By Miss Management
Fallowmere Academy welcomes the government’s renewed enthusiasm for vocational education.
We have established a working group to locate the workshop.
We think it is now an intervention room. The site manager remembers a vice, although nobody is quite sure what happened to the bench. The prospectus has already been updated.
The government plans to introduce broader technical pathways from September 2028, with some new vocational GCSEs available as early as September 2029. There is also a commitment to change performance measures so schools are encouraged to offer them.
There is much to welcome here. A wider choice of worthwhile courses could make a considerable difference to young people whose interests and abilities are poorly served by the options currently available to them.
It is worth remembering, though, that vocational education has continued during the period before its rediscovery. Teachers were teaching it last Tuesday. Pupils were learning, gaining qualifications and preparing for their next steps.
Those teachers have experience we should use. They know where a course stretches pupils, where assessment gets in the way and which parts are worth keeping. They may even have useful things to say before the replacement has been designed.
At Fallowmere, they will be consulted during lunch. The meeting will finish promptly to allow them to cover someone else’s lesson.
One thing worth listening to is what happens when pupils can build evidence of their learning over time.
A portfolio gives them something to return to. They can complete a task, respond to feedback and improve it. They can compare an early attempt with a later one and see the difference for themselves.
For some pupils, particularly those who struggle in exams, that provides a way to demonstrate knowledge and skills that might otherwise be missed. For a young person accustomed to receiving marks that confirm how far behind they are, being able to see their own progress can matter enormously.
That deserves a place in the discussion about standards.
Practical competence takes knowledge, judgement and sustained effort. Diagnosing a fault or adapting a design requires someone to understand what they are doing well enough to respond when it goes wrong. Reading, writing and technical vocabulary will be part of that learning, alongside opportunities to demonstrate the work itself.
Computing makes the supposed divide between academic and practical learning particularly awkward. Writing software requires theoretical knowledge, practical skill and the patience to discover that the problem was something you did yourself three hours earlier.
AI adds another question for curriculum and assessment: what should pupils be able to do independently, and how will they learn to judge the output a tool gives them? Producing something that looks convincing is easier than establishing whether it works. Pupils still need enough understanding to test it, spot mistakes and explain their decisions.
At Fallowmere, we are preparing pupils for the jobs of the future. Our computing teacher occasionally browses those job listings too.
The new qualifications will need assessment that captures those demands. We cannot judge that from the word “vocational”. We will need to see the specifications.
We should be equally careful about deciding who these courses are for.
The fact that portfolio assessment works well for some pupils with SEND does not make vocational education the answer for pupils with SEND. Some want an academic programme. Some want a technical route. Some would benefit from combining the two, and others need opportunities to discover an interest before being asked to commit to it.
Finding the right course means paying attention to the pupil’s strengths, needs and ambitions. It also means being honest about the choices available.
Fallowmere believes every pupil should follow a pathway suited to their individual strengths and aspirations.
These are established through a careful discussion of the three courses running in option block C.
Pupils are encouraged to express a preference. Where their preference requires a course we do not offer, they receive additional careers guidance until they prefer something else.
Schools cannot offer everything. Even a modest expansion takes planning. Someone has to teach the course, in a suitable room, with equipment that works. Materials need replacing and machines need maintaining. Specialist staff may be difficult to recruit.
A partnership with a college or employer can open up more possibilities, provided the timetables fit and the pupils can get there. Someone must arrange transport, work out what support is needed and pay for it.
A course ten miles away may be an excellent opportunity. Whether it is an opportunity for a particular child depends on rather more than its inclusion in the options booklet.
Fallowmere has committed to removing barriers to participation. Transport remains the responsibility of someone yet to be identified.
Once pupils arrive, the curriculum needs to make sense.
Measuring materials, adjusting quantities and explaining a process all draw on knowledge developed elsewhere. Pupils need help to recognise those connections and apply what they have learned. Staff need time to plan together, including checking whether the maths required for a practical task has actually been taught yet.
At Fallowmere, maths is taught in the maths department. Construction is provisionally near the car park. Pupils are expected to make the connection independently.
We have described this as transferable learning.
These are manageable problems when schools have the time, expertise and resources to address them. They become harder when each new course must also justify its existence through performance measures that may recognise some qualifications more readily than others.
A course can be valuable to a pupil while contributing little or nothing to the headline figures used to judge their school.
The pupil may have developed skills, completed substantial work and gained what they need for their next step. The school can still find itself explaining why it devoted curriculum time to a qualification that its results do not fully reflect.
At Fallowmere, every achievement is celebrated.
Some are also counted.
Schools should have to explain their choices. A course needs to be worthwhile and appropriately challenging, with credible progression afterwards. Keeping pupils occupied is an insufficient ambition.
But a school with good evidence that a course serves its pupils well should be able to make that case within the accountability system. Otherwise, choosing what is right for a pupil can leave the school defending an apparent weakness in its results.
The government’s commitment to adapt performance measures is welcome for precisely this reason. The detail will matter: which courses are recognised, how they contribute and whether the arrangements support a sensible range of choices.
Schools also need to know what is coming in time to prepare for it. Tes reported on 16 October that the consultation on national curriculum and GCSE subject content had slipped beyond its previously announced September date. First teaching of the revised curriculum remains planned for September 2028.
Staffing, training and facilities take time to arrange. A delayed consultation leaves people waiting for information they need to make decisions. That time cannot all be recovered through a particularly ambitious INSET day.
There is a real opportunity to build on good vocational provision and make it available to more pupils. Doing so will require attention to the courses already working, the people teaching them and the support that enables pupils to succeed.
The test will come when a young person sits down to choose their subjects. Is there a course that interests them? Can they access it? Will they be taught well, assessed fairly and able to progress afterwards?
Those are reasonable things to expect from a pathway.
Fallowmere remains ready to play its part.
We have found the vice.
We are now looking for the budget.
Further reading
Tes: National curriculum consultation delayed until ‘later this year’ — 16 October 2026
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