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Investing in vocational education

By: admin

Wednesday 16 December 2015

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It was great to hear the news that a record £360,000 grant has been awarded to a team of academics for research on improving teaching standards in FE, showing a real commitment to improving vocational education.

Awarded by the Gatsby Charitable Trust to a research team at the University of Huddersfield, the grant will be used to investigate how to improve both teaching and teacher training in FE colleges. The aim is to develop a sector-wide “intervention” designed to raise standards in technology, engineering, and vocational science subjects.

The team plans to undertake a “large-scale investigation of current pedagogy and practice in training teachers of engineering, technology and vocational science subjects, principally in Further Education colleges”. The two-year project will involve as many trainee teachers as possible, and the intervention will include online and physical resources, plus guidance and instructions for teacher training.

Teacher training in these areas certainly has room for improvement, so we’re pleased to see the necessary investment and focus on this. It’s essential that just as much importance is placed on high quality teaching of vocational subjects as it is on academic subjects, so projects like this one will play a big part in moving towards closing this gap.

In learning, one size doesn’t fit all, and we believe that neither vocational nor academic education should be seen as a more valuable form of learning than the other.

We look forward to hearing about the outcomes of the research undertaken by the University of Huddersfield over the next two years, and hope that it will go some way to raising the profile and perceived value of vocational education.  

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