...or the purpose of education...
I just heard that there are to be new qualifications, building up to the equivalent of A-levels, that will be run by UK employers. It's being trialled by three to start with, including Macdonalds. There's a constant refrain that schools don't produce people with the skills necessary for employers, so as part of what's called "the skills agenda" employer qualifications are seen as the way forward. The radio report said this was unlikely to please educational traditionalists.

A few thoughts on this:
Is the purpose of education to create a ready-to-use workforce or to encourage our children to think for themselves? I'd always thought the latter - I feel that's what I got from my education - but there's such a focus now on frameworks, testing and standardisation it's hard to see how that can be the case, in fact we seem to be heading back toward the Gradgrind view of education. They've had to create a new expression "GAT" (gifted and talented) to cover allowing those that can do more than the standard. And I'm not sure that I would've done particularly well now as I'm something of a lateral thinker.

The aim has been to upskill the UK workforce by having 50% with a university degree. In part this is to be achieved by courses that were previously certificates or diplomas into degrees (midwifery is a good example, where those taking the qualification have said that they don't feel they are getting as well trained in practicalities as previous generations...). In part new universities are offering new and somewhat sneered-at-by-press degrees (media studies, fashion marketing and golf studies anyone?) A-level results are going up - good if more people are going to university and degrees are to be worth the same.
But are today's teenagers really so much cleverer than those of my generation?
And if so many more people have them, are degrees no longer the dooropeners that they once were?
Does this mean that to get on, the best ought to stay on and get Masters degrees? In my day a lot of the people who stayed on to do Masters degrees were those who had been disappointed with thier first degree result (i.e. those with 2.2s rather than 2.1 or 1sts). Should I be planning to save for my baby son to need six years at university rather than four?
And is there any point if UK employers don't think the qualifications are any indication of having appropriate skills?

I say "UK employers" with reason. I've worked nearly half my career in Brussels, Belgium, and am thinking about whether I would like to go back there and do something different. I've taken a look at consultancy and lobbying (where I started and the sector most closely related to what I do now) and I've found something a bit worrying. To do the job I've already done, and frankly to do jobs even a couple of levels down from the ones I've done, a Masters degree seems to be a minimum requirement. I don't have one. I don't have time to do one, what with looking after a tiny baby and needing to return to work at least part-time to cover the mortgage. Even if I had time, I don't have the money and there's no money available to borrow as far as I understand the current policy on student loans. So technically employers in Brussels don't think I'm qualified enough to do the sort of jobs I have done and done with good results. But UK employers don't think that academic qualifications don't meet their needs?

I find this fascinating as my own profession is going through a skills refocusing. One of the big debates has been whether qualifications are necessary to demonstrate competence. My sector's official line on this is that, no, experience is sufficient. However, the skills/ competence framework has been designed to allow for the possibility that qualifications will be developed by training providers at the request of organisations within the sector. It begs three questions:
If there is no need for qualifications why should any training organisation bother developing them speculatively?
And if the skills framework in my sector is universal then why is the decision to have qualifications or not being left for each organisation to decide individually?
and, if qualifications are developed are they going to be recognised across the sector or just in the one organisation that requested it?
What if someone from the equivalent job in a parallel organisation wants to transfer over - will their experience not count unless they also have the employer-specific qualification? Are we effectively blocking more people from the job market by setting up qualifications that can only be undertaken by those already working for an organisation?

Does all this mean I'm against lifelong learning? Not at all. In fact I'm part way through a qualification for my job - I'm training to be a trainer, but it does look as if I'll finish the qualificaiton at roughly the time I'm due to leave this job. But while some of the practical stuff I'm learning from the classes is useful (some of the lesson planning ideas for example) the written assessments are causing me real trouble. I'm required to produce something really quite simplistic that demonstrates I've covered the syllabus but doesn't help me in my day job - when I try to do the latter I get written feedback from the examiners that what I've produced is too complicated and I'm thinking at degree level rather than NVQ level. This is just daft - to fit the requirements of the course I need to dumb down what I produce for examination so that it's actually of no use to me! But I need the certificate to prove I'm good at what I do. Go figure.

In other words, does the rush to introduce qualifications for skills development lead to a devaluing of experience gained unless a certificate can be provided?
Are we risking turning ourselves into a certificate-rich but breadth of expereince poor workforce?
I can't help thinking that it would be better to educate employees on how to explain their experience in the latest jargon words (I managed a project... I led... I communicated effectively... I know what a paradime is...) rather than requiring a piece of paper confirming that the expereince has indeed been gained.