Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what impact assessments the Government has conducted on cessation of funding for post-16 qualifications.

The government is taking forward a review of post-16 qualifications at level 3 and below. The first stage consultation on this review was published in March 2019, alongside a general impact assessment and an equalities impact assessment. Details of this review can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/review-of-post-16-qualifications-at-level-3-and-below-in-england.

For the majority of our proposals, these were initial assessments as the first stage consultation set out high level principles for reform rather than firm proposals for change on which full detailed impact assessments could be based. The second stage consultation, which will follow later in 2020, will contain specific proposals for change. The government will publish a corresponding detailed impact assessment, including equalities impacts, alongside this consultation.

For one area where we are making early progress on the review, we set out a full impact assessment alongside the March consultation. This is where we are removing funding approval for qualifications where we have a reformed version approved for performance tables running in parallel. Funding for these “pre-existing” qualifications will be removed in August 2020. The impact assessment can be found at: https://consult.education.gov.uk/post-16-qualifications-review-team/post-16-level-3-and-below-qualifications-review/supporting_documents/Post%2016%20level%203%20and%20below%20qualifications%20review%20%20Impact%20Assessments.pdf.

Funding will be removed from these qualifications in August 2020. The impact assessments published in March last year addressed this.

The first stage consultation also set out our intention to remove funding approval for qualifications with low and no publicly funded enrolments. On 13 February 2020 the Department for Education announced the process to identify which of these qualifications will have funding approval removed from August 2021. This included publication of an initial list of qualifications with low and no publicly funded enrolments in scope of the process. This process requires awarding organisations to notify the Department if they believe funding approval should be retained, subject to specific criteria including whether the removal of public funding approval for the qualification will have a significant adverse impact upon a particular group of students, a provider, or occupational or geographic area. The department intends to publish the final list in July 2020 of qualifications that will have approval for public funding withdrawn from August 2021. An impact assessment will be published at this point.