麻豆约拍

For the first time on mainstream national media, I have set up a day across 麻豆约拍 News to celebrate vocational qualifications. Let me explain why.

As a financial journalist I visit lots of different businesses. Unsurprisingly, one of the biggest problems they talk to me about is the skills gap.

I also spend a lot of time working with young people on careers. There’s a common problem: if a kid is not good at exams, they often think they are not skilled. Yet many of them do have the skills employers are looking for - but often we don't show them that, or teach them how to develop them, or celebrate them.

During a careers event I was hosting in my hometown Middlesbrough, I asked the forty 16-year-olds in front of me to write down what skills they thought they had. They didn’t write anything. I was devastated. Desperately clutching for something, I asked one of them what he had been doing at the weekend. His reply: "Well, not much, because I was working in a Chinese takeaway."

I was shocked he didn’t recognise his skills: "So you serve customers? You deal with the till? You help package up the food?" I bombarded him with questions.

"Yeah, of course," he replied, looking at me like I was mad.

"Well get writing them down," I shouted.

"But I don’t want to work in a Chinese takeaway for the rest of my life so I don’t see how it’s relevant," he shouted back.

It turned out that everyone in the room had part-time jobs, or were carers or mentors, or played sports, or had another interesting hobby, but they didn’t know that those experiences also gave them transferable skills to help make them employable in lots of areas. They thought skills were just academic things, like being good at algebra.

We are not making young people value what they are good at. I appreciate this is a sweeping generalisation and there are some great initiatives and wonderful teachers and schools out there who are doing this.

But it’s not happening enough and I personally feel schools, on the whole, are creating exam monsters. I don’t blame teachers, they are judged on exam performance. And as a society we feed that by constantly focusing on academic results. But they’re not the whole story when it comes to being employable and valued.

Why as a society can’t we celebrate people who are skilled practically? Or people who are good with people? We see things as being soft skills. Well in my line of work being good with people is the most important skill I need and there is nothing soft about it.

If someone chooses a vocational route, why do they not get the same respect in society as someone who just does a pure academic route? Why do we celebrate A-Level results but not BTEC or City and Guilds or NVQs results?

The 1.5 million people who did A-Levels last year got a day of national media coverage, but what about the 3.8 million people who took vocational qualifications? This is why I pushed for 麻豆约拍 News to do that today.

I believe there should be parity of esteem for whichever route you choose. Some people I went to school with were written off as being thick by the education system yet they are now highly successful tradespeople and business leaders.

I was applauded because I was the school swot. I was an exam monster. I was that kid who opened her A-Level results on the local 麻豆约拍 news. But that is not the reason why I think I am successful. It’s because, through my school, I had direct links with industry.

From a young age I had a real sense of the world of work. This is what vocational education gives you. You learn about jobs by doing them and then the theory relates directly to it. But yet, this type of training is viewed by many in society as inferior.

The most rewarding, insightful and challenging year of my life was my 'Year in Industry' working as a trainee engineer at Black & Decker, which involved studying part time at college. I went to university after this, but only because I felt I had to, so that society would judge me as ‘clever’.

I am not criticising people who work hard for their degrees, I just wish we would give the same respect to people who choose the vocational route. Also not all vocational courses are brilliant, but there are a lot that are.

The media has an important role in helping change the perception about education. Despite covering many huge news stories for the 麻豆约拍, I think celebrating vocational education will be the thing I am most proud of.