Creative Industries: Qualifications

Earl of Effingham Excerpts

Thursday 23rd July 2026 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

My Lords, we thank the noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, for securing this debate and for her long record of work with the arts on protecting copyright for creators against generative AI, championing inclusive music and arts education and advocating for the financial resilience of the UK’s theatre and cultural sectors.

It was not a surprise that the noble Lord, Lord Isaac, gave us an in-depth insight into the creative industries, given his role as chair of the Court of Governors at the University of the Arts London, nor that the noble Baroness, Lady Kingsmill, given her directorship at Zara, flagged fashion design among other things. The noble Lord, Lord John, talked about a “deep pool” of creative talent: the creative industries combined contribute £124 billion to the economy and employ 2.4 million people, over 7% of the national workforce. Their output has grown at more than 1.5 times the national average since 2010.

Creative education is valued. That is not in doubt. The question is whether these reforms will produce qualifications that enable people for jobs, for university and for higher technical study. This process has cross-party parentage. It began with the report from the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, in 2011, which found that too much post-16 vocation provision had little or no market value. When in government, we started to remove overlapping qualifications, and the current Government have continued. Rationalising a landscape of more than 900 such courses is essential in principle, and His Majesty’s loyal Opposition support the momentum. The “Wolf test”, if I might call it that, remains entirely correct: a qualification exists to serve the learner, not the system that awards it. However, reforms should derive from evidence-based data and analysis. Skills England’s assessment of the creative industries, published only last month, excluded media and communication courses from its priority analysis because, historically, it is a low portion of those education leavers who progress into priority occupations.

My noble friend Lord Vaizey flagged the 360-hours limit, the noble Lord, Lord Knight, referenced a “shallow breadth” and the Government’s own consultation response reported that both industry and higher education warned that 360 guided learning hours is insufficient to establish practical competence. That warning was overridden. The extended diplomas being defunded carried 1,080 hours of study; their replacement carries only 360. UK Music points out that occupational standards for portfolio-based music careers simply do not exist, while the Minister for Skills conceded that the original transition was, in her words, “too aggressive”. It is the case that the timetable was fixed before the design existed.”

We believe that a qualification must do at least one of three things. It must confer occupational competence that employers recognise; it must carry currency with universities; or it must provide a ladder to higher technical study at levels 4 and 5. The new system appears to fail those tests. T-levels, after five years, are enrolling around 28,000 students, just 2.5% of the 1.1 million-strong level 3 cohort. Creative placements are structurally the hardest to supply, because a sector of freelancers and small firms cannot provide 45-day placements at scale. V-levels will be classroom only and one A-level in size. They cannot realistically confer occupational competence; their currency with universities is untested; and no progression route to levels 4 and 5 has been published. Prima facie, this looks like simplification, not reform, which is the failure that the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, identified.

Some 78% of creative employers report shortages in their three highest occupational groups, against a benchmark of 31% across all other industries. The Government’s skills audit, published in May, highlights the shortage occupations of software developers, graphic and multimedia designers and advertising and marketing executives, with 63% of creative employers expecting digital skills demand to rise, driven by artificial intelligence.

The noble Baroness, Lady Caine, referenced Skills England highlighting that over 1 million new workers will be needed. Some 60,000 creative workers are currently not proficient in their roles, because technology is outpacing the training. Skills England has projected this large number of workers needed in priority creative occupations by 2035, many requiring qualifications at level 4 and above. Based on that evidence, the pipeline the country needs is technical, creative, digital and higher level. Yet, with all due respect, nothing the Government have published maps creative V-levels or T-levels to a shortage occupation. Surely, the right course of action is to build replacements that are demonstrably better. Both T-levels and V-levels should offer this, yet at the moment neither does.

The noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, talked about the two-year UAL extended diploma. In terms of transition, the University of the Arts London extended diploma in creative media production and technology will be defunded from autumn 2027, due to a suggested overlap with T-levels. The UAL disputes the merit of that, in both content and approach, and is appealing against it. The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, quite rightly referenced the last carriage of the train, the back of the queue, because creative V-levels will not arrive until 2030, which means a three-year void with no large creative qualification. The reality is that providers act on defunding dates years in advance: courses close, specialist staff leave and recruitment collapses ahead of the deadline.

The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, talked about west Everton parents, carers and disadvantaged students; the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, talked about disadvantaged people; and the noble Lord, Lord Isaac, flagged that students may not achieve the grades they need. We should also be asking what will happen to the students who will be deplaced. T-level entry requirements commonly demand five GCSEs at grade 5 or above, including English and maths. However, the Association of School and College Leaders has confirmed that students on these qualifications are disproportionately special educational needs pupils, as referenced by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, or disadvantaged pupils without those grades. What will happen to them?

Would it not be fair, reasonable and sensible to first undertake a mapping of courses with the labour market? Which shortage occupation on the Government’s own audits will each creative V-level and T-level serve? Secondly, we need to publish the progression routes for students. What articulated routes to levels 4 and 5 will be attached to each qualification? Thirdly, we must understand and publish whether any new qualifications will be accepted by employers and universities before, not after, the existing qualifications are switched off. We would also suggest addressing the communication problem seemingly reflected in T-level uptake rates. A 2% uptake rate indicates that they are not as widespread as they should be or the Government hope they will be.

Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Caine, repeatedly and quite rightly asked: what exactly does this mean? The noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, said to pause for thought and reflection on what will happen. The noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord John, suggested not changing it without full analysis. His Majesty’s loyal Opposition believe that the measure of this reform is not just the number of qualifications to be streamlined but whether a talented 16 year-old in 2028 will have a route into that workforce as good as the one that is now being taken away. If the answer is yes, that is a great result. But if the answer is no, which appears to be the case, based on many noble Lords’ reflections today, we hope that the Government will address the constructive challenges from all sides of your Lordships’ House on this incredibly important issue for the creative sector.