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I admit to signing up and paying the £4.50 just to annoy myself before going to the pub. But I ended up agreeing with a lot of this. Certainly I agree that a big problem is employers and that devolution is the best way to fix this.

I am an employer. We have had good apprentices before. It works if the system is pretty stable, and there is a person at the local council or combined authority and at the relevant local colleges to guide you through it and that is so eroded now we just can't make it work. Which is a shame.

People like me who are big supporters of devolution should be honest about the drawbacks. If UTCs have a bad record,... but the trustworthy people who put the hard work in to non-academic education in Leeds mostly supported UTCs,... then I as a devolutionist back UTCs in Leeds. Even if it's wrong.

That's part of the messy part about building local coalitions of responsibility and accountability and agency that ultimately get me as a business offering places for people from non-academic routes. And get local people providing the colleges and courses. And kids choosing them. It's messy.

The thing that keep me on Andy Burnham's side (certainly not without criticism) on this is that I don't see of an understanding of where the last three decades of education reform in England have performed poorly. There's just so much celebration. But the picture is much less good for very many.

"education, education, education,… because nothing matters more to the future prosperity of the country" said Tony Blair. We did the education. We did not get the prosperity. Without a good story for why, people (including me), will want the right to take other paths that led to more prosperity.

Weirdly I've just been writing a bit for my next book today on why one of the big problems with the third way (not just in the UK) was its almost exclusive focus on education as a solution for the losers from globalisation.

I look forward to it. I feel like the UK problems are much deeper than the left behind by globalisation part though. The chart on graduate premiums declining in @jburnmurdoch.ft.com is something other than that.

For my further thoughts on skills and growth with fewer spelling and grammar mistakes (hopefully). I offer these two pieces. tomforth.co.uk/humancapital/ tomforth.co.uk/graduateprem...

Jen's FT piece today expresses well the way some GM scepticism about the MBacc has been eroded by evidence of its success in increasing employer engagement. www.ft.com/content/c01d...