29.07.2026
Andy Burnham’s plan for technical education pathways from age 14, and his line that there should be “no dead ends” for young people leaving education, gets the diagnosis right. Morson has spent more than fifty years placing skilled people into aerospace, defence, rail, nuclear and energy. We see what happens when technical talent runs short. Projects slip, costs climb, and the country’s ambitions outrun the workforce needed to deliver them. I welcome the announcement. I also want to be practical about what will make it work.
Putting academic and technical routes on an equal footing matters. For years, “vocational” has been treated as the fallback for young people who could not manage exams, rather than a demanding discipline in its own right. The engineers and technicians we deploy across critical national infrastructure keep the lights on and the aircraft flying. Presenting technical pathways as a first choice rather than a consolation prize is the most important thing this policy can do.
The caution is straightforward. A pathway is only worth as much as the job at the end of it. Technical education linked to local jobs works only if employers help design the curriculum, offer real work experience, and commit to hiring. Previous versions of this idea failed when the employer relationship was assumed rather than built. Burnham’s own work as Mayor showed the model holds when business is in the room from the start. That lesson should follow him into government.
This is where Morson can help rather than applaud from the sidelines.
Morson Nexus, our training and skills business, already delivers the technical accreditation, apprenticeships and workforce development that turn a qualification into someone who can do the job. We see the gap between passing an assessment and being ready for a worksite, and we know how to close it. A reform that starts at 14 needs partners who understand both the classroom and the site. We can shape curriculum around real demand, host work experience that means something, and provide the progression routes that keep a 14-year-old’s first choice from becoming their last.
The Morson STEM Foundation reaches young people earlier, before subject choices are made and before they have decided that engineering “isn’t for someone like me.” Burnham is right that we must stop telling young people there is one route to success. But the system change fails if the story young people tell themselves stays the same. That work happens in schools, with parents, and in communities that engineering has under-recruited from for decades.
My one request of Government is continuity. Technical education has been rebuilt and rebranded so many times that employers have learned to wait and see. A reform rolling out from September 2028 has to survive elections and reshuffles to reach the 14-year-old starting Year 10. Businesses will invest in apprenticeships, equipment and mentoring only against a settlement they trust will still be there when today’s Year 9s finish school.
Morson will engage with this properly. We have the training capability in Nexus, the outreach through our Foundation, and fifty years of knowing what industry needs. If the Prime Minister wants technical pathways worth the young people who take them, he has a champion here.
We have the training capability in Nexus, the outreach through our Foundation, and fifty years of knowing what industry needs. If the Prime Minister wants technical pathways worth the young people who take them, he has a champion here.
