PM is latest to try to end grip of university on UK psyche

Keir Starmer has joined a long line of ministers and prime ministers who have called time on Tony Blair's ambition for half of the nation's young people to go on to higher education.

- Richard Adams

Rishi Sunak, Gavin Williamson and now Starmer have all declared an end to Blair's famous 1999 pledge as a policy priority, and done so on the grounds that the focus on universities has come at the expense of vocational education and training such as apprenticeships.

And they all have a point. The problem is, given the structure and funding of post-school education, in England at least, the alternatives are not nearly as attractive to parents or young people.

Starmer's challenge is to change that, and in his announcement at the Labour conference he put a hard number on his vision: that by 2040 two-thirds of young people would "get higher level skills, either through university, further education, or a gold-standard apprenticeship by age 25".