trendy restaurant. ‘We don’t bother with qualifications,’ she said. ‘It all starts with attitude and liking to work with people, to like your colleagues and customers.’ They were keen to recruit young people from a ‘tough’ neighbourhood. What about NVQs I asked, would they be useful? ‘Nope, except maybe City and Guilds for the chefs. So they know the names of all the knives. We’ll teach them the rest.’

We hear a lot about the shortages in teaching STEM subjects – science, technology, engineering, maths. Which is true, but this need is not just about universities, research and A levels. It starts with tomorrow’s artisans in today’s schools, and finding head teachers brave enough to take a punt and risk the wrath of Ofsted’s inspectors.