Are Greater Manchester graduates missing out?

Dear readers — welcome to this week’s briefing. Today we’re exploring the Manchester Baccalaureate, a new vocational educational option launched by Andy Burnham with the intention of better preparing students for accessing the city region’s labour market; courses are tailored to give students the skills most applicable for working with big employers in Greater Manchester. In addition, we’ve got updates on the Bee Network’s punctuality, the Manchester-born businessman looking to buy the Telegraph, and reads on co-ops in Scotland (with a Rochdalian edge) and the Labour donor scandal. 

Over the weekend, we published a follow-up to our hugely popular report on the Carlton Club, a members club that has been serving the Whalley Range community since 1913. Jack got ahold of the building company directors who decided to serve an eviction notice to the club, and found their plans for the future are inconsistent at best. You can read that below.

From today’s sponsor: Every week, when we recommend the best reads in this newsletter, we link to the Financial Times. Why? Because its writers produce some of the richest journalism in the country. Take, for instance, their award-winning long read following a school in Oldham — an eye-opening account of the realities of state education. Now, for a limited time only, you can get 50% off an annual digital subscription to the FT. That’s just £4.40 per week for peerless reporting on politics, culture, business, and international affairs. Click here to claim the offer before it’s gone. Thanks to the FT for sponsoring today’s edition. 

🌦️ This week’s weather

Our local weatherman Martin Miles says autumn weather is rolling in this week, so stay warm.

Tuesday 🌦️ Mostly cloudy with occasional light showers. Breezy during the afternoon. 14°C.

Wednesday 🌧️ Wet and cool with outbreaks of heavy rain. Breezy. 13°C.

Thursday 🌦️ Windy and chilly with frequent heavy showers. 13°C.

Friday 🌦️ Cold and windy with sunny spells and isolated blustery showers. 12°C.

Outlook 🌦️ Cool and briefly more settled thanks to a ridge of high pressure, then milder but unsettled again next week.

You can find the latest forecast at Manchester Weather on Facebook — daily forecasts are published at 6.15am.

The big story: Plenty of support, but an uncertain future for the Manchester Baccalaureate

Top line: Last week, Andy Burnham sat down with secondary school students in Dukinfield to talk about his plans to introduce the Manchester Baccalaureate, an alternative, vocational education route for 14 to 16-year-olds, which will base its curriculum on the skill requirements of employers in Greater Manchester.

• Burnham introduced the idea of the Manchester Baccalaureate in May 2023, arguing that an education system that wasn’t matched up with what big employers desire from their graduate hires was posing a risk to the city region’s economic growth.

How it works: At 14, students will be advised on what GCSEs employers most value, and at 16, they will be offered to choose from a range of technical qualifications, like a T Levels and BTECs, with a guaranteed work placement in their desired industry attached to the course. The curriculum of these technical qualifications will be determined by local education leaders, young people, and local employers, who will get a say over what kind of skills students should be developing in order to get jobs in their industries. The digital travel agency Booking.com is said to have signed up to the GMCA’s Employer Integration Board, and Burnham told The Mill on Friday that he is looking for more “big names to bring prestige to the MBacc”.

Do we really need it? According to a 2022 survey of 35,000 young people in Greater Manchester, 45% of Year 10 pupils said they were considering a technical education pathway after finishing their GCSEs, but only one in three said they’d received information about the options that were available to them.

High stakes: While many vocational qualifications like T Levels, BTECs and apprenticeships do already exist, Burnham argues that the current system is “fragmented”, and jobs are not “easily accessed” straight out of graduating, which risks creating a “class divide” between those who go to university and those who don’t. 

Pushback: In June 2023, Gillian Keegan, the education secretary under Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Government, threw cold water over Burnham’s plans. “He doesn't actually have that as part of his role, to be honest,” she told the Northern Agenda podcast. “It's something that he said, but it's not within his power to change.” Keegan added that she opposed regional variations in education and said it was important to “have some national standards and national qualifications that are equally understood”.

As expected, Burnham came to bat for Greater Manchester’s young people. “We're not going to take no for an answer,” he said at an education conference in Sheffield. “We're going to build this system. It's right and proper in this day and age that a place like Greater Manchester shouldn't have to ask permission from anyone to do what we know is right for our young people."

How it’s going now: Burnham recognises that there are “going to be funding issues” with the programme and has said “largely the money is in the system”, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service. He says he has the support of local schools, employers, and Bridget Phillipson, Secretary of State for Education, and has written to Sir Keir Starmer to outline what he wants from the new government. 

What’s next: Burnham has promised that by September 2025, 16-year-olds in Greater Manchester can expect to see “a significantly larger number of T Levels with work placements attached to them”, and the GMCA will “build the numbers of those” over the next five years. 

Will we see results? The success of the MBacc will be measured by employment vacancy rates in Greater Manchester, business confidence in Burnham’s approach, and the amount of high-quality jobs that the GMCA can draw in. But ultimately, what matters is that young people in Greater Manchester feel positive about the future. Electina Fernando, a Year 11 student in Dukinfield, said at a press conference last Friday that being able to see the latest jobs available in Greater Manchester had made her feel more hopeful. “I’ve been going on about it to my friends all day. Words can’t express what a difference it has made,” she said. “Now I’m looking at the MBacc gateway for Business and Professional Services as I’d like to become a corporate solicitor or a finance director and I’m interested in doing a degree apprenticeship.”

Your Mill briefing

🏛️ Greater Manchester MP and deputy prime minister Angela Rayner promised a “devolution revolution” at the Labour Party conference over the weekend. The government wants to give devolved powers — similar to those Greater Manchester has received over the last decade — to the rest of the north of England, saying her government will be the one that “completes” devolution”. A new white paper will lay out how the government will end 14 years of “northerners being dictated to by Whitehall” (Mills passim).

🗞️ Dovid Efune, a 39-year-old Manchester-born businessman and current owner of the New York Sun, has emerged as the latest bidder for the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph newspapers. The publication went on sale after a previous bid to buy them by a Emerati-backed consortium was blocked by ministers worried about foreign influence on the press. Efune has said he had no formal or secular education since the age of 11, reports The Times, attending Jewish academies and studying the Torah and rabbinic traditions instead. 

🐝 Analysis has shown that Bee Network buses are becoming more punctual, but still coming just short of the 80% punctuality target it set for itself. “On time”, in this case, means a bus arriving between one minute early and five minutes late. Between 5 May and 7 September, 80% of buses were punctual on just 51 of the 126 days. It’s an impressive increase on last year, however, when no buses were punctual over the same period.

🤢 Pollution in the River Tame has caused clouds of scum to blow into roads in Dukinfield today. A report has been made to the Environmental Agency. Jamie Woodward, professor of physical geography at the University of Manchester, tweeted the environment secretary Steve Reed saying “this is how we treat our precious rivers.”

Home of the week 

This three-bedroom Victorian home in Worsley has oak flooring, solid wood doors, and a beautiful garden accessed via a winding cobbled pathway. £695,000.

Our favourite reads

A port in a storm — Harper’s Magazine

We loved this piece from the Harper’s archive about the village of Portpatrick, Scotland, a village with a population of 540 people bent on saving its harbour that had been left to degrade under a conveyor belt of owners. It eventually came into community ownership, but fractures among those involved led to disputes. The story features a Rochdalian named Dave Boyle, who serves as the story’s point of expertise on all things co-ops, seeing he’s from the model’s birthplace. “It struck me, an hour and three pints in,” writes Samanth Subramanian of meeting Boyle, “that I’d never met anyone who took such manifest joy in socioeconomic wonkery.”

The strange rise of Paula Vennells: ‘She just wasn’t very good’ — The Times

Paula Vennels, the now-disgraced former Post Office boss, was born in Denton and went to Manchester High School for Girls, then Bradford University. “Along the way,” writes Oliver Shah, “any trace of a Mancunian accent was ironed flat into BBC tones.” This profile draws on multiple sources to paint a complex picture of Vennells, someone who surprised people both when she became boss of the Post Office, a station many felt above her, and when she took such a key role in a scandal that ruined the lives of some 4,000 people. “The essential mystery of her part in the Post Office scandal is how her wholesome appearance and backstory squares with the horrific output of her actions.”

Waheed Alli: How Labour donor’s largesse tarnished government’s squeaky clean image — The Financial Times

This great FT longread takes a closer look at Waheed Alli, the Labour donor whose grand donations to Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and David Lammy has thrown the government’s claims to lead transparently into question. Starmer took £16,200 worth of free clothing — improperly declared — and Rayner stayed at Alli’s New York flat while on a private holiday. “I don’t understand why no one saw this coming,” one off-record MP told the FT. “It looks like a series of self-made errors and mis-steps.”

Our to do list

Tuesday

🐈 Lucky Cat, part of Michelin star chef Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant empire, offers a midweek lunch deal where you can enjoy a three-course menu for £33 per person. Book a table here.

🎨 Salford Museum and Art Gallery is hosting an open exhibition filled with works submitted by emerging and established artists with a connection to the city. Visit here.

Wednesday

🎶 Experimental electronica artist Bethany Ley and surrealist filmmaker and animator Alfie Dwyer will perform a unique audiovisual show at the Carlton Club in Whalley Range this week, “inspired by ideas surrounding reincarnation”. It’s free entry.

📚 Award-winning Italian author Maddalena Vaglio Tanet will be discussing her debut novel Untold Lessons with literary critic Jess White at Rare Mags in Stockport from 7.15pm. Tickets are £5 and include a free drink on arrival.

Thursday

😂 The Edge Theatre and Arts Centre in Chorlton’s famous satirical sketch show is back, taking aim at current affairs and headline news, with a musical twist. Tickets here.

🕯️ Khalid Abdalla, an activist and actor best known for his roles in The Crown and The Kite Runner, is performing a solo show at HOME inspired by his involvement in the Egyptian revolution of 2011 and the counter-revolution that followed. It’s showing until the end of October, get tickets here.

Thanks to the FT for sponsoring today’s edition — get your discounted subscription now.