BTEC Qualifications

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) for leading the debate and speaking with characteristic eloquence about what the Government’s plans to defund applied general qualifications will mean for young people living in her constituency.

Like my hon. Friend, I have been deeply moved by the many messages I have received in recent weeks from students studying at Wirral Metropolitan College, urging me to speak in this debate and to stand up and defend the principle of student choice. Many of those young people live in some of the most deprived communities in the country, and they understand all too well what the Government do not: that guaranteeing young people access to a wide range of educational opportunities is essential if they are to realise their full potential. That message has been underscored by many of my older constituents who now work in sectors as diverse as academia, administration and aerospace, for whom BTECs were a vital stepping stone towards university or training in industry.

Much of today’s discussion will understandably focus on pathways to work or further study, but we must never forget that education is all about broadening one’s horizons in other senses. Although much of what a person studies at age 17 and 18 has little bearing on their day-to-day work, it nevertheless plays an important role in shaping more well-rounded, thoughtful and inquisitive adults. Since the Conservatives came into office 12 long years ago, education policy has been treated as a plaything for policymakers, who have little grounding in the sector and are more interested in ideology than in outcomes. Rhetoric has trumped hard-earned experience and successive Education Secretaries have been free to make far-reaching reforms, despite the protestations of education experts, practitioners and young people themselves.

The result is that today levels of social mobility are in freefall, while the UK continues to lag far behind our European neighbours when it comes to investment in technical training and education. Now Ministers want to do away with a system of qualifications that is widely respected, recognised and understood, replacing it with T-levels, which are entirely untried and untested.

For many people working in further education, these plans will undoubtedly revive memories of the ill-fated vocational diplomas and A-levels. However, whereas those served only to distract the Government from attending to the more profound questions concerning education provision, I fear that these new proposals will have the far graver consequence of entrenching long-standing educational inequalities for years to come. Indeed, the University and College Union has warned that by limiting student choice to a traditional academic education or a narrower vocational pathway, we risk giving rise to an overlooked middle of learners who are unable to access either.

For far too long, the Government’s approach towards education policy has been warped by a grotesque desire to preserve a privileged education for the elite few, and by the belief that university is somehow innately superior to a vocational education. The consequence is that vocational education is today poorly understood, even by Ministers who seek to reform it.

Ministers have fundamentally failed to grasp the fact that not everyone studying a vocational subject wishes to enter an occupational role, and nor should they be expected to commit to such a significant decision at such a young age. The education unions are quite right to fear that the Government’s plans for T-levels risk forcing some students, who would otherwise study BTECs, into lower levels of learning or out of education entirely.

Our country faces some extraordinary challenges in the coming years. The landscape of work is set to be fundamentally transformed by the growing pace of automation, while the existential threat posed by the climate crisis demands that we invest in an unprecedented level to lay the foundations for a high-skilled and green economy. These changes all have enormous implications for the future of education provision and, in particular, vocational education. We are in desperate need of a rethink of our priorities and a clean break with the idea that a vocational education is somehow second rate.

However, instead of showing the vision, ambition and commitment to fundamental change that the times call for, Ministers are instead focusing on repackaging technical qualifications and restricting student choice. In the short term, it is young working-class people in my constituency who will suffer, but soon enough our whole country will be forced to pay the price.