YES

Sally Dicketts, chief executive of Activate Learning – the new name for Oxford & Cherwell Valley College Group – which wants to run a University Technical College in Didcot

For too long, employers have complained of a skills gap that exists between young people leaving education and entering employment. Qualifications alone are no longer enough to guarantee employment.
Today’s employers demand people with so-called softer skills – skills like teamwork, creativity in problem-solving, initiative and resilience. We also know from working with employers that particular industries have specific skills and training requirements.
As educational providers, we have a responsibility to help bridge this gap – a responsibility to our young people, to our employers and the overall economic prosperity of our communities.
We cannot hope to prepare people for employment if we work in isolation. Partnering with employers enables us to understand their needs and develop a curriculum which boosts employability.
University Technical Colleges are a new concept in education. They offer 14 to 19-year-olds the opportunity to take a highly regarded, full time, technically-oriented course of study. They are equipped to the highest standard, sponsored by a university and offer clear progression routes into higher education or further learning in work.
At a UTC, students combine hand and mind to learn in a very practical way, integrating national curriculum requirements with the technical and vocational elements. The UTC ethos and curriculum is heavily influenced by local and national employers who also provide support and work experience for students.
Activate Learning is the lead sponsor for UTC Reading, which opened its doors to its first cohort of 140 pupils last month (September). UTC Reading offers a specialism in computer science and engineering and its curriculum is designed and delivered in partnership with Cisco, Microsoft, Network Rail and Peter Brett Associations. Academic backing is provided by the University of Reading. Students take part in projects set by the employers, attend school in a way that is much closer to a working day and have the opportunity to develop qualifications relevant to each employer.
We are now leading a consultation around the opening of UTC Oxfordshire – a proposed new school for 14 to 19-year-olds based in Didcot. This would be the county’s first UTC and is being developed in partnership with Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, MINI Plant Oxford, Unipart, IBM, RM Education, Oxford Instruments and OBN. The UTC would specialise in science and engineering to help meet the recruitment and growth needs of the area’s Science Vale.
Local people can find out more and have their say during a public consultation, which starts next week.
Find out more at http://www.utcoxfordshire. org.uk

 

NO

Gawain Little, secretary of the Oxfordshire National Union of Teachers

One of the problems with the Government’s academies programme is that, as a parent, you genuinely don’t know what you are getting.
You could be sending your child to an excellent local school which has, for one of a variety of reasons, either decided or been forced to become an academy. On the other hand, you could be sending your child to a school run by an outside company with no experience or understanding of education or the needs of local people.
Indeed, it is very similar to the Government's decision that schools are no longer required to employ qualified teachers. This effectively removes our children’s right to a qualified teacher and means that, when you send your child to school, you do not know whether the person teaching them is qualified to do so or indeed has any experience of teaching.
The irony is that all of this has been done in the name, we are told, of improving education and supporting vulnerable children, but it is hard to see how it will do either.
In fact, it looks much more like education is heading in the same direction as the NHS. Before long, we may see for-profit companies tendering for lucrative contracts to run schools, answerable to their shareholders and not to local parents.
Of course, all the international evidence shows that, where this has happened, standards have dropped drastically and for-profit schools perform much worse than their state-funded counterparts.
Luckily, in Oxfordshire there is a huge choice of excellent local schools to send your child to and the county council has followed a clear, and correct, course of prioritising those with local experience when assessing potential academy sponsors.
However, recent announcements suggest that this policy may be wavering.
Ultimately, we have to do what is best for our children’s education and that means supporting high-quality local provision, whether academy or community. It also means protecting our children from the Government’s attempts to impose low-quality for-profit education on the cheap.
This will be one of the key motivations for teachers taking strike action on Thursday, October 17.