Choosing between university and vocational training is a bogus choice, according to a government minister.

In an exclusive interview with ePolitix.com skills and vocational education minister Ivan Lewis said it was time to stop defining success purely in academic terms.

"The way that we’ve presented vocation-based education throughout our history has been to divide people into sheep and goats," he said.

"What we’ve tended to mean by vocational education is that successful, well-motivated, middle class young people do the academic conventional route and anybody who’s identified as a problem does the vocational route.

"There are some people who are posing a bogus choice between vocational education and higher education. I think that does tremendous damage because what we actually need in this country is actually far more graduates and far more young people qualified to a higher level of vocational skills. At the moment our definition of success tends to be exclusively related to academic success."

Lewis also revealed that he will shortly announce proposals to improve the apprenticeship system to reach out to more employers and urge them to offer more apprenticeship places.

Work experience

He revealed that a move to more practical work experience will be driven by the fact that young people are becoming increasingly aware about their career options.

"Young people need to be able to make choices based on authentic experiences not reading about things or looking up things on the internet. Them spending time in the workplace is really important," he said.

"I also think that young people are becoming increasingly sophisticated in what motivates them. They genuinely look for what earning potential they will have in a particular career. You can’t knock the fact that these days if you choose to be a plumber or a joiner - highly skilled jobs - you could earn a tremendous amount of money. A lot more than in the traditional professions.

"What we underestimate is that young people themselves look at those issues. We know it and the press increasingly cover it as an issue but we shouldn’t underestimate that young people make that connection.

"For me it really has to be a more dynamic, authentic relationship between young people and their future career options than just sitting down with them and having a one-hour chat with a teacher when they get to a certain age."

Challenge

Lewis backed the idea of pupils learning on the job, even on building sites.

"Why not? There should be a more varied, flexible timetable that will involve them spending some time in college or on the building site or why not in a modern IT firm," he said.

The minister accepted his ideas would be a big challenge for the teaching profession.

"Massive challenges for the workforce and the culture of our education system and indeed with employers. Of course there are major changes. Putting the individual pupil at the centre of the offer is a radical departure from the institution determining the offer," he said.

Re-training

Lewis predicted that in the future, adults would also have to face up to re-training for new careers.

"The job for life is dead so for 21st century replacement for that has to be employability for life. We can’t pretend that we can cushion people completely from the effects of globalisation but we have a responsibility to help people through and to demonstrate that the government is on their side," he said.

"One of the central ways we can make people feel they can cope and come out the other end of this change is by replacing the concept of a job for life with employability for life."

Lewis argued it was time for Labour to put the issue of education back on the policy and media agenda.

"What this government’s got to do is put back at the heart of its message its passion for lifelong learning, that’s the key. We’ve always been very strong on this but we’ve stopped using the term as being central to our vision of the society we want to live in," the minister said.

"The way I put it is from a social justice point of view. It’s about supporting every individual to fulfil their potential and to know the dignity of self-improvement."