Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help support people to transition from level three qualifications to higher levels.

Skills are crucial to economic growth, with a third of productivity improvement over the last two decades explained by improvements to skills levels. However, between 2017 and 2022, skills shortages in England doubled to more than half a million and now account for 36% of job vacancies.

To address this, Skills England will bring together central and local government, businesses, training providers and unions across all regions to meet the skills needs of the next decade to provide strategic oversight of the post-16 skills system that is aligned to the government’s Industrial Strategy.

The government will also bring forward a comprehensive strategy for post-16 education to break down barriers to opportunity, support the development of a skilled workforce and drive economic growth through its Industrial Strategy.

The department will continue to support learners who wish to progress from Level 3 to a higher level, whether that is to study at university, a higher level or degree apprenticeship, or a Level 4 or 5 classroom-based qualification such as a Higher Technical Qualification, which have been approved as providing the skills that employers need.