BTEC Qualifications

Debate between Vicky Foxcroft and Toby Perkins

Monday 18th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Mark. I start by congratulating the 13,437 people who signed the petition entitled “Don’t scrap funding for BTEC Performing Arts”—I will come back to that in my speech. I also congratulate and place on the record my thanks to the more than 108,000 people who signed the #ProtectStudentChoice petition. Like other hon. Members in the debate, I want to refer on the record to the excellent work that my local college, Lewisham College, does in developing our young people and others so that they can go on and be successful in BTECs and continue their education further.

The securing of a Westminster Hall debate clearly shows the strength of feeling about the plans to defund BTECs. I am really glad to see people from all different political parties contributing to the debate and showing the strength of feeling on this issue. I am sure that they are all aware that young people in England can currently choose between three types of level 3 qualifications at the age of 16: academic qualifications such as A-levels; technical qualifications that lead to a specific occupation; and applied general qualifications, such as BTECs, which combine the development of practical skills with academic learning.

That all changed in July 2021 when the Department for Education confirmed plans to replace the three-route model with a two-route model, of A-levels and T-levels. As a result, funding for the majority of BTEC qualifications will be removed. It is disappointing that the Government reached that decision after the Wolf review said that BTECs are

“valuable in the labour market, and a familiar and acknowledged route into higher education”.

Although the Government insist that it is not a cut, it is.

[Mr Perkins]

My hon. Friend refers to the Government’s decision a year ago in July 2021, but that is also four Education Secretaries ago. Does she agree that we have Education Secretaries who pop into the job for a few months without any prior knowledge of the work, make massive decisions and disappear to do a different job, leaving those lifelong educationalists to pick up the pieces from the appalling work that they have done?

[Vicky Foxcroft]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful and important point. These are people’s lives, future and opportunities to get on in life. Quite often, they are lifelines. I speak from experience. After failing my GCSEs, as a working-class 16-year-old with a difficult background, it was a BTEC in performing arts—I am doing a bit of performing now—that got me back into education and, ultimately, to university. It made me excited about education again. A BTEC was my second chance.