Right.  Before the Tories beat me to it, and perhaps some comrades may disagree with what I am about to say, I wanted to say how AMAZING I think McQualifications are.  Fantastic.

This is a report that McDonalds, Flybe and Network Rail are soon to be delivering proper qualifications.  Something like A levels in catering management is planned; food selling with a bit of HR and marketing.  I understand that Network Rail are planning much more advanced engineering qualifications, perhaps at a Masters level.

Now, this isn’t dumbing down by any means.  They’re intended to be quite difficult things to achieve.  Although adding a new dimension to learning, as business offers its own way of skilling its workers, it is a positive move.  It’ll mean that people who want to work or who don’t want to study can still get skilled while on the job.   And all of these jobs are in places where, historically, people went who might not be immediately attractive to employees elsewhere.

I look forward to seeing how this impacts the other education institutions of the world.  As business is clearly saying that it can provide better employees on its own than in partnership with established education providers, this will make the fees debate and the ‘traditional’ academic debate more nuanced than ever before.  Fascinating times…