The political rhetoric of parity of esteem

ABSTRACT

The vocational and academic routes that make up the English education system have different purposes, for different stakeholders, with different outcomes; they can be complementary routes but are not analogous. Consequently, calls for parity of esteem belie the fundamental intention and importance of each. While these calls have persisted for over 70 years, parity between the two routes has not been achieved. This paper questions whether the term parity of esteem is useful or simply political rhetoric. It argues that parity of esteem is unachievable when one of the routes is regarded without much esteem at all, and that political rhetoric focussing on social mobility through education, specifically higher education as a means to achieving it, actively undermines the vocational route, making parity of the routes a political pipe dream.

KEYWORDS:

• Parity of esteem
• academic qualifications
• vocational education and training
• social mobility

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Jo-Anne Baird, Ewart Keep and Richard Pring for their constructive feedback on earlier drafts of this paper. Thank you also to Gary Morris and Kristine Gorgen for their research assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Beckham.

2. Class of ’92 is a documentary movie about six footballers who joined Manchester United football club at the age of 14, and who later went on to take the club to many victories: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVloytikOBk.

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Armstrong-Jones,_2nd_Earl_of_Snowdon.

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Prime_Ministers_of_the_United_Kingdom_by_education.

5. In Labour cabinets, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown both had 32%, while 25% of Clement Attlee’s first cabinet had been privately educated.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Susan James Relly

Dr. Susan James Relly is the Co-Director of the Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance (SKOPE) research centre, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Education, University of Oxford. Susan’s entire career has been in education; she taught in secondary schools in Australia and England before starting her academic career. Susan completed a B.Ed at the Queensland University of Technology, Australia and read for an M.Sc in Comparative and International Education and a D.Phil in Education at the University of Oxford. Her research interests include Vocational Education and Training (VET) systems and policy; vocational excellence; apprenticeship; vocational assessment; work-based learning; on-the-job and off-the-job training; teaching and learning in Further Education; and social mobility. She has published widely on these topics in journals and books.