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Does skills-based learning face a lean future?

The outgoing chief executive of education charity Asdan is worried about the prospects for vocational learning

There is something quite apt about the headquarters of Asdan being located in an old workhouse for children. The organisation rescued the dilapidated building from almost certain demolition 10 years ago, creating a new base for its ever-expanding work.

The charitable organisation – its acronym stands for the Award Scheme Development and Accreditation Network – has been saving children and young people from academic and social failure for the last 30 years by giving currency and value to what they can do, rather than failing them because of what they can't.

These days, Asdan is probably the fastest growing awarding body in the country, offering skills-based qualifications and courses not just for the disaffected, low-achieving and pupils with special needs, but also for those bound for Oxbridge.

Roger White, the chief executive, has overseen the creation and evolvement of Asdan, but today he is "going hell for leather" to make sure there is a seemly handover when he retires at the end of the month. Asdan has pretty much been his life's work.

He leaves at a time of huge upheaval for the state education system, which has reverted into the hands of a government that seems intent on preserving the "gold standard" of GCSE and A-level and considers vocational, skills-based learning as something quite distinct.

Last week, Michael Gove, the education secretary, ordered a review of vocational qualifications, a move that looks likely to sound the final death knell for diplomas, which had been designed to form a bridge between the academic and vocational. "However much this government values academic rigour, it must never forget that by itself this is not sufficient. Even the brightest young people need workplace skills," White says.

"Having growing numbers of candidates with A* grades is all well and good, but it doesn't tell universities and employers much about them personally and what they can do. A*s do nothing to differentiate between students."

The insistence of successive governments to maintain the benchmark by which success is gauged – five or more grade A* to Cs at GCSE – has been a continued source of frustration for Asdan. The skills it teaches and promotes simply can't be measured in the same way.

Asdan was created and driven by a small number of innovative teachers in the late 1970s who could see that a content-led curriculum did not suit all children. Rather than force-feeding the disengaged and disaffected a diet of history and maths, they began to take them out of school for practical activities.

"It was a time of changing attitudes towards pupil behaviour and a loosening of the formalities between teachers and pupils," White says. "The deferential attitude that prevailed in the 1950s, that teachers knew best, was coming to an end.

"Children were starting to ask questions about the relevance of what they were learning.

"At around the same time, the school-leaving age had been raised to 16 and teachers were asking themselves 'why are we keeping them here for an extra year'? Was it to do more maths and English, or something entirely different? The cauldron of academic change was brewing."

The pioneering teachers who followed their instincts and offered their pupils something different were warned by the educational establishment that young people could not be trusted and would let them down.

But they found quite the opposite to be true. They watched as their students grew in confidence and self-esteem, while picking up skills and experiences that would be invaluable when they went to work. "Actually, most young people will behave well and take responsibility for themselves when treated like adults and given the opportunity to show what they can do," White says.

Until Asdan was formed, there was no mechanism to assess and accredit what they had learned as part of these practical activities. The Record of Achievement existed at that time, but it had no real currency.

Gradually, teachers set up award schemes regionally, which students worked towards as part of a timetabled curriculum, and Asdan evolved naturally from there, drawing all the strands into a national body.

Its credentials were swollen by a ringing endorsement from the All–Party Commons Select Committee in 1998, which said Asdan qualifications should count in performance league tables. Five years later, David Miliband, then an education minister, said he wished Asdan qualifications had existed when he was attending his comprehensive school in north London.

Today, the organisation offers 40 different courses to more than 6,000 schools and colleges across the country. Its flagship qualification – the Certificate of Personal Effectiveness (CoPE) – is taken by the most academically able to develop skills such as teamwork and problem-solving. It carries 70 Ucas points and has the equivalence of a grade A at AS-level.

"We moved into the area of gifted and talented because we came to a realisation that however academic the student, they still needed to develop skills to prepare them for university and work, which are not answered by curriculum subjects," White says.

"We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to engage with a skills-based course. And anyway, why should the least able kids have all the fun?"

White is acutely aware of the challenges the organisation faces with the coalition government. He believes that free schools and academies will appeal to "the more pushy parents, who will set up enclaves that will exclude many less able children".

"We are going to see polarisation again between the academic and less academic, which the education system has done so much to eradicate in recent years," he says. "Michael Gove could make a real name for himself and create a lasting legacy by running education through cross-party consensus. We need to have some sacred cows in education that should never be touched, such as ensuring that every child has the opportunity to succeed.

"Instead, education in this country is managed by ideology and political point-scoring."

White wants to see the qualifications system "left alone" for the next 10 years to give diplomas a chance to work. But most of all he wants Gove to listen.

"The government needs to talk to employers and universities to find out what they are saying about the young people our education system is turning out, and whether they fit the bill for what our society requires," he says. "If they don't, then what are we going to do about it?"

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