Rolf Mason is centre manager for Rathbone Bradford. Based on Cheapside, Rathbone enables disadvantaged young people to move on to education, training or full-time work Born into a working-class mining community, former Labour Leader Neil Kinnock once proudly boasted that he had become "the first Kinnock in a thousand years to go to university."

For many of his generation, making it to the dreaming spires of Cambridge, Oxford (or the University of Bradford) was the ultimate achievement.

That aspiration remains a worthy one; and there has been much recent debate about whether loans and tuition fees prevent people from poorer backgrounds being able to afford a university education.

But I wonder if our obsession with academia isn't also having a detrimental effect on our economy and society. With a dearth of plumbers, painters and nursery nurses, customers are forced to pay top dollar to employ someone to unblock a pipe, decorate their home or look after their children. And with a lack of training opportunities in these potentially lucrative trades, many young people drift into unemployment, boredom and even crime.

At the Rathbone charity, we work with many teenagers for whom the classroom environment is tough. They may have learning difficulties or come from an unstable family background where coping with addiction or finding the cash to pay the bills is seen as more important than literacy or numeracy. Some are so lacking in self-esteem they've given up on school altogether. Others have committed offences and need serious help before they slide into a career of crime.

We offer these young people a practical route into work, via programmes such as Entry to Employment - which teaches skills needed to find a job and provides a taste of the work place. Childcare is one of the apprenticeship courses available.

Around seven out of ten young people who come to Rathbone move on to bigger and better things. The learning is tailored for individual need and they enjoy achieving in an atmosphere that isn't like school. But it's the prospect of learning a trade and eventually earning serious money that really attracts.

Take the 14 to 16-year-olds we're currently training to become car mechanics at the Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College. Almost all struggled at the high schools referring them to the Rathbone-led programme. For them, the hard-grafting environment of the workshop where "messing about" carries a serious healthrisk is proving fruitful.

Minus this vocational training, where would some of these young people be? Hanging about on your street? Expanding the ever-growing prison population? In the light of a major report into the lack of skills within Britain's workforce, the Government and opposition parties have committed to offering more work-based learning. We as a city must back this, by giving young people opportunities to experience the work place. Plus, we must stop viewing the professions keeping our economy ticking over as "second best".

A university education may still be the pinnacle for some, but there's many a young person who would trade it in for a properly-paid crack at plumbing - let's allow them chance to achieve that.