The post-16 educational landscape in England and Wales is patchy and messy. It is also unequal and unfair. For the most academic students, the expectation is that they apply to university after studying A-levels for two years. Currently, around a third of young people follow this route, and while by no means perfect, it is at least clear. The same cannot be said for the options faced by the other two-thirds. The reform of the other qualifications on offer to this age group has resulted in a worrying standoff between government officials and those on the ground.
The introduction of T-levels, under the Tories, was meant to be a levelling up measure – to put vocational learning on a footing with academic pathways, equipping young people for skilled jobs and making our system more like the German one. Some of the new courses are high-quality, but slow take-up and questions about their suitability for some of the cohort mean that resistance to the phase-out of older qualifications has built up. In opposition, Labour signalled a willingness to pause and review the situation, in advance of the defunding of popular courses including BTecs. In government, however, the tune has changed. A decision about which courses will be saved will be made by ministers and civil servants by Christmas – in a separate process from the wider curriculum review that is also under way.
This places sixth-form and further education colleges in an impossible position, as the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, will surely realise. It is unreasonable to expect them to hold autumn open days while so much remains unclear, and unfair to young people as well. Currently, there are fewer than 30,000 T-level students (with a dropout rate of around one-third). More than 10 times that number are studying for one of the qualifications that could be scrapped next year.
This asymmetrical approach to curriculum change is not the only way in which the post-16 playing field is off kilter. Pay is another, as the recently announced 5.5% rise for teachers made painfully clear. There are historical reasons why colleges are not part of the same pay review process, meaning the rise does not apply to their staff. But the effect is that school sixth forms – which teach a higher proportion of students from better-off backgrounds – will get a funding boost unmatched by new resources for colleges.
Gordon Brown was right to say that teething problems with T-levels don’t mean they should be scrapped, as Rishi Sunak had pledged. But it is time to admit that they are not the comprehensive replacement for existing provision that was envisioned. If ministers value the input of independent experts, they should make post-16 qualifications part of the wider review being led by Becky Francis, an expert in educational inequalities, and give colleges another year. At the very least, the scope and terms of the Department for Education’s in-house decision-making exercise must be made public.
It is shocking that the situation has reached this point. As critics of the reforms point out, the proposed cancellation of a single A-level (economics, say, or theatre studies) would probably generate a noisier fuss than the redrawing of the entire qualifications landscape for less academic students. This observation on its own should prompt reflection about the snobbery that continues to mar education debates. T-levels are a tricky inheritance. But patience, and careful thinking, would be the wisest approach.
