In a recent speech, new prime minister Andy Burnham argued that education required a “complete rethink”. His ambition is to provide every child with a “path into a re-industrialised Britain”. The early indication is that Burnham wants to take the Greater Manchester Baccalaureate national. Introduced in 2023 as a technical counterpart to the EBacc, the MBacc seeks to establish parallel academic and technical routes, linking schools more directly with employers and the needs of regional economies. I agree entirely with Burnham’s central thesis: that England has never built a technical education system worthy of the name. Too many young people leave school without a clear route into secure work. Too many employers report persistent skills shortages, and for too long we have treated university as the only destination carrying real prestige. Britain plainly needs better technical education. The question is whether children should begin sacrificing a broad academic education at 14 in order to obtain it. As a Labour member and teacher, I think they should not. Don’t narrow fields of possibility When we encourage a 14-year-old to organise their curriculum around a presumed occupational destination, we narrow their field of possibility before either they or we can know what they might become. Not because they have freely rejected classical subjects, but because adults have decided that other knowledge will be more useful to them. Our children deserve to be taught the very best of what has been thought and said. It is an entitlement for all and represents a great leveller in society. One of the beauties of our education system is that the children at my school – an academy in Brixton – have access to the same knowledge as the children at Eton and Harrow. This knowledge enables children to enter conversations beyond their immediate experience, to challenge the powerful on their own ground and, eventually, to exercise power themselves. The danger is not that the MBacc explicitly abolishes academic education, but that it limits access to this type of knowledge. Substitution in the name of parity In a system of constrained resources, “parity” can quickly become substitution: less history, geography and languages for the pupils considered least academic. I view this first point as a moral one, but the second criticism I have is far more practical. The children who leave school as most employable are those who have learnt to reason effectively, who can distinguish a strong claim from a weak one and who are capable of being precise and empirical when required. These are not generic “skills” that can be taught in isolation. They are developed through sustained engagement with substantial bodies of knowledge drawn from the subjects we teach at school. To replace substantial disciplinary study with narrow occupational courses would not produce a more practical education, it would produce a more brittle one: pupils trained for particular tasks but given fewer resources with which to interpret change, question assumptions or understand the society in which they work. In a labour market being transformed by automation and AI, early occupational specialisation may therefore be less, not more, practical. Poorer children get fewer options And of course, disciplinary education would not disappear. It would continue in independent schools, selective schools and the most prosperous comprehensives. The children of the professional classes would still study languages, history and separate sciences before deciding what to become. It is poorer children who would be asked to decide first, and to decide with fewer options. We have seen already what happens when schools are incentivised to place more children on vocational pathways. In the 2000s, the New Labour government of which Burnham was a part assigned GCSE “equivalences” to many vocational subjects. In an era of comparative performance tables, schools rushed to place children on courses deemed “easier” in order to inflate their standing. According to the Wolf Review commissioned in 2011, the number of level 2 vocationally related qualifications awarded rose from 1,882 in 2003-04, to 462,182 in 2009-10. In a national data study, researchers Simon Burgess and Dave Thompson found that the group most readily ferried onto such qualifications were those on free school meals. Concerning For those of us on the left, this should make us uncomfortable. The lesson of the 2000s is not that vocational education is inherently second-rate. It is that, when vocational qualifications are given generous accountability weight and schools are placed under intense performance pressure, disadvantaged pupils are most likely to be entered for courses that serve the institution’s interests rather than their own. For these reasons, I think the early signals of direction from Burnham on education are concerning. I would therefore offer three suggestions: Keep in place a broad and balanced curriculum until age 16 that is founded on rigour and ambition. This should be the entitlement for all children. Secondly, develop outstanding technical pathways from 16. That means well-funded FE colleges, respected and rigorous T-levels, apprenticeships with meaningful employer participation and clear routes from qualifications into secure work. Technical education will acquire esteem through its quality and the opportunities it creates, not by being declared equivalent to academic study at 14. And finally, seize the opportunity that was presented to Starmer when he arrived in office. Namely, build on the success of the previous government and acknowledge the good work that was done. Be brave The opportunity still exists for a brave Labour government to meaningfully pursue knowledge-rich curricula across all schools in England and support those struggling with implementation. Instead of a deviation towards technical qualifications, I say double-down on knowledge. As an educational policy, there are few that would be so important and impactful. So no, Andy Burnham, education does not require a ‘complete rethink.’ England needs a technical-education system worthy of the name, but it should be built alongside, not at the expense of, a common academic entitlement. Parity of esteem cannot mean asking poorer children to narrow their horizons earlier. The most progressive education policy remains the simplest: give every child access to powerful knowledge and allow them to decide for themselves what they will become.