What might Andy Burnham mean for future skills policy?

If, as many expect, Andy Burnham makes it to Number 10, the biggest change in skills policy is unlikely to be a single flagship reform. It is more likely to be a shift in governing philosophy.

Burnham’s record in Greater Manchester suggests he sees skills not as a stand-alone Whitehall programme, but as part of a wider place-based growth model. That means joining up technical education, employment, housing, transport, industrial strategy and local institutional capacity. It also means a stronger belief that decisions about skills should sit closer to local labour markets and employers, rather than being tightly controlled from the centre. Reports that he is considering a new “devolution department” point in exactly that direction.

This reflects a wider argument Burnham has made for some time: that England’s weak economic performance is not only a problem of low investment but also of an overcentralised state that still does not trust places to shape their own futures. If that view carries into government, we should expect skills policy to become more devolved, more regionalised and more closely aligned to local growth strategies. The Greater Manchester trailblazer deal already pointed the way, with deeper local responsibility and a single funding settlement designed to support growth.

A second likely theme is a stronger emphasis on technical education and parity of esteem. Burnham has been consistent in arguing for “two equal pathways” after GCSEs: one academic and one technical. In Greater Manchester that has taken shape in the proposed MBacc, designed to sit alongside the EBacc and provide a clearer route into good technical work. The significance of this is not simply that Burnham wants more technical courses. It is that he is challenging the hierarchy that still treats university as the default marker of success and technical education as secondary.

That suggests a more assertive attempt to rebalance the post-16 system: stronger local influence over technical pathways, more visible employer involvement, and a sharper effort to make technical education a first-choice route rather than a fallback.

This could matter well beyond youth transitions. One of the chronic weaknesses of English skills policy is that it remains too front-loaded and too fragmented. Technical education is often discussed in relation to school leavers, while adult learning, workforce development and career change sit elsewhere. Burnham’s approach in Greater Manchester has been to connect skills more directly to local economic strategy and to the practical question of how places create good work. That opens up more space for a conversation linking colleges, universities, training providers and employers.

A third likely feature is that skills policy would be tied more explicitly to reindustrialisation and regional growth. Burnham’s recent language on reindustrialising Greater Manchester points to a model built around clusters in digital, health innovation, advanced materials and low-carbon technologies, supported by infrastructure, long-term planning and devolved control over technical education. That is not just administrative reform. It is a particular theory of growth: that places perform better when they can connect skills policy to real sector strengths and investment opportunities.

There is also a clue in the advice Burnham is said to be taking. Andy Haldane’s economic arguments have focused on long-term prosperity, productive investment, regional growth and stronger institutions. That does not tell us much about Burnham’s future skills policy in detail, but it does suggest the surrounding argument will be about regions, investment and diffusion, rather than simply supply-side course reform.

Of course, there are limits to what we can infer. Burnham does not yet have a published national skills manifesto, and there is an obvious difference between leading a city-region and running the country. He would inherit Treasury constraints, departmental politics and the challenge of scaling local models across very different parts of England.

But the broad direction of travel seems clear enough.

If Andy Burnham reaches Number 10, we should expect skills policy to become more devolved, more technical, more place-led, and more closely tied to growth. We should expect stronger language — and perhaps stronger structures — around parity of esteem, more emphasis on employer-shaped pathways into good work, and a shift away from narrow qualification reform towards the bigger question of how England builds a more joined-up system of education, skills and work.

For those interested in lifelong education, that would be a significant opening. The real test would then be whether devolution and technical reform extend beyond youth transitions to adult learning, reskilling and progression through life. That is where the next phase of skills policy will really be won or lost.