Just eight days into the Burnham premiership and we have ourselves the first big education announcement. Driven by Number 10 and the new prime minister himself, the speed that the new government announced the national roll out of the MBacc was breathtaking. Andy Burnham is clearly a PM who knows what he thinks and knows what he wants when it comes to education. This is not a policy to be sneered at, even if details, such as how Ofsted will actually embed technical education in inspection and how the new changes work with the curriculum review, are still rather thinner on the ground than we’d like (almost like Andy learnt his politics at the knee of Tony Blair). Thin on technical detail or not, it is clearly a serious attempt to really build some form of parity of esteem into the education system – however idealistic, or even naive, that is as an ambition. We should be pleased, however, that many of the changes align closely with the evidence on what needs to improve, especially if truly disengaged students and their families are to have their faith in the school system reestablished. Don’t rush The independent inquiry into white working class educational outcomes, for which Public First ran the research, found careers guidance that was generic, weighted heavily towards university and poorly connected to local employers. Across the country, white working class parents saw it as lacking in credibility when it came to their lived experiences. We also heard from young people who were markedly less confident about navigating technical and vocational choices at 16 and 18 than their peers going off to university. Many of the inquiry’s recommendations point in the same direction as Burnham’s reforms. But there is also a risk here that in its rush to nationalise the MBacc, the government doesn’t take into account the circumstances of the towns and regions, often white working class, where its success is most needed. Ironic, really, for an administration so focussed on place-based solutions. The MBacc works – at least on paper – because Greater Manchester has the economy to support it: creative and digital, media, sport, health, construction, and a growing green-skills base. Employer-led curriculum design in a diversified economy widens choice. But what does a locally-designed curriculum offer in a coastal town or a rural county where three main employers dominate and one of them is the local council? In those places, aligning provision with local demand risks narrowing options rather than expanding them. A pupil who lives near a pharmaceutical plant or a gigafactory gets a pathway. But what about those whose regions might not have clear anchor employers or strong industries in which to train? Societal issues drive NEET numbers How do we ensure we don’t end up further embedding rather than tackling social divide, and that regional curricula have the breadth of economically durable skills that mean young people will be resilient to industry shifts and economic shocks? In the comms around this week’s announcement, the prime minister also echoed working class parents, who attribute part of Britain’s NEET problem to the expansion of higher education. This widely held critique – including among teachers themselves – is that by setting a target for the half of young people going to university, and making it the focus of the education system, the other half were left to rot with deprioritised and underfunded alternatives. That is partly fair. Non-university routes have been neglected for two decades. But nearly a million young people out of education, employment and training is also the product of massive societal issues. These include, but are not limited to, a weak labour market, the post-industrial malaise unanswered by successive governments, employment costs that have risen sharply for exactly the entry-level roles young people fill, and a long tail of places where firms are not hiring much at all. Alan Milburn’s £125 billion estimate of the cost of youth inactivity rests on scarring effects that run through the labour market, not through the curriculum. ‘No dead ends’ The same logic applies to apprenticeships. The idea of more apprenticeships is of course more than welcome – and something the inquiry and many others have long called for. But nothing in what pupils study from 14 will change whether a local employer is incentivised to recruit and train a school leaver. Demand for apprenticeship places already outstrips supply many times over – a fact that white working class parents know only too well – and many employers have no need or wish to hire at 17. The announcement comes with a reprioritisation of existing departmental budgets rather than new money. Curriculum change on its own will not conjure up a vacancy that an employer has no commercial reason to create. The government has picked the right problem, which is more than most of its predecessors managed. “No dead ends” is clearly the right ambition. But a technical route entered at 14 needs a destination at 18 and beyond, and young people deserve qualifications that set them up for a broad range of potential futures. Success absolutely cannot mean a reform that works well in Manchester, a number of core cities and London – and patchily everywhere else. Existing divides in both engagement and outcomes could even be widened, not closed.