1) Poly come home

The return of the Polytechnic? http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article5780304.ece This could be seen as just the harbinger of another reversal of a state policy, which will waste many millions of pounds of public money. However, I don’t think it is that simple or clear. Elsewhere, the government continues to push ahead with new schemes to encourage disadvantaged students to apply to the ‘top’ universities http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/feb/02/teachers-university-expectations-achievers Analysis of the existing student populations shows that there is a structural tendency for disadvantaged students to attend the new, post 1992, universities. http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/feb/03/access-university1 For those who want more detail a recent study examined this trend http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/feb/03/university-access-social-exclusion and at http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/feb/03/universities-admissions-social-mobility and this trend continues to excite some MPs http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/feb/26/university-elitism-access

As an aside, I think it is interesting that these research reports used the Acorn system of social classification, this schema seems to be gaining the upper hand in education studies and we would be wise to use it in any studies that we undertake in the future.

However, back to the main point, I think I am with John Denham on this one. I’m not so excited about ‘top universities’. I think the difficult problem is getting disadvantaged students to stay in education, get 5 GCSEs A to C and then to consider higher education of any sort. The disadvantaged student group seem to be gravitating to the old polys; so why not bend those institutions to fit the customers. I admit that there remains the old British quandary of the divide between academic and vocational qualifications and the assumed inferiority of the latter. This was never addressed when the old polytechnics were converted into universities; the problem was assumed to have been transcended by a simple change of name. Without a serious attempt to make ‘parity of esteem’ real this time round then the vocational route will continue to be seen as second best and unattractive to all types of students.

A utopian thought: It seems to be a chronic problem of UK social policy that old policies and strategies are described in a caricature way by the advocates of each new policy that comes along. I know it’s an old-fashioned idea but I still believe that an honest and thorough understanding of a policy’s history will always help to both better understand the present situation and might even ensure that the new policy is an improvement on the old. We could really do with this approach in education policy.