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Apprentices and vocational training: a changing educational landscape?
I believe fundamentally the shape of the workforce is changing. Employment has historically conjured up a nostalgia of factories, but, given the relative decline of the manufacturing base in England over recent decades, it might be possible to have such a rosy image. Youth unemployment is increasing, but this is a pathology which has afflicted all political parties, and the workforce consists also of an increasing proportion of part-time workers. Many disabled people also wish to work from home, because they find accessibility at work difficult; and we now live in an age where creative, innovative, technical skills such as programming in asp .net 3.5 are not only valued in society but also can be extremely profitable. I feel that breaking down walls between academics and vocational skills is essential – whilst engineering, law and medicine are undoubtedly professional, they are intensely academic, but also remarkably vocational, for example. I believe as a society we should begin to make an ambitious ‘lead of faith’ in reshaping the skills and employment landscape. I do not think it is realistic to expect people to know at the age of 16 what career they wish to pursue for the rest of their life, and there is also an important social mobility issue here as well.
John Hayes on lbc973 described to Iain Dale this evening the purpose of National Apprenticeship Week. He has a dual role in the Department of Education and the Department of Business. Hayes feels that apprenticeships have not been given the priority they deserve, according to Hayes, as practical technical skills have not been valued. He intriguingly feels that he only became academic as he was not good enough to be practical.
Hayes says that he reveres practical skills, such as creativity, and feels that they are vital for the UK economy; furthermore, he believes that it is essential the UK grows its own skills, and people in the UK should be given encouragement with a seductive pathway.
Indeed, John Hayes’ interests are precise:
Further education, adult skills, Skills Funding Agency, skills strategy, lifelong learning, informal adult learning, apprenticeships, UK Commission for Employment and Skills, Sector Skills Councils, Workplace Training reforms, qualifications reform programme.
It is said that Professor Alison Woolf felt that a lot of vocational skills were not indeed adding particularly to candidates’ skill sets.
Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education, commissioned Professor Alison Wolf of King’s College London to carry out an independent review of vocational education. She was asked to consider how vocational education for 14- to 19-year-olds can be improved in order to promote successful progression into the labour market and into higher level education and training routes. She was also asked to provide practical recommendations to help inform future policy direction, taking into account current financial constraints. The review has been informed by over 400 pieces of evidence from the public, a number of visits to colleges, academies and training providers, and interviews and discussion sessions with key partners in the sector.
Key recommendations in the report include:
- incentivising young people to take the most valuable vocational qualifications pre-16, while removing incentives to take large numbers of vocational qualifications to the detriment of core academic study
- introducing principles to guide study programmes for young people on vocational routes post-16 to ensure they are gaining skills which will lead to progression into a variety of jobs or further learning, in particular, to ensure that those who have not secured a good pass in English and mathematics GCSE continue to study those subjects
- evaluating the delivery structure and content of apprenticeships to ensure they deliver the right skills for the workplace
- making sure the regulatory framework moves quickly away from accrediting individual qualifications to regulating awarding organisations
- removing the requirement that all qualifications offered to 14- to 19-year-olds fit within the Qualifications and Credit Framework, which has had a detrimental effect on their appropriateness and has left gaps in the market
- enabling FE lecturers and professionals to teach in schools, ensuring young people are being taught by those best suited.
The Government has produced a cogent response to Professor Alison Wolf’s report. The landscape is indeed changing, as noted by the Guardian:
Vocational education is being reviewed by the redoubtable professor Alison Wolf. To stand any chance of harmonising his mixed messages on what teenagers should study, Mr Gove will need to make full use of her formidable brain.
John Hayes feels rather controversially that practical accomplishment is perhaps even of a “higher order” than academic accomplishment, as creativity is less derivative.
Finally, I am glad to see that we are having a debate on this at all. At the heart of all of this is that I believe too many people are written off in England by the educational system, and wherever you are on the political spectrum this is not on. And I have a vested interest here – in ensuring the legal profession attracts individuals of the highest calibre, both within and for society.
Thank you @obotheclown! I've entered the top 100 Total Politics left-wing blogger awards 2011 at no 13!
Thank you to @obotheclown for telling me that I’d made the top 100 Labour bloggers this year.
http://www.totalpolitics.com/blog/257882/top-75-leftwing-bloggers.thtml
It’s public knowledge I was very upset at not having made the top 100 last year. I asked Iain Dale why this was so, and he simply explained, delicately, that nobody had heard of my blog. So many thanks to the people who voted for me this year. I put a huge amount of effort into my blog, and I’m ecstatic this year it’s been rewarded!
Total Politics Blog Awards 2011 | Vote for Shibley Rahman!
Hi readers,
I would be very grateful if you could vote for my blog in the ‘Total Politics Blog Award 2011‘. I would like to win an award in ‘Total Politics 2011′ as I have never won a blog award of any sort, and I feel that inclusion somewhere in the Top 100 might recognise it. It has a reasonable following, and people have often told me how much they enjoy reading my contributions, ranging from Labour policy, to some other loves of my life, medical education, recovery and dementia. These days, I love the law and business, and hence my other blog ‘LegalAware‘.
My blog is http://www.shibleyrahman.com
Please use this link: Vote for Shibley Rahman – Total Politics Blog Award 2011.
The rules of Total Politics Blog Award 2011 provide that:
Please note you must vote name at least five blogs/authors for each question for your vote to count, but if you don’t want to name more than that, just write ‘blank’ in the other boxes.
Voting is said to close later this week.
Please feel free to mention me @shibleyrahman as your favourite political tweeter.
I have cross-party support for the blog which I’m proposing for Total Politics Blog Award 2011 (see my testimonials on my front page of this blog). Thank you! Rules prevent me from recommending any other blogs! (Thanks, H.)
Finally, I should like to mention one person who has influenced me massively over a long period of time. Iain Dale has shaped the landscape of political blogging like no other person in England, and for that I believe we should be enormously grateful. I had no votes for my Labour blog last year, but it was in its infancy. Whilst I do not agree sometimes with Iain’s political views, I don’t think there is anyone on the left or right who is as competent at articulating his ideas and with passion, currently. I know Iain Dale is not judging this Award, so I do not feel inhibited in writing this!
Is there an official blogger uniform?
These people are Tom Harris and Iain Dale, both ex-bloggers. Made me wonder whether there’s a ‘blogging uniform’. I don’t know – but the blogosphere seems to have actually blossomed since they both left the blogosphere in 2010. Personally, I miss Tom’s and Anthony Painter’s blogs; it’s also a great pity for us that Will Straw has moved on, but thankfully Shamik Das is really good.
Top 100 of the Daley Dozen blogs
- Walaa Idris
- Dan Hannan
- Dizzy
- Norman Tebbit
- Political Scrapbook
- Guido
- Paul Waugh
- Tom Harris
- Nick Robinson
- Cranmer
- Stumbling and Mumbling
- Ed Staite
- Benedit Brogan
- Mark Wallace
- Liberal Conspiracy
- Paul Flynn
- John Redwood
- Ellee Seymour
- Alex Singleton
- Lightwater
- David Osler
- Daniel Korski
- Harry’s Place
- Nick Pearce
- Steve Baker
- Alastair Campbell
- James Forsyth
- Labour Uncut
- Stuart Weir
- Ben Lodge
- Tim Worstall
- Iain Martin
- Richard Lowe
- Nadine Dorries
- David Blackburn
- Con Coughlin
- Jason Walsh
- Cicero’s Songs
- Evan Price
- Fraser Nelson
- Brian Landers
- Matt Wardman
- Mark Pack
- Adam Boulton
- Left Foot Forward
- Katharine Birbalsingh
- Better Off Out
- Jonathan Todd
- Dylan Jones Evans
- Political Betting
- Spidey
- LobbyDog
- Jonathan Isaby
- Max Atkinson
- Not a Sheep
- Phil Taylor
- Arthur Baker
- Helen Duffett
- John McTernan
- Roger Helmer
- Man in a Shed
- William Somerville
- Andrew Neil
- Cardiff Blogger
- Biteback
- James Corum
- Gerry Hasan
- Ministry of Truth
- Peter Oborne
- Richard Stay
- John Stone
- Paul Krugman
- Sir Christopher Meyer
- Tim Montgomerie
- The Daily Maybe
- The ASI
- Sean Haffey
- Matthew Sinclair
- Philip Davies
- Boris Backer
- James Delingpole
- EU Referendum
- Richard Drax
- Nancy Knows Best
- Jon Craig
- Like Akehurst
- James Claverly
- Jonathan Jones
- Mat Smith
- Jules peck
- Burning our money
- David Seymour
- Guy the Mac
- The Freedom Association
- Simone Webb
- Let Us Face The Future
- Tory Bear
- Chris White
- Harry Aldridge
- Peter Black
@iaindale's "Daley Dozen" never mentions the top Labour blog @LabourList
Iain Dale publishes a “Daley Dozen“. It is not exactly clear what this Daley Dozen is supposed to achieve, but presumably it is meant to represent the best of the blogosphere. Most casual observers have observed that it tends to present far right Tory views, mainly Euroskeptic ones where possible, and it never presents a non-Conservative view unless strongly in praise of the coaliton or highly critical of Ed Miliband. Keen observers have in fact drawn exactly the same decision.
Labour List is edited by Mark Ferguson, by most observers, extremely well. It acts as a hub for intelligent debate about contemporary issues in Labour; it certainly does not indulge in crazy tribalism, and certainly does not shy away from debate. It is a flagship blog for Labour, in producing breakthrough journalism such as this article on Chris Grayling’s crime figures.
It is therefore somewhat surprising that in a sample taken from November 7th 2010 – November 30th 2010, it does not feature once in Iain Dale’s “Daley Dozen”, compiled as the best of the blogs by Grant Tucker and Iain Dale. In fact, 50% of the top 12 Labour blogs haven’t appeared once in this period of about 3 weeks at all.
The Top 12 is as follows, with the figures in brackets the number of appearances in Iain Dale’s “Daley Dozen”.
1 (0) Labour List
2 (4) Tom Harris MP
3 (0) Hopi Sen
4 (1) Next Left
5 (2) Alastair Campbell
6 (4) Political Scrapbook
7 (1) Luke Akehurst
8 (2)Labour Uncut
9 (0) Penny Red
10 (0) Hadleigh Roberts
11 (0) Socialist Unity
12 (0) Anthony Painter
And what was the Daley Dozen of Dozens in this time period? A fairly predictable list, but it was worthy to see Ed Staite, a media analyst, who is described by Boris Johnson as, ““A veteran master of strategy and all round general of the political battlefield – I would recommend him to anyone who wants to win any comms battle” Dale has blogged frequently on how much he will be sad to see Tom Harris MP. It is sad for Dale’s readership that the death of Tom Harris’ blog may mean a relative lack of representation on a regular basis of any Labour blog in the Daley Dozen, if this Daley Dozen is as influential as Iain Dale claims. On a positive note, the pressure is on Political Scrapbook to post articles which attract the attention of Grant Tucker or Iain Dale, being known officially as a’left-leaning blog’. Paul Waugh is well known to be highly critical of Labour, especially Gordon Brown. Finally, congratulations to Stumbling and Mumbling, which describes himself as an “extremist not a fanatic”. This blog (here) looks very intelligent indeed. The full list is as follows. Many congratulations to @WalaaIdris whose entertaining and passionate posts do deserve leading this list, which incidentally consists of 128 blogs in total (not this one, curiously). This is undoubtedly a massive tribute to the ‘Daley Dozen’ that they cover so many blogs in a matter of 3 weeks, with no particular favouritism, when they could have showed much more preference towards certain blogs. However, the fact that LabourList does not appear once is either a reflection on their view of LabourList generally, or the Conservatives, or rather Iain Dale, is very partisan – and very proud of it.
1. Walaa Idris
2. Dan Hannan
3. Tom Harris
4. Paul Waugh
5. Guido
6. Political Scrapbook
7. Norman Tebbit
8. Dizzy
9. Mark Wallace
10. Benedict Brogan
11. Ed Staite
12. Stumbling and Mumbling
@iaindale, don't give up the day job?
What I mean by the title of this post is that, whatever Iain Dale decides to do regarding his parliamentary career, I think Iain Dale has been greatly successful in engaging people, of all ages, with political issues, whatever their political persuasion, through his blogs. I hope very much therefore that they continue. I understand that the blog is undergoing a re-vamp, so I am looking for the ‘new look’ indeed.
I really like “The Seven Day Show” on Tory Radio with Jonathan Sheppard and Iain Dale (link here). Congratulations to them for reaching their 50th edition. Their podcast is brilliant, and plays very well on my iPad as it happens. I think the show’s very entertaining – and actually the analysis is very perceptive and thought-provoking, even for an ardent Labour member like me!
Iain Dale is the second most popular blogger at the moment (link here). An issue that has interested me recently is the fact that Tom Harris, who has been a Labour MP since 2001, and was a minister at the Department for Transport from September 2006 until October 2008, has decided to give up blogging. He says very clearly in his ‘About me‘, that: “FIRST of all, this is a blog, not my parliamentary or constituency website. If you want to know about my work in Glasgow South or in the House of Commons, …”. Iain Dale has recently been discussing his fellow blogger Tom Harris giving up blogging. In an article entitled “So Farewell Then Tom Harris” (link here) dated 15 November 2010, Iain writes:
Lord knows I understand his reasons, but what does it say about the political blogosphere that it has forced someone like Tom to give up. He’s a brilliant writer with a fantastic sense of humour who provides insights into politics that you just don’t get elsewhere. I know he was hugely disappointed at not being appointed to Ed Miliband’s front bench team – a completely baffling decision, in my opinion.
Clues about Tom Harris MP giving up blogging are indeed given by Tom himself on his blog in a post (link here) dated Tuesday 16th November 2010.
I want to see Labour win the next election and I want to make some kind of contribution to that victory, even if that contribution is simply shutting my face. This response was taken as an indication that I have been leant on by the party to stop the blogging. I don’t think MPs should use words like “bullshit” on a publicly available blog, and I’ve always tried to be careful not to lower the tone in such a way, so I won’t say “bullshit” now. But what a load of b******t.
Indeed, apparently Ed Miliband has encouraged him to keep going:
Never, at any point in the whole of my blogging career – including the period when I was a minister – has anyone in the Labour Party asked me to stop blogging. Not once. The last conversation I had with EdM ended with him telling me: “Keep up the blogging.”
However, Tom Harris’ full-time job is being a full-time Parliamentary MP. I would humbly submit that Iain Dale, having had attempts to be a Parliamentary candidate, appreciates that he is not invited to do paper reviews on Sky News in this capacity (as I am sure he does), but is brought on TV as one of the country’s very top bloggers. Indeed, he has even written books on blogging, such as this one (link here).
If on the other hand Iain would like to re-attempt to be a parliamentary candidate, it might worth considering discontinuing the blog. I like enormously though his full articles (not so much the short ones) The danger with that particular strategy, of course, is not being a parliamentary candidate or a blogger at the same time, but, in Iain’s favour, his business interests are successfully diversified in Tory Radio at Biteback Publishing. As for the issue about whether Iain feels it’s worth the hassle any more, I think possibly yes: the people who criticize Iain are obviously idiots (I disagree with Iain’s opinions in the main, and object to the fact that the Daley Dozen never continues any Labour blog posts unless they’re blatantly anti-Labour, but actually these posts are not written by him anyway). However, Iain is by any objective standards superb at something which I know David Cameron and Ed Miliband feel passionate about, which is making politics relevant to real people.
I’ve only met Iain once at a Total Politics event which I remember clearly for Steve Richards’ Mandelson impression, so I hope will not mind this post.
Prize competition – spot the mistakes in a blog post
Walaa Idris, in her popular blog, posted an article as advice for the blogger Darren Bridgeman.
Bad spelling and grammar are evident in all our blog posts. Walaa offered this really helpful advice:
My advice, as someone who knows how you feel, because I felt embarrassed whenever I misspelled words and made such obvious mistakes, but I found although some who correct me do it for their own self satisfaction, most truly care and just want to help me. Even though I continue to correct and pay extra attention to every word I type, still, I make many mistakes. Somehow I feel like the Ambassador of all the poor English speakers and writers and as such feel it is my duty to ask you to reconsider – so please rethink your decision.
Here is the text of a mythical blog post. There are at least 14 errors in it, identified in Simon Heffer’s “Strictly English” as common grammatical errors in the English language. It may be purchased from Amazon here.
Blog post by Troubleblogger
This week has been an extraordinary week in British politics. For example, one blogger has alleged that a Tory MP has left his wife for a woman, while she is fighting malignant melanoma.
Yesterday, there was a very interesting debate in the House of Commons on student finance. The excellent discussion demonstrated the problems of making policy in a Coalition government. The difficulties is probably compounded by the fact that Vince Cable is using data which is probably out-of-date. The thing is that none of the options for the future of student finance are credible.
Some of the options proposed to Lord Brown are inforgettable. To be fair, I would of thought that some of the options proposed would have seemed impressive to the Institute of Fiscal Studies. However, raising tuition fees is now a distinct possibility following the Browne Report. The problem is that Clegg said that he would not never go there.
In terms of feedback, the Labour Party must be feeling good. The concertos of criticism from Liberal Democrat voters were not nice to listen to. In a sense, it was if Miliband was trying to collapse a house of cards. Some commentators just got personal. For example, yesterday, some people, working for the Times especially, called Vince Cable ‘an ugly monster’, but this is perhaps tad unfair. I wonder what Andy Marr would have made of that?
It is difficult to know who came out of worst – Clegg or Cable. Some think it’s better if Cable had quitted his cabinet post, given his beliefs. Commentators wrote on Cable giving his speech whilst being transmitted on Sky.
There’ll be a debate on it: I don’t know if I’ll go. Under the circumstances, it should be interesting, don’t you think?
You can download the text of the blog post Blog poste.
Have a go at spotting the mistakes in them. Feel free to email your entries to Dr Shibley Rahman, management@lawandmedicine.co.uk
The winning entry will get a copy of this book, Iain Dale’s Guide to Political Blogging in the UK. with no expenses spared!
Alternatively, you can, again, buy it off Amazon UK.
Dr Shibley Rahman
Queen’s Scholar, BA (1st.), MA, MB, BChir, PhD, MRCP(UK), LLB(Hons.), FRSA
Director of Law and Medicine Limited
Member of the Fabian Society and Associate of the Institute of Directors
Total Politics – is mine the worst Labour blog 2010?
Having received no nominations, my blog must surely be the worst Total Politics Blog of 2010?
I suppose therefore I am entitled to wear this ‘badge’ with some regret, but, as Tony Blair might say, “things can only get better”.
I understand that Iain Dale will soon be giving a talk on what constitutes a good blog. I am dreading the day when he talks about what makes a dire blog.