Education and Skills Reform

Caroline Voaden Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell]

My hon. Friend, as a former teacher, understands these issues well. There is a range of things we need to do. We are introducing new, high-quality, rigorous vocational and technical qualifications, which I think will be attractive to young people and their parents. We are looking at the incentives for schools; the changes to Progress 8 measures will encourage schools to offer a broad curriculum—not an increasingly narrow one—that they will be judged on. This is about supporting and working with teachers, so that they are excited about delivering these new options and courses. As we have seen, where these are embedded in schools, people vote with their feet and really take them up in high numbers.

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

I welcome the announcement about technical education, which I think is really valuable, but approximately 40% of colleges have had to cancel or scale back trade and vocational courses because of a lack of staff, and around three quarters of colleges in England are unable to recruit the necessary staff to teach technical subjects. Could the Education Secretary tell the House where the workforce will come from to teach technical subjects in every school in the country?

[Lucy Powell]

Can I just say that I admire greatly our teaching profession? Teaching is not a job; it is a calling, and every day we should all thank our teachers for the amazing work they do. I want teachers to feel respected and valued, and to be attracted to the workforce. I feel that is my first priority.

Yes, we will look at making sure that we have the teaching staff, but also at the preparation and the training that teachers need to adapt to these new courses, which we will bring in in a way that takes the workforce with us. However, I think there are real opportunities for teachers who are already teaching certain subjects to transfer those skills and combine them with technical education. This is also about teaching more practical skills for some current qualifications—drama, music, PE or even computing—in which there is very little practical assessment at the moment.