Advancing British Standards? Exploring public attitudes towards a baccalaureate-style 16-18 education system
Over the last two decades, Edge has been calling for an education system that allows young people to develop knowledge and skills across a range of disciplines to best prepare them for life and work – a truly broad and balanced approach.
Through our Bacc to the Drawing Board policy series, Edge has explored different options for a broader, baccalaureate-style post-16 education system – one that allows young people to study a blend of academic, technical and vocational options at 16.
In this report, Advancing British Standards? Exploring public attitudes towards a baccalaureate-style 16-18 education system, we unveil the findings from our nationally representative poll of more than 2,000 adults in England, conducted with Public First in February 2024, testing the extent to which there is appetite for such reform, the case for change, and the drivers of support or opposition.
The headline findings are:
- Voters think the current education system is not fit for purpose. But more than that, they think we’re not actually preparing young people for their futures any better than 20 years ago. A majority of respondents (52%) think the current education system prepares young people poorly for the world of work. 37% think a person leaving the education system today is worse prepared for the workplace today than someone leaving 20 years ago (1 in 10 say “much worse”).
- There is growing public demand for schools and colleges to focus on developing essential skills for life and work, and technical skills to prepare them for vocational pathways. Gaining life skills (e.g. household budgeting, cooking, etc.) was seen as the most important priority of the education system in England. But large majorities think education should focus more on teaching young people skills that will be useful for the workplace (88%) or for everyday life (90%), and there’s overwhelming support (82%) for encouraging more young people to explore technical or vocational options.
- Technical and vocational pathways are popular – and perceived to be better preparation for life after school or college – but respondents feel they are not as respected as they should be. Despite vast majorities thinking that technical and vocational qualifications should be as respected as ‘academic’ ones (81%), just under a third (32%) of respondents agreed that technical and vocational qualifications are actually as respected as academic ones, in practice. The positive? Respect is on the up. We see an age trend here - with younger respondents more likely to say technical or vocational qualifications are already as respected as academic ones than older respondents.
- The Advanced British Standard is a popular proposal, in principle and in practice. 78% of respondents said they would support a proposal to reform the education system in line with the ABS proposals, compared to just 10% who would oppose. Driving that support is the proposal for majors and minors, allowing for breadth and the all-important ability to mix and match ‘academic’ and ‘vocational’ subjects.
The full data tables can be found here.
