The technical baccalaureate: providing excellence in vocational education?

Abstract

Proposals for a technical baccalaureate have received cross-party support in England. The technical baccalaureate is intended to deliver the necessary training to enable young people to fill the UK’s skills gap in intermediate-level occupations in STEM and other sectors. This paper explores how to design and implement a high-quality technical baccalaureate and identifies some of the challenges that are likely to be encountered. We argue that the curriculum of the technical baccalaureate should aim to strike a balance between providing young people with skills needed to enter specific sectors whilst also providing a component of general academic education to help keep options open. We argue that the assessment needs to be both reliable and valid. We also suggest that hurdles – additional criteria that students must meet (e.g. must pass a maths exam) – to gain the Tech Bacc should be avoided, as should aggregating qualifications together to grade the technical baccalaureate. We conclude by discussing the challenges of implementing the technical baccalaureate, including obtaining the necessary employer engagement and provision of information advice and guidance.

Keywords:

• vocational education and training
• technical baccalaureate
• curriculum
• assessment

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers as well as our AQA colleagues Martin Taylor, Ali Wood, Michelle Meadows and Dale Bassett for helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. We have also benefited greatly from discussions and feedback from Prue Huddleston, Tina Isaacs and Chris Husbands.

Disclosure statement

At the time this work was carried out, the authors worked at AQA Education, which offers GCSEs and Tech Awards for 14–16 year olds.

Notes

1. However, the extent to which vocational qualifications are suitable as a tool for motivating disengaged learners is open to debate (Isaacs, 2013; Stanton, 2006).

2. In the context of the speech, it would seem that Miliband means a gold-standard vocational qualification.

3. Construction, digital, early years, engineering, land-based services. However, at the tie of writing, the City and Guilds Tech Bacc doesn’t contain a Level 3 maths qualification and so will not count in the Department for Education’s Tech Bacc performance tables. This could lead to confusion for end users.

4. Level 3 qualifications, A-level or equivalent qualifications (e.g. BTEC Nationals) aimed at 16–18-year olds who have attained the necessary qualifications at Level 2 such as GCSE or equivalent (e.g. BTEC Firsts). See National Qualification Framework http://ofqual.gov.uk/help-and-advice/comparing-qualifications/

5. In the final quarter of 2013, there were 138,000 16–18-year-old NEETs and 844,000 18–24-year-old NEETs (Department for Education, 2013c). These figures translate to 7.6% of 16–18-year olds and 14.2% of 18–24-year olds.

6. This effect is also known as attenuation of variance.

7. It is not centrally determined that students must pass A-level chemistry. However, A-level chemistry in a prerequisite for certain courses such as medicine, and so students who wish to become doctors are thereby incentivised to pass chemistry at a particular grade. Similarly, it will be up to employers to specify the grades in each part of the Tech Bacc that they require.

8. to help ‘develop a student’s appreciation and understanding of the connections between the different elements of a body of knowledge and skills, relating to a subject or occupation/occupational group’ (p. 20).