In the aftermath of recent GCSE and A-level results, we inevitably talk about grades, standards and whether results have gone up or down. But perhaps the results should prompt a more fundamental question. In 2026, what is the education system actually for? And are we asking too much of it?
Is it there to ensure every young person reaches a common standard? To give employers the skills they need? To prepare young people for particular careers? Or to develop the knowledge, curiosity and ability to keep learning as the world changes around them?
These aren’t necessarily competing ambitions. But they do create tensions and choices about how we parent, teach and support our educational institutions, that we need to navigate with care.
In his first few weeks as PM, Andy Burnham set out his commitment to delivering genuine parity of esteem between academic and technical education, and the Government recently announced plans for new technical education pathways from the age of 14. He is only the latest PM to recognise this challenge and sits in a long line of PMs, Ministers and Secretaries of State that made similar commitments.
It’s not hard to see why, for too long, we have both implicitly and explicitly presented the academic route as success and others as alternatives to it. Giving young people meaningful technical choices, connected to real employers and real opportunities, could help to change that.
But it also raises a more interesting question. At what age should we start asking children to think about their role in the economy and developing skills they need for work?
Fourteen may be the right answer. Perhaps it should be earlier. But if education becomes increasingly responsive to real local employers, do we risk defining young people’s horizons by the economy they happen to grow up in? Education should surely connect young people to the opportunities around them, while also showing them opportunities beyond them. Getting that balance right is critical.
The economy is changing faster than our education system can reasonably change with it. Locally, nationally and globally, the world of work is changing fast. The skills demanded by employers will keep evolving. Careers will keep changing and some will disappear. Many young people will move between occupations and industries several times.
That makes knowledge no less important. You cannot think critically about something you know nothing about. But perhaps one of the most important things an education system can now instil is the capability to learn.
Can you encounter something unfamiliar, ask good questions, work out what you need to know and learn something new?
If we don’t know exactly what jobs today’s 11-year-olds will be doing in 5, 10 or 20 years, that ability may ultimately be more valuable than preparing them perfectly for the jobs available today.
And perhaps there is one more purpose we don’t discuss enough. Much of education and careers policy is built around helping young people find work. Learn. Qualify. Apply. Get a job. But we should also prepare young people to be more enterprising, give them the skills to work for themselves and teach them about the fundamentals of business.
That doesn’t mean expecting every teenager to become an entrepreneur. It means understanding how value is created. How businesses work. How to turn a skill into an income. How to spot a problem worth solving. How to build relationships and create something somebody else needs.
There is a meaningful difference between teaching a young person how to make themselves attractive to an employer and helping them understand that they can create value and opportunity themselves.
Perhaps there isn’t one answer to what education is for, but we do need to recognise it might change.
We need a common educational foundation. We need technical and academic routes that are genuinely valued. We need employers closely involved in education, while accepting their own responsibility to train and retrain their people. And we need young people prepared for today’s economy without limiting them to it.
The pitfall we need to avoid is that technology keeps evolving, the economy keeps adapting, and our education system carries on successfully delivering against a purpose we decided twenty years ago.