Qualifications Reform Review

Lord Johnson of Marylebone Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend. He is right that there is something very arresting for a new Member of the House of Lords and a returned Education Minister to attend a meeting with my noble friends Lord Blunkett, Lady Morris, Lady Blower and Lord Knight, all of whom are very expert in this area. I am glad that he thinks I at least listened and understood what they said to me.

My noble friend is right that of the qualifications that we started looking at, of which about 460 were due for defunding by 2026, about 200 had very low enrolments: 100 or fewer students. We have largely managed to remove those from the qualifications landscape. It is probably still the case that that landscape is overly complex for students to be able to work their way through, but we kept 157 of the qualifications that were previously proposed to be defunded.

On the point about the curriculum and assessment review, as I touched on earlier, that review has within its remit the consideration of the assessment routes for 16 to 19 year-olds, and—responding to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, which perhaps I did not address previously—a particular emphasis on ensuring that our curriculum and assessment routes enable everybody to succeed, including those who are disadvantaged and those with special educational needs and disabilities. For that reason, it will focus carefully on bringing forward recommendations about what the assessment route should look like for students post 16, and we will reflect on those and use them as the basis for further decisions about how to ensure that our qualifications for 16 to 19 year-olds are suitably rigorous, suitably accessible and provide appropriate choice for students.

[Lord Johnson of Marylebone (Con)]

My Lords, like others on all sides of the House, I very much welcome the Government’s rapid work to lift much of the uncertainty over the defunding of applied general qualifications. It would be hugely beneficial if the Government went a little further and were absolutely explicit that this is not just a stay of execution until 2027 but that there is a long-term place for these qualifications in our education system. That is my first point. The second point is: can the Minister show similar rapid work in lifting the uncertainty over how the growth and skills levy will interact with the lifelong learning entitlement, and if not now, say when the Government will do so?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I do not think it is appropriate for anybody—I do not think the noble Lord would have done it—to say that there would never be any development or new qualifications introduced into the 16 to 19 landscape or that there should ever be any ending of any qualification. So the qualifications landscape should not be set in stone. However, I can repeat, as I said to his noble friend, that the Government do not envisage a qualifications landscape in which there is only a choice of T-levels or A-levels. That is one of the reasons why the work of the curriculum and assessment review in setting out its views on what should remain in order to provide appropriate routes for young people will be the basis for any future decisions made there. It is my view that there will always need to be qualifications that are neither A-levels or T-levels, but they need to be of sufficiently high quality to ensure that we are not selling short the young people who take that route.

No sooner have we solved one problem than the noble Lord quite rightly pushes us to get on to the next one. Skills England is currently consulting on some of the current flexibilities that we will be introducing to develop the growth and skills levy, and of course we are also working hard on the implementation of the lifelong learning entitlement. I hope it will not be too long before we will be able to say more about both of those and, as the noble Lord also suggested, how they will link together. But I will just have a little break over Christmas before we come back to do that, and I hope all noble Lords also have a very restful break when it comes.