BTEC Qualifications

Steve Brine Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Marsha De Cordova]

Fantastic—I could not say it better myself. My hon. Friend makes a fantastic contribution and she is absolutely right: it is not just about social mobility; it is about the local economy too.

The introduction of T-levels does have value in terms of technical education; however, there is no rationale for why BTEC qualifications must make way for them. It makes sense to have A-levels, T-levels and BTECs in all future qualification landscapes. It is clear that the Government are forcing through these changes so they can drive up T-level take-up. The Sixth Form Colleges Association has described T-levels as a

“minority, untested product that the Government is pushing as a mass product.”

It is still too early to analyse the effectiveness of T-levels. The Government should not be pulling away from BTECs without evidence about the success of T-levels. That is grossly unfair to young people, removing their choice and opportunity.

The notion that we can divide people into “academic” or “technical” is wrong. BTECs provide a different type of educational experience—one that combines the development of skills with academic learning. I believe that the Minister studied a BTEC and said that it had a transformative impact on her life. Perhaps she agrees with me that, after last week, we need a new BTEC course on public anger management.

Leaders from various education institutions have said that, for some students, BTECs will continue to be a more effective route to higher education or skilled employment than studying A-levels or T-levels.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

I am fortunate to have Peter Symonds College in my constituency. It is one of the biggest in England and it educates about 4,500 young people. Many of its students progress to higher education or to skilled employment after studying an applied general qualification such as a BTEC. Does the hon. Lady agree that if the Government are to proceed with this policy and remove BTECs, we need to hear from the new Minister—I welcome her to her place—what viable pathway they envisage for those young people who will then want to move on to higher education or skilled employment through colleges such as Peter Symonds, which serves my constituents and those of many of the MPs around me in Hampshire?

[Marsha De Cordova]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution. It is important that we retain the three routes that are currently available.

In particular, BTECs provide a good route to get young people into university. The Nuffield Foundation found that around a quarter of students who go to university have BTEC qualifications. A significant number of those students complete their studies successfully, with 60% graduating with at least an upper second-class degree. The Government must listen to students. It is clear from the data that students value these qualifications. An estimate suggests that around 34% of the 921,046 16 to 18-year-olds studying a level 3 qualification in England are pursuing at least one BTEC.

On the benefits of BTECs, I will share some students’ experiences. First, BTECs allow students to specialise and learn a wider range of skills. Isabella, who is studying for a BTEC in IT at St Francis Xavier Sixth Form College, said:

“If I was to do A level computer science, I would have to pick two other subjects that weren’t related to my chosen career path…I would like to do something in artificial intelligence or computer science or web developing and I realised that me doing BTEC IT really benefits me as I study a lot of”

those areas.

Secondly, BTECs are more accessible than alternatives such as T-levels. Summer, a level 3 aviation operations student at Newcastle College, said:

“Many people won’t meet the qualifications”

to go on to T-levels, and

“everyone deserves an education no matter what grades they get.”

Thirdly, BTECs also lead to beneficial health outcomes, including for mental health. Sylvia, who is studying art, design and communications at St Francis Xavier College, said:

“I don’t need to worry about exams or any tests, I’m just in the moment—I design buildings and I build them.”

Not everybody is cut out to do exams.

The reality is that the plan for T-levels and A-levels to become the qualifications of choice for most young people will leave many students—including those with special educational needs or disabilities and those from a black, Asian or ethnic minority background—without a viable pathway after their GCSEs. The Department for Education’s own impact assessment concluded that such students had the most to lose from these changes. Defunding BTECs risks reversing the progress made by higher education institutions, especially in London, on access and participation in recent years. BTECs are engines of social mobility, as my hon. Friends have highlighted. Research from the Social Market Foundation found that 44% of white working-class students who enter university studied at least one BTEC, and that 37% of black students enter with only BTEC qualifications.

The Government have now said that they plan to delay the defunding until 2024-25 rather than 2023-24, and that their plans will apply to only a “small proportion” of the total level 3 BTECs and other applied general-style qualifications. On the first point, delaying a bad idea does not stop it being a bad idea. On the second, removing a small proportion of qualifications for which a high proportion of students are enrolled will still have a devastating impact. For example, around 80% of applied general enrolments in the sixth form college sector are in just 20 subject areas.

It is time for the Government to listen, and they need to consider reversing their plans. Does the Minister think that the new Prime Minister will change the Conservative party’s disastrous policy on this issue? Will she guarantee that funding will not be removed for any BTEC qualifications unless an impartial, evidence-based assessment has concluded that they are not valued by students, universities and employers? Will she ensure that students and practitioners can contribute to the process of identifying qualifications that are deemed to overlap with T-levels? Can she assure us that some of the most popular BTECs—in subjects such as health, business, IT and applied sciences—will not be scrapped through the reapproval process simply to help drive up the numbers of students taking T-levels?

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Pow]

I am not always the first person to agree with the Opposition, but I think we have a lot of synergy here. What is most important is putting students first and coming up with what we can do for them—and then, in fairness, what they can do to help the country and the economy because they are well trained and they have the right skills.

We have a reprieve, but I believe that it is only a delay at the moment. I urge the Minister to use that delay to listen to all these comments and work out what sort of system might keep all three qualifications in the right shape or form.

[Steve Brine]

Further to my earlier intervention on the hon. Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova), if the Government wish to proceed with this, they have the right to do so—if they can convince the House that it is the right thing to do. However, young people have had enough anxiety over the last few years, and they are making decisions now. They do not have time for delay and navel gazing. We need a steer sooner rather than later; otherwise, it just adds to their anxiety.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point. I think that we all recognise that our students have come through a very difficult time. Indeed, the colleges, in planning, also need some clear steers. His point is well made.

I want to speak very specifically about my own sixth-form college, Richard Huish College, which has been rated outstanding by Ofsted for the third consecutive year, and has an outstanding record over 20 years. Nearly 800 students every year do applied general qualifications—that is, BTECs—and a significant number go on to very high-quality education and a whole range of other courses. BTECs are definitely a useful stepping-stone. I have spoken to those students, and many of the points that I am about to raise have come from those discussions. I will highlight some of the examples. One student did two A-levels, psychology and sociology, and then a BTEC in music production. She has gone on to Magdalen College, Oxford, to do human sciences.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Sir Mark. I, too, thank the hon. Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) and the Petitions Committee for scheduling the debate. The petition has attracted many signatures from my Meon Valley constituency and elsewhere in Hampshire, where we are fortunate to have some really strong colleges serving our students. Although I do not have a sixth-form college in my constituency, some of my constituents attend colleges in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) and other nearby colleges. In the lead-up to the debate, I have been contacted directly by student constituents who have concerns, and I am pleased to speak on their behalf too.

In the post-covid landscape, we must help students to catch up, as well as ensuring that education meets the changing needs of employers and the future life of young people. One thing that I know employers look for is certainty. There has been an endless debate about the value of qualifications and about how well qualifications relate to what employers need, which is why I wrote a paper on assessment nearly two years ago and why there have been five commissions since on the subject, which I will come to later. Indeed, tomorrow we will be setting up an all-party parliamentary group on assessment—I say that in case anybody here is interested in joining.

With BTEC, we have a proven qualification in many subjects that provides value for everyone—students and employers. Qualifications such as BTEC are taken close to the point at which many students are likely to enter work. They are relatively more important than A-levels to young people who are not going to university, as they prepare students well for work immediately, whereas university students have another three or four years before facing career-level employers for the first time after graduating.

I am pleased that most universities recognise BTECs as part of the mix of qualifications for entry to university. I did not know about T-levels, but I have looked them up and the hon. Member for Battersea is absolutely right that Cambridge and Oxford do not accept them at this stage, but I hope that might change.

I welcome the intentions towards employability skills that the Government showed in bringing in T-levels. However, where BTEC qualifications best fit the needs of students and employers, they should be retained. Let us take nursing and healthcare, for instance. All the medical bodies have said that they are concerned about the impact of scrapping BTEC courses on their ability to recruit in future. Students who take BTECs can become support workers, and many go on to qualify as nurses, midwives and radiographers. NHS employers estimate that about one fifth of those studying for a nursing degree started with a health and social care BTEC. At the same time, NHS bodies have doubts about the viability of replacement T-levels because, as we have heard, they require a 45-day work placement, which many employers struggle to offer. That is a problem for people who want to go into medicine too; finding work experience is very difficult. Ending BTECs without having a suitable replacement will make it hard to recruit into those professions and others, including apprenticeships, so we must ensure that every route into those jobs is kept open.

We should also look at the social impact of the proposed changes. The equalities impact assessment, which formed part of the Government’s response to the consultation, states that removing BTECs will mean that some students do not attain a qualification at level 3. There is simply a commitment to mitigate that with a higher-quality level 2, and mitigations are outlined to support continued progression to level 3, but it is not clear what they will be. The EIA highlights concerns about the uncertainty of the future approval criteria.

Hon. Members will agree that to expect students to start on a path when neither they nor the Government know where it will lead is unacceptable, as my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) articulated well. The EIA is clear that students from minority and more deprived backgrounds will be disproportionately affected by this change. It is not good enough to say that we will make a better level 2 for them. That is not how we advance social mobility.

This experience should teach us that the structure of senior education assessment is becoming more confused, not less. We have A-levels for the academic strand, which is completely separate from vocational strands. T-levels do not provide learning in some subjects in the way that BTECs do. We are proposing to end BTECs in general while retaining some specialist qualification. As I mentioned in the paper that I wrote, it is time to look again at how we structure education between the ages of 14 and 18 so that young people can work towards a range of qualifications that complement each other—education and vocational, with the ability to do different strand at the same time.

We should end the situation in which young people take GCSEs, which are only a milestone in their education, before moving into a confused offer of A-levels, T-levels and whatever other limited qualifications remain after this review. We need a vocational path alongside T-levels. All the commissions that have published on this subject agree that our assessment system is no longer fit for purpose.

University technical colleges are one of the best innovations in education in decades. Many of my constituents go to one in Portsmouth, and I would love to have more surrounding my constituency, because the demand for UTC places in Hampshire outstrips supply. That is the right kind of environment for young people to take in a mixture of subjects and qualifications. By starting at 14, they avoid a jolt in students’ education at 16. Students do GCSEs, but it is a secondary thing; it is something they have to get through, rather than linking to what they want to do.

[Steve Brine]

As usual, my hon. Friend is making a very thoughtful speech. In Hampshire, we have a tertiary system: we have big sixth-form colleges and very few sixth forms attached to state secondary schools. UTCs are an important element of choice that maintains the system that has worked well and served our county and constituents for many years.

[Mrs Drummond]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That should not stop a curriculum that starts at 14 and continues to 18. It just means that it continues in a different building, perhaps with a different uniform. It is a way of progressing, and it is very easy to do. It should not be a barrier to changing to a different sort of curriculum. It also means that people would have a much more coherent education. They would then be able to go into the workplace, further training or higher education, properly equipped with a wide range of experience. It is a bit like an English baccalaureate, although I do not think we should call it a baccalaureate—I have spoken about that many times and will not speak about it now.

Employers, teachers and students in my constituency all tell me that we should have a meaningful reform of senior education, and I agree. The present situation with BTEC, as this petition emphasises, is one that we must avoid letting happen again.