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Analysis

The Forgotten Half

Analysis

BBC

News, Politics

4.61K Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2019

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

More and more young people now go to university. But what's on offer for those who don't? Public and political attention is far more focused on the university route. Paul Johnson discovers why other kinds of further education and training have been neglected, leaving many young people facing much more difficult choices. Yet the needs of the economy and the choices of many shrewd young people suggest non-university education may be heading for revival.

Producer: Chris Bowlby Editor: Jasper Corbett

Transcript

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0:00.0

Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

0:04.6

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

0:08.4

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable

0:14.3

experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC

0:20.4

makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

0:24.6

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

0:29.7

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.

0:36.0

BBC Sounds, Music Radio Podcasts.

0:41.0

Hello and thanks for listening to this edition of Analysis. podcasts. Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Over the next half hour, I'm going to ask why we are so neglectful of the education of the half of our young people who don't go on to university.

1:02.0

Sometimes it's not what the media reports about a crucial story

1:05.2

that's most revealing, it's what they don't report. We had a classic case at the end of May

1:10.7

with the launch of a

1:15.0

end of May with the launch of a major review of post-compulsory education in England, which the government are commissioned from former Bank of Philip Orger.

1:18.0

The headlines this morning, a government review has back to cut in university tuition fees

1:22.0

and the return of maintenance grants. has backed the

1:24.8

the university tuition fees and the return of maintenance grants the

1:24.6

back the findings of a long-awaited review of university funding in England

1:28.1

which calls for a cut in... The media focused almost entirely on just one part of the Auger Review, proposed changes in university fees.

1:37.0

In fact, the review was about all of post-18 education and was especially focused on the non-university sector.

1:45.1

This coverage was typical of our national obsession with universities and neglect of the other

1:50.3

half of the population, those who don't attend university, and neglect to further

1:55.4

and vocational education in particular.

...

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