Tim Almond

What about the ones who don’t apply?

If we do not do more to engage this talent, we are going to end up with the “meritocracy” that Michael Young envisaged in 1958. He coined the phrase as a warning, not nirvana. He applauded the appointment of individuals to jobs on merit. But he feared that mass education would end up creating a new, exclusive, social class of degree-waving men married to degree-waving women that would reproduce itself and reduce social mobility.

That this seems to have happened, as the ladder of opportunity was kicked away from so many by the abolition of the grammars, is all the more reason to make urgent improvements to schools. It is also a reason to ensure that those who have the merit to make it now, those 3,000 plus, are given every encouragement, every support, to try.

Or maybe, they just don’t want to do it.

Aged 18, having spent 2 years at technical college studying computing, I was on for good grades. I went for an interview and had a place subject to grades.

But that was my fall back position. Because during my 2 years, I’d worked out that what I wanted to do was to build business computer software. I didn’t want to carry on studying, I wanted to earn some money. My university* place was the backup plan in case I couldn’t get a programming job. I wasn’t expecting to get one without having more qualifications, but I did. So, I never went to university, and my family always supported my decision.

I don’t really like this sort of arrogant "encouragement" that assumes that the best thing for someone is to always go to university. It wasn’t for me, and I still believe that. No-one seems to address the other side - people for whom going to university is their plan, regardless of not knowing what they want to study, or what they want it to do for them. A little more "encouragement" for those people to forget about it, and maybe get a job might not be a bad thing.

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Tags: General //