British Baccalaureate

Lord Flight Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I would be happy to talk to the Leader of the House about my noble friend’s idea.

[Lord Flight (Con)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the main problem is that people have to specialise too early in this country? When many of us were doing O-levels, the standards were closer to today’s A-levels, so we have the problem that you cannot specialise when the quality of the teaching you are relying on is not high enough.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I can say to my noble friend that we have worked incredibly hard to reform both academic and, more recently, technical qualifications. I proudly wear my T-level badge, although it is slightly upside down. More importantly, there is a perception that one can do either academic or technical qualifications. In our response to the consultation on level 3 qualifications, published in July last year, we set out the groups of technical and academic qualifications that we will fund and how they can be combined.