Twigg must now focus on how he would deliver his vision of education

Twigg's emphasis on colloboration - strong schools helping weaker ones – and his promise to put an end to the academy-non/academy divide give a sound foundation from which Labour can progress. Photograph: Felix Clay for the Guardian

Stephen Twigg's speech last week on Labour's emerging schools policy was without doubt his most important since taking on the post of shadow education secretary. There have been grumblings that this has been a long time in the making, but he is right to take time to consult and to gather evidence. I suspect we have yet to see the finished product.

No shadow minister starts with a blank sheet. The work of developing opposition policy goes on in relative obscurity, while the government is setting the agenda. The speech therefore needed to do two things: clearly articulate Labour's response to current policy and create some space in which Labour can begin to outline the principles and policies that will underpin its manifesto proposals.

The speech itself did the job. It provided a deeper analysis and clearer thinking than anything we have heard from the opposition so far. It restated Labour's longstanding support for the central elements of the academy programme, but highlighted two important key weaknesses. First, the lack of an effective policy to deal with failing academies and free schools. It is as though ministers' belief in structural change is such that they never imagined the problem might arise. At the moment, oversight is the responsibility of civil servants in Whitehall – but every underperforming school cannot be run from the secretary of state's office.

Second, the government's failure to plan school places is causing havoc in some areas of the country. Twigg has more cause to know this than most. In his city of Liverpool, the number of surplus places in secondary schools is set to rise fourfold in one year as the government opens more new schools.

However, if you buy into the Govian view that any school being an academy or a free school is itself a definition of success, then you inevitably judge new ideas by this measurement. It is difficult to overstate how successful ministers have been in defining this as education's main priority – media comments following Twigg's speech reflected this.

Michael Gove won't criticise the academy programme – his reputation has too much invested in it – but Twigg began to craft a more balanced and evidence-based analysis. Though, of course, it will take time to shift the national debate about academies from being just a numbers game.

The strongest part of the speech attempted to do this. Twigg understands the dynamics of how schools work together and how they relate to their communities in a way that Gove never will. It is this that is shaping his alternative education vision. His emphasis on school collaboration as well as school independence, his tough approach to strong schools helping weaker ones and his promise to put an end to the academy-non-academy divide give a sound foundation from which Labour can progress.

Twigg's challenge will be to get these ideas out of the shadow of the current obsession with structural change – and the speech didn't quite do that. Here, he should learn a lesson from Gove and focus relentlessly on those policy ideas that he wants to define his leadership. He must resist relaunching policies that have only ever had a marginal impact, such as parent-led schools, and becoming involved in meaningless debates like defining the difference between academies and free schools – both of which got an airing last week. This speech needs to have settled Labour's view on these perennial debating points and they should not be revisited.

Twigg has chosen independence, devolution and collaboration as his watchwords. Every speech he makes from now on must focus on how he will deliver them. Only in that way does he stand a chance of writing the next chapter in the book of school improvement.

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Happy VQ day. It's time to upskill Britain | Stephen Twigg

A student on an NVQ Level 2 course in hairdressing at Croydon College, south London. Photograph: Frank Baron

There is an emerging consensus around the need to rebalance our economy. In the 21st century, we cannot compete on a low-skill, low-wage model with places like China and Singapore, where workers are paid a fraction of what they are in the UK. We need to drive growth from the high end of the value chain.

Today is VQ Day, a celebration of vocational qualifications. These are critical to building a new economy and ensuring our competitiveness. But too often young people don't progress, getting stuck in a revolving door of low-level qualifications. A new settlement is required that gives young people a gold standard to aim for, increases the skills of the workforce and supports employers to use and develop those skills.

Labour began to tackle this challenge during our time in office. In 1994, 22% of the workforce had no qualifications. By 2005 this had fallen to 13%. Today feels very different. Almost one million young people in the UK are unemployed. Investment in skills has been slashed, subjects such as engineering undermined, work experience opportunities cut and independent careers advice ended. While David Cameron talks about a global skills race, he is pursuing a race to the bottom.

By contrast, we have announced our plans to drive up the standard of vocational qualifications. This includes a new Tech Bacc at 18, with rigorous courses accredited by employers, high-quality work experience and all students doing English and maths to 18.

Addressing our skills deficit, on both the supply and demand sides, is critical to rebalancing our economy. Labour would ensure that far more young people get the chance to do a high quality apprenticeship, by using government contracts to create more opportunities.

We also need to improve the standards in our further education colleges, which aren't good enough. In 2012, Ofsted did not judge a single college to be outstanding for teaching and learning. Eighty per cent of young people who leave school without five good GCSEs, including in English and maths, do not reach that benchmark after two years in college.

Currently further education teachers don't need to have a good (A*-C) GCSE in English and maths to teach in a college. That's why one of the first recommendations from Labour's Skills Taskforce is to ensure they do. How else can we expect them to teach these subjects?

Second, industries are changing rapidly, but 30% of teachers and trainers never or hardly ever update their experience. We support the idea from EEF, the manufacturing organisation, that further education teachers should spend time each year within a business to gain first-hand experience of the workplace.

I want to look at how we can create new centres of excellence for vocational learning – the equivalent of Oxbridge for technical education. These would be world-class colleges, aimed at attracting the brightest and best students, like the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich or the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.

In February, I visited Switzerland. Nothing sums up their attitude more than the phrase they use for vocational education: zweiter konigsweg meaning "a second king's path" that runs alongside higher education. The vocational route is just as prestigious as the academic one and chosen by two-fifths of the highest achievers. Two-thirds of Swiss students are enrolled in vocational programmes from the age of 15, more than twice the level in the UK. This isn't just for construction or engineering firms; high-profile financial services firms such as UBS and Credit Suisse have impressive apprenticeship programmes that our own City institutions could learn from.

It's no wonder that Switzerland has the lowest rate of young people out of work in the OECD – around 7%, compared with 20% in the UK. We could learn from Switzerland how to get more young people into employment and training. Part of the solution is getting more young people to see vocational education as an attractive and worthwhile option.

To effectively rebalance our economy, we need a skills system which meets the needs of our economy and leaves no one behind.

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