303. Why making schools truly comprehensive is vital for our economy

0:00Steph McGovern:So I'm here at Teagle Machinery. The new Prime Minister Andy Burnham says the hard hat is just as important as the graduation cap. This is music to our ears for too long. People who do vocational training have not had parity of esteem with traditional academic qualifications. He wants to change that, but what are his chances and why is it so important? Support for this episode comes from Octopus Energy and the founder and CEO Greg Jackson is with us now. and I want to ask about oil prices. Obviously, they're very high at the moment. What's your advice for a company worried about them? First of all, if you use a lot of electricity, it may be possible to get electricity tariffs where you get charged less at certain times of day and a lot of businesses have been able to benefit by shifting their electricity consumption.

0:47They still use as much energy, they just pay less for it. Of course, things like heating space can be very expensive and finding ways to do that more efficiently by heating to maybe 18 degrees rather than 21 can make a very big difference. But of course, look, the real solution is that Britain needs to escape from this dependence on the global fossil fuel price. And that means more electrification, disconnect our electricity price from the gas price and ultimately get more of electricity from British resources.

1:18Steph McGovern:Nice one, Greg. Thanks for explaining that. Right, we're going to go to the episode. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tremphaya offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tremphaya is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject Tremphaya, proper training is required. Tremphaya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis.

1:56Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tremphaya today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit TremfireRadio.com.

2:23Robert Peston:Queen Carvania stood haloed by the morning sun. An army hung on her every word.

2:30Steph McGovern:My champions, I have sold my chariot on Carvana. It was a lovely SUV, an inexplicably queenly offer. They're even coming to the castle to collect it. Tonight, we feast!

2:47Robert Peston:An offer you can feast on. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees, may apply.

3:02Robert Peston:Hello and welcome to The Rest is Money with me, Robert Paxton.

3:06Steph McGovern:And with me, Steph McGovern. So Andy Burnham has said that vocational and technical education should have equal status with the university route, the pure academic route, rather than being treated as the second best option. He wants to give pupils access to technical education from 14 and he wants to combine that classroom learning with work experience, employer projects and links to local jobs. Now, this is something, Robert, you and I have been banging on for a long time about. I mean, we've had a lot of lip service paid to this over the years. But yeah, every year, it's always the A-level results and the GCSE results in the news.

3:48Steph McGovern:Everyone's always talking about degrees and never really about things like BTECs or T-levels or NVQs or Cambridge Technicals or all the other city and guilds, all the other different types of qualifications that you can get. And yet there's millions of people who are doing them. They go on to do really important jobs for the economy. And yet they have for a long time, Robert, never really had that status, that parity of esteem, have they?

4:15Robert Peston:They haven't. And obviously it comes against this backdrop of a crisis of employment for young people. more than a million young people under 24, not in education, employment or training. And, you know, there is a real fear that if this government doesn't take really effective action to help these young people, that a generation will be lost. It's why we've got the Alan Milburn review. It's why there's a review of the curriculum. It is indeed why the prime minister has made one of his first pledges to significantly reform the education system to make it less focused on academic qualifications and to give people who have other kinds of skills more of a chance to acquire those skills before they enter the workplace formally or before they're written off.

5:15Robert Peston:And we're going to talk about whether or not what the prime minister is proposing is practical or indeed, you know, whether it's more than a few headlines at this stage. And we'll talk about that after we hear the absolutely fascinating interviews that you've been recording, Steph.

5:34Steph McGovern:Yeah. So one of my big beats I've been going on about this for years is the fact that we don't have any kind of day or moment to celebrate those people who do do vocational training. And, you know, we're talking about people in all the sectors that matter to us in engineering, construction, health care, AI, tech jobs, you know, just everything we need in life, health and social care. And so last week I was part of setting up this day to celebrate that vocational celebration day. It was an event we live streamed on YouTube with a charity I work with called Enginuity Skills Charity. So I went to Cornwall to do this.

6:07Steph McGovern:And it was amazing because we were talking like there were hundreds of people there. I interviewed people all over the country, so many amazing young people doing really important stuff. And so what I want to do before we have a chat about whether, you know, why this is so important, because it is, this is about economics as much as it is about anything else. I just want you to have a listen to some of the people I met there and what they told me about what the issue is and why it matters so much. So here's what I found out from my trip to an advanced manufacturing business in True Row. so i'm here at teagle machinery it's a family-run business and they make kit for the agricultural industry so things like bale processes and they sell their stuff all around the world about half of their business is exports one of the big customers is america so one of the things i've to deal with here is of course the trade tariffs so there's so much going on for a business like this one of the big issues and we've talked about this before on the podcast is skills and getting the right people through the door to be able to do all the jobs here, whether it's, you know, welding, anything to do with the engineering side of things.

7:15Steph McGovern:There's so many different jobs here and it has been a problem for them here in Cornwall. So they have been really focused on apprentices over the last few years. They employ about 150 people here and now 20 % of the workforce are apprentices. And even on a Friday, they'd let them run the factory. So they've really invested a lot in them and obviously think they're brilliant too and I've got a few people I want to chat with about all of this including the manufacturing director Richard Berryman who's alongside Nikki Story who's from the charity the skills charity Engenuity and then up in Coventry we've got Olivia who is an apprentice at Amazon we're going to talk to her in a minute but Richard tell me about what your kind of skills challenge has been here because this is a successful business isn't it it is yeah very successful um and currently we've got the biggest order book that we've ever had um but with that comes the challenges of employing skilled people in cornwall um so as you just mentioned we've got a sort of abundance of welders and cnc machinists but um massively struggle to find skilled um machinists and welders in cornwall um I mean, several years ago, data came out on just the welders that by 2027, 40 % of the UK's welders are due to retire, which is frightening, especially for us.

8:40So five years ago, we made a massive effort to look at apprentices. I was an apprentice, so extremely keen to get apprentices into the company. and we put a huge amount of effort into getting apprentices into the business.

8:57Steph McGovern:And what was that like? Because, you know, we talk to a lot of different business leaders and people have different experiences of actually getting apprentices through the door because there's so many parts to this, aren't there? It's finding the people who want to do it. And then it's the funding, the training, everything else. What's it been like for you? So it's not been sort of an easy ride, I won't deny that. So we sort of started off thinking that we would get apprentices come to us. Wasn't the case. We've had to, especially in the last 12, 18 months, we're doing a lot more with local schools, local colleges, trying to get information out there that there are these fantastic jobs in engineering.

9:44some really great careers that are out there just trying to make sure that children in schools even junior schools know what jobs are available in engineering so we've yeah huge amount of effort has gone into teagles and sell ourselves myself apprentices of hr manager going around to schools colleges to drum up interest in engineering Yeah.

10:11Steph McGovern:And it's obviously worked in terms of where you're at now and letting them run the place on a Friday. What's that? How did that come about then? So we work a four day week on the production side. So the bulk of production staff do 39 hours in four days. But the apprentices don't. They're not allowed to. So they do a five day week. And Fridays is either for them to do college work or to do carry on with production work. so in parts of the factory like the cnc machine shop um they we let them run it we just let them go for it um they're fantastic we're so lucky to have um such a group of fantastic apprentices that we've got and they do a great job doing it so there is a real issue you know we've heard andy burnham talk about the valuing the hard hat as much as the graduation cap and everything else what do you need from the government to help you like has the apprenticeship levy been part of you know your planning and has that helped in any way for me personally it's it it's getting like i said a second ago it's it's getting that information out to um junior schools secondary schools that there are these amazing opportunities in engineering and apprenticeships around the country um and you don't have to go to university to to get fantastic jobs as i said i was an apprentice i'm now sort of manufacturing director so there's amazing jobs out there but they just don't know they when i go to schools and colleges they just don't understand what jobs are available i want to come back to some of that um with nikki but first of all um i want to bring in an actual apprentice at this point who's Olivia, Olivia Lynn, who is in Coventry, works for Amazon.

12:01Steph McGovern:Olivia, tell us a bit about what you're doing your apprenticeship in. So I'm doing my apprenticeship in Mechatronics. It's a level three advanced apprenticeship that kind of looks like on a day-to-day basis for me, reactive maintenance, preventative maintenance, kind of thinking ahead about when things will break and trying to either put things in place to prevent that happening or engineering solutions and all that sort of thing um yeah i'm loving it oh and i can see the the joy in your face as you're talking elivia um so tell me for people who don't know then like what that means in terms of how it connects to their amazon delivery which bit are you doing are you in you know one of these logistics centers one of the big warehouses making sure all the parcels are moving around and everything else i mean a customer customer fulfillment center and we mainly deal with the prime deliveries of slightly bigger items and so it's more like your tvs your baby gates and the bigger bulkier items and we're basically in charge of minimizing the downtime of the conveyance systems by conducting preventative maintenance because all throughout the warehouse these packages are going on conveyance and there's many different automation systems that get the packages from um on the on the racking where it's just the raw item that then gets picked and then it weaves its way through the warehouse and goes out to the customer next day but Olivia tell me about your um your background and your story of getting an apprenticeship because it wasn't easy was it in terms of you know how you were perceived particularly by your teachers at school yeah exactly um weirdly engineering was spoken about in school and it did kind of sit there in the very back of my mind um I did my dad was an engineer my granddad was an engineer so that I sort of saw that in real life dad was an engineer in a brewery and in specifically in the canning department so he used to come home with stinking of beer and mucky dirty so that was not for me yeah um my sites were set on medicine I absolutely loved Grey's Anatomy that was the career that I wanted for myself I wanted to be a surgeon in scrubs and um yeah that was my dream um and then all of my academic decisions were geared towards medicine it was the biologies the chemistry psychology um mainly because engineering interested me when it was kind of spoken about in school but it wasn't really branded to be no it was one dimensional and it sounds like you were just giving them one part of engineering and not the whole thing yeah so what changed what was so was when my career in medicine kind of was halted at the crossroads between finishing my a-levels and being accepted into med school um I'd done my a-levels in covid and they were all based on predicted and summative assessments and stuff and I'd missed out on my chemistry grade so that automatically made me halt made me have to rethink my steps my route into either medicine or not um and I decided to take a gap year and go to Amazon and to earn some money to basically help me with whatever route I picked um and it was there that I got to speak with real life people I actually got to see what production looks like, what the real world of our industry looks like.

15:33Steph McGovern:And my favorite days became when the machinery would break down, even though it was irrelevant to me. I know. Even though it was irrelevant to me, I just loved how operations panicked because where are the boxes going? How are they getting out the door? But then the engineers, they were cool, calm, collected. They kind of rushed to the scene and they knew how to fix whatever problem it was. They were so relaxed. And then afterwards they could explain everything as to the symptoms, the treatment of it, and then put that in place. And then everything was up and running again as if nothing had occurred.

16:09Steph McGovern:And I was like, oh, do you know what? That actually kind of really resonates with me. It's almost like being a machine doctor rather than a human doctor. Maybe that could kill me in the same way. And so then I found out about the Amazon apprenticeship and that's how I am here now. Yeah. So this is fascinating. So you got that insight. You saw the real world application of engineering in a way that excited you. So then you decided to do an apprenticeship at Amazon. And then tell us what happened when you then saw your old teachers back at school. so it was my brother's year 11 prom he's three years younger than me and I was speaking with my teachers my head teacher being the main person in the conversation and they all asked me where I was what I was doing and I was explaining to them that I was at Amazon and looking at doing an apprenticeship I hadn't I had secured it but not 100 % officially so it was very up in the air but I was explaining um that these were my options and everything that I was looking at and he point blank his face dropped anyway when I said I wasn't at university when I said I was working at Amazon his face dropped already and then the first thing he said to me was don't get stuck and then the other thing that he said to me was don't waste your academic talent and I just can't believe that a head teacher has the audacity to say something like that for a start but the drastic misconception as to what the opportunity was now meant for me as well and how a great career move that it was and how drastically wrong it could have gone had I really taken on board what he said yeah it's so shocking it absolutely boils my blood when I hear stories like that because everyone learns in different ways there are so many different ways to having amazing careers and that should be celebrated just as much as anyone who's gone to uni because let's face it you're working for one of the most valuable companies in the world we always talk about it all the time on this podcast as being the one of the magnificent seven that's and that's for a reason what do you want to see change on that front olivia because we're hearing now you know andy burnham's talking about we need to give more value there should be more push to vocational education from 14 do you think that's the right thing is that enough what do you want to see happen I was going to be a student that went to a Russell Group University I also had on the table at the same time a nursing degree at King's College in London so I could have gone down the university route I could have been the Russell Group University student and I think because the the narrative has been ingrained for so long it's not just the it's not just parents and teachers that we kind of need to celebrate vocational routes with it's also the students themselves amazing um richard and nikki to hear olivia talking there but i could see your faces as she was saying like nikki the the head teacher nikki's from the charit skills charity ingenuity you know it's kind of your job to help support the the supply chain the whole sector small businesses big businesses when it comes to key engineering jobs isn't it and what how do you feel when you hear that it's just really disappointing that we're still coming across this when it comes to academics.

19:22Steph McGovern:You know, we've been talking about this for years, about why vocations are so important and why vocational qualifications are so important. You know, they are part of what drives our economy. 90 % of the UK companies are SMEs, you know, and those skills that they learn through T-levels or apprenticeships and working directly within organisations are key skills that we need as an economy and in the UK. You know, when I started out in engineering 20 years ago it was the whole you know it was back then it was we need to get more women into engineering we need to do all of these things they're really key part of the economy and here we are I feel like there's been lots of verbal enthusiasm for however long but no actual proper funding for FE colleges and you know that that whole point about the education system is not geared towards encouraging people into vocational training but Nikki you've done some research on the perception of it as well in society about people who do the pure academic versus the vocational what have you found so yeah so we've done a vocational attitude survey and what's what's come out is parents and learners are really really interested in vocational qualifications you know we know that over 90 percent in both of those areas you know really want to know more about it so they've got three reasons one of them is around earning while learning and not you know going into debt at university one of them is around jobs in the local area and being able to go into jobs in the local area the other ones around those specific skills because you'll learn some of those specific skills whilst you're in an apprenticeship in an SME rather than going to university and learning general skills so what we find is that although they are really enthusiastic about it it's then how do we then create those pathways through to the the apprenticeships and the and the availability of what's there for them because they're not it's not clear it's fragmented it's complex it's not easy for SMEs to understand we're in it all the time and we don't you know understand all of it so it's really important important that we do that yeah what's really interesting being here in Cornwall is how they are trying to solve the needs problem I should add by the way if you're listening to this wondering what the noises are in the background.

21:39Steph McGovern:We are in a live factory. So this is people making stuff, which they're selling all over the world. So it's key stuff going on here. And Richard's smiling at me now because he's the manufacturing director here. But there is this kind of issue, isn't there, around people being competitive about skills and companies in competition with each other trying to get the best people. And often that means supply chain are left behind because they're not the big brand businesses. And what's interesting about Cornwall is the way that they've been trying to solve it with this kind of collaborative approach to skills.

22:14Steph McGovern:And Richard, I'd love you to tell me more about this because the number of needs in the region has been reducing because of this. There's this focus on actually, let's get more young people into the jobs that are needed in this area and partnership with each other. Yeah, yeah. so Teagles we're part of the CMG Cornwall Manufacturing Group it's been fantastic so the CMG put on sort of events for sort of school leavers or sort of even junior school level to get them in to look in and see what's available there's no obviously Teagles themselves we're against people that are doing similar sort of procedures than we are welding cnc um it doesn't matter we just want people to come in what we want apprentices yeah um no one's precious we're we're not sort of um fighting each other we just want to get um information out there to these these youngsters that there's some incredible opportunities out there yeah because it's like opening the boxes that probably these kids i'm sure there's people have driven past this business hundreds of times and not really knowing what's going on and it's opening the doors isn't it it is yeah people um and today with the and the event that we've had and you listen to people they they say that crikey i didn't i didn't realize this place was here yeah um it's gone in the day like i said where where sort of people knew um all your local businesses that's gone we we need to as a business we need to get out there we need to um get our name and get the information out there.

23:53Steph McGovern:And I just want to ask as well, Nikki, about, you know, the skills is so fragmented. We've now got Skills England. We've got Alan Milburn, who's just done this big report about NEATS. We've had Andy Burnham saying we need to push more people into vocational training. We've got a skills minister in Jackie Smith working across the DWP and in education. Is it getting less fragmented? And where does the apprenticeship levy sit in all of this? Because that's the other thing businesses moan at me about is it's so complicated it's not working where where are we at with things at the minute so I think there's been that much come out from a reformer's perspective that it it's more complex at the minute than probably it was a while ago we've got a report that we're doing in the autumn where we're trying to get under the skin of the levy what it means to SMEs why they're finding it so difficult what we can do to help them because it's really important.

24:52Steph McGovern:SMEs really want this to work. They want the apprentices. They know the importance of getting the right people in. So it's really, it's going to be a key time for us. As you say, it's all over the place. There's loads of people talking about it at the moment. So it's going to be really key for us to understand the detail of that levy and what we can do to really help SMEs. So as things stand though, it's still dead complicated. Yeah. Which when you're talking to a small business and they're trying to run their business day to day, That is just makes it impossible. So what do we need to see change on that front, do you think?

25:27Steph McGovern:So I think you're right when we talk about, you know, talking to people younger so that there is more understanding of how they can get through to vocational qualifications and vocational routes. We need to help SMEs understand how it all works, how the systems and the frameworks work. but we also need to listen to them so we do a snapshot survey every quarter where we ask SMEs how we can help them and we use that to lobby government so we talk to you know all all of the right people in government to help us make the the difference for SMEs. Do you think they're listening? I think they are starting to listen so there is some other language.

26:06Steph McGovern:That's frustrating how many years in a way like starting to listen? We are many years in. It's like turning a juggernaut isn't it so it we've been talking about this for years us together have been talking about this for years but I feel like some of the language that they're starting to use now when you listen to them is the language that we've been talking for the last couple of years it's it's it's still not there we still need a lot of help with it but we are using the voices of SMEs to really make that difference yeah Richard I can see you roll your eyes there go on um I mean just from our experience we we brought everything back in house we we didn't use the colleges we did like i said when we first started on this journey a few years ago um it just wasn't working like we just spoke about there's the struggles out there there's the not knowing how to do these things so we're fortunate enough to be big enough that we can do that we've got a hr department we've got people that can do that so we brought it all back in house smaller businesses don't have that yeah don't have those sort of options to use.

27:11So, yeah, I don't know. I just, I don't know if it is changing or not.

27:16Steph McGovern:Yeah, I know that's the hard thing because we have a problem in this country with our productivity and, you know, with growth. You're talking about your order book being bigger than ever, but you need the skills behind that to make it happen. Yeah, yeah. And so, I mean, we're here, you know, part of the reason I'm here as we're doing this vocational celebration day you know one way to try and just show people that it isn't just all about a pure academic route um you know we've talked a bit as well about getting more young people to know about the jobs out there but do you think i want to know if either of you agree with me do you think we need a bit of a revolution in schools do you think we need to start 100 it personally i agree i think we've we've done the same if you always do what you always have done you always get what you've always got we need to really think about what's going to make a difference and it's not just from 14 it needs to start yes i yeah so andy burnham's saying 14 push for vocational it starts much earlier than that also 14s are really weird age because it's you know you've gone through all the hormone stuff you're only just picking your options if you're doing you know gcs all of this time it's the wrong time to suddenly be taken out of the school setting you're in and move to another one isn't it it needs to be much earlier than that i think in terms of presenting these options because you're decided quite early on whether you're academic or not aren't you yeah which i think is wrong like we shouldn't be siloing people like that but that is currently what happens and so i guess for for a note of optimism to end things on loving that your order book's really healthy thank you so am i yeah i bet you are but what what gives you hope richard um again me personally the apprentices that we've got i mean they're fantastic they um i can't sort of speak highly enough of them um saw them earlier you've met them um they're just an amazing um group of apprentices and the friday thing it works they run it and that just shows how good they really are um so and we as a business and we've just got to keep pushing that we've got to keep pushing yeah the fact that um there are all these opportunities out there and what was that what was that alarm for then uh that's lunchtime Is it?

29:30Steph McGovern:Well, there we are. That's a good point to end this. So there you go. That gives you a flavour of everything I found out from my trip to Cornwall. After the break, Robert and I are just going to talk about what Andy Burnham actually wants to do here, whether it's achievable and why it matters so much. So we'll do that in a couple of minutes.

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31:10Steph McGovern:Smart move. Another smart move? Getting help from one of State Farm's 19 ,000 local agents when you choose to bundle home and auto. bundling just another way to save with the personal price plan prices are based on rating plans that vary by state coverage options are selected by the customer availability amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state welcome back to the rest is money with me

31:34Robert Peston:Robert Peston and me Steph McGovern so Steph what did you decide having listened both to young people and you know adults teachers specialists in this space what did you decide the priorities for Burnham ought to be my biggest take home from talking to so many young people who

31:59Steph McGovern:have chosen the vocational route is that a lot of them started with the words I wasn't very good at school or I failed my GCSEs or, you know, I just, you know, didn't get on at school. None of them were like, oh, school was great. And this is the path I'd chosen. So for me, I feel like there's a whole cohort of people who are totally let down with the education system in terms of it, not recognising their skills and instead just telling them what they're not good at rather than telling them what they are good at. And they defy the odds anyway and have done well. But there's so many people who aren't, who are left behind, who leave the education system and think that they've got no choice.

32:37Steph McGovern:And so what's interesting for me from talking to like the people training these young people or, you know, the local employers was that for them, they're interested in what Andy Burnham's saying about, you know, from 14, we're going to make sure they've got this vocational pathway. Well, we've been here before because we've got university technical colleges, which is basically a school you start when you're 14, which is, you know, a technical training, lots of vocational qualifications, often supported by industry. They are few and far between. They're doing really important work, but they involve a kid leaving what I would call mainstream education to go to that.

33:16Steph McGovern:At a time when, you know, you're 13, 14, you're hormonal, you've just made all your mates in secondary school. And then you get in, you have to decide at that point whether you're going to completely change to a whole other college. It means there's a lot of people who don't do it because of that. So they're interested in what is going to happen when Andy Burnham says this about this technical and vocational education for 14 year olds, this choice, this real choice. Is it going to be provided within schools already? And then how do you cater for that? Because it's much more expensive to put on practical training courses than it is pure academic ones.

33:52Steph McGovern:the teachers are they gonna have to suddenly know all this or are they gonna bring in staff to do this and is that going to be supported by industry how's that all gonna work so for them they feel like we've heard it before that 14 year olds and young teenagers are going to be helped but the reality is when it comes down to it it's a lot more expensive and it's not really given the the emphasis it needs it's not really ever delivered as a proper route it's just seen as a oh well if things go wrong you can go and do that and it's totally the wrong mindset for this so I think the feeling is that like they particularly that guy who ran that machining company he is they're doing so well but he said the it's on them to go into schools all the time and convince kids like it's there's no support around that and and that is a lot for they're fine because they're a big business but for small businesses in the supply chain that is really difficult there isn't the time the money and you know as things stand Ofsted judges schools on how they do academically and not about where kids go next so it's tricky for teachers because the motivation isn't there for them.