Life is Rarely Linear. Our Education System Should Stop Pretending that it is

It seems everyone in Greater Manchester has an Andy Burnham Story.

Mine starts backstage at Parklife festival in 2017. I was fortunate enough to be invited as part of Manchester’s tribute following the Arena attack and found myself walking onto the stage alongside Andy Burnham, The 1975 and the incredible emergency service workers who had done our city proud. As a proud Mancunian, it’s a moment that has always stayed with me.

Fast forward and Andy has us all talking again.

I’ve spent the last couple of days reflecting on his plans to reshape technical education and create clearer pathways into employment. Truthfully, I welcome a lot of what has been announced. For too long, technical education has been treated as the alternative rather than an equal. Better employer engagement, stronger technical routes and a renewed focus on opportunity can only be a good thing.

But I keep coming back to one thing: fourteen.

Fourteen is the age we’re asking many young people to start making some pretty significant decisions about their future. It’s also the age I was excluded from school.

At fourteen, I wasn’t thinking about careers, qualifications or apprenticeships. I guess I was a young carer. My mum had just been diagnosed with leukaemia and, if I’m honest, all I wanted to do was spend as much time with her as I could.

Looking back now, if somebody had judged my future by where I was at fourteen, they’d have got me completely wrong.

That’s why, whilst I welcome the ambition behind these proposals, I think we need to be careful not to build a system around the assumption that every young person’s journey will follow a neat, predictable path, because life rarely works like that.

Yet so much of our education and employment system still assumes a straight line from school into college, training or work.

The question I keep asking myself is: what happens when life gets in the way?

Because from where I’m standing, that’s where the real challenge begins.

Working with young people every day through BREAKOUT, I don’t meet many who simply need another pathway into employment. I meet young people looking for a way back. Back into education, back into employment and, quite often, back into believing in themselves.

That’s a very different conversation.

After leaving school, I spent around eight months unemployed. After being excluded at 14, I attended a Pupil Referral Unit for my final six months complete my core GCSEs. Like many PRUs, the staff worked incredibly hard with limited resources. I was told I could only be entered for the lower-tier papers. If I’m honest, I hated my double Art lesson on a Monday morning so I’d often go and see the careers advisor to drink tea and eat biscuits (and of course talk about my future).

Her name was Linda.

Technically, once I’d left education, I wasn’t her responsibility anymore. She didn’t have to remember me and she didn’t have to pick up the phone, but she did.

She reached out with an opportunity that completely changed the direction of my life.

Looking back, Linda didn’t change my life because she had another programme to refer me onto. She changed my life because she cared enough to remember me.

That experience has stayed with me throughout my career.

One of my biggest frustrations when we talk about young people is how rarely we stop to ask one simple question: why?

Why has attendance dropped? Why has confidence disappeared? Why has somebody disengaged? Why are they behaving the way they are?

Too often, we respond to the behaviour before we’ve understood the story behind it.

That philosophy now sits at the heart of everything we’re building at BREAKOUT. We don’t start by asking, “What’s wrong with this young person?” We start by asking, “What’s happened to them?”

It sounds like a subtle shift, but it completely changes the conversation.

Earlier this month, I also had the privilege of contributing to the Breaking Barriers report alongside colleagues from education, employment and the voluntary sector. Although we all came from different organisations and different perspectives, one message came through loud and clear: young people don’t just need opportunities, they need trusted relationships. They need adults who genuinely believe in them and they need somebody in their corner.

So what do we actually do?

From where I’m standing, there are three practical things I’d focus on.

Firstly, let’s design for the pathway back, not just the pathway forward.

Success shouldn’t simply be measured by how many young people stay on a prescribed route. It should also be measured by how quickly and effectively we help those whose lives take an unexpected turn find their way back into education, training or employment.

Life isn’t a straight line, so our education and employment system shouldn’t expect it to be.

Secondly, let’s back people before programmes.

Qualifications matter, careers advice matters and employers matter, but relationships matter just as much.

The adults who ask “why?” before making assumptions. The mentors who keep showing up. The careers advisers who remember your name long after you’re no longer on their caseload.

Because sometimes what changes a young person’s future isn’t another initiative. Sometimes it’s simply knowing somebody believes in them.

Every young person deserves someone in their corner.

Finally, let’s properly back the organisations already doing this work.

Across Greater Manchester, and indeed across the country, there are brilliant schools, colleges, youth organisations and grassroots charities quietly changing lives every single day.

The challenge isn’t passion. It’s capacity.

Some of the organisations making the biggest difference are often the least able to compete for larger contracts. Not because they lack expertise, but because they don’t have dedicated bid writers, procurement teams or the capacity to spend weeks navigating lengthy commissioning processes while continuing to support young people on the ground.

I’d love to see commissioning evolve.

Let larger organisations do what they’re brilliant at: governance, compliance, reporting and contract management. Then properly resource grassroots organisations to do what they do best: build trusted relationships, understand local communities and help young people when life inevitably knocks them off course.

To me, that’s what good partnership looks like and it’s also where I think we could unlock so much more impact.

Andy Burnham deserves credit for getting Greater Manchester talking about technical education and youth employment. As a proud Mancunian, I genuinely hope these proposals succeed.

But if there’s one thing my own journey has taught me, it’s this: you can’t build an education and employment system around the assumption that life goes to plan, because for millions of young people, it won’t.

If we’re serious about creating opportunity, let’s build a system that works just as well for the young person whose life takes an unexpected turn as it does for the one whose journey is straightforward.

Let’s build systems that ask “why?” before they judge, invest in trusted relationships rather than just programmes, and make it easier for the organisations closest to communities to be part of the solution.

Because life is rarely linear and our education system should stop pretending that it is.

By Roman Dibden, founder of BREAKOUT