Gavin Williamson has torn up Tony Blair’s target of having half of young people in higher education — a year after it was achieved — in favour of an employer-led system.
The education secretary said that he wanted to end the culture of qualifications for qualifications’ sake and pour more money into further education colleges.
There was an “inbuilt snobbishness” about those who went into vocational training, rather than university. Rather than being for other people’s children, the education secretary said that he would be delighted if his children shunned a degree in favour of an apprenticeship.
Mr Blair said in 1999 that 50 per cent of young people should take degrees or their equivalent and this figure was finally achieved last year. Mr