Reply to Lucy Powell: Technical and Academic Education

Sir,

Lucy Powell's suggestion that the divide between technical and academic education belongs in the history books sounds progressive, but why must improving one come at the expense of the other?
Technical and academic education are not opposing camps. They go hand in hand. An engineer needs mathematics as well as practical skill; a stonemason uses geometry; a doctor relies on technicians throughout modern medicine. Britain needs excellent apprenticeships and technical education, but that does not diminish the value of literature, history, mathematics, science or university education.
Stranger still is hearing this argument presented through the language of working-class opportunity. Ms Powell has spoken proudly of her working-class background, yet academic education did her rather well -Good. That is what social mobility is supposed to accomplish.
A working-class young person should have affordable access to Oxbridge as readily as to an apprenticeship. Neither should be considered the more authentic route for their background. Nobody should feel a fool for choosing a trade, any more than feel university is not for them. There will always be the “my Gerald is going to university” sort of neighbour, but education should not reinforce their snobbery.
For generations, we treated technical education as second-best. We should correct that mistake, not simply reverse it.
We need excellent technical and academic education, with genuine opportunities to move between them. If a young person wants to work with machinery, give them a first-rate apprenticeship. If medieval history fascinates them, give them the chance to study it at university. If they happen to come from the same council estate, so much the better.
Class should not determine which kind of intelligence we encourage. Technical education does not need academic education diminished to prove its worth.

R. D. Kerr