Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to (a) improve, (b) promote and (c) expand technical and vocational education and training.

Our long term reforms will create a world-class technical and vocational education system, offering a real choice of high quality training.

We have put quality at the heart of apprenticeships. Old style apprenticeships known as ‘frameworks’ are being replaced, giving way to new high quality employer-designed ‘standards’. From the start of the 2020/21 academic year, all new apprenticeship starts will be on standards. These changes are making sure that today’s apprenticeships reflect what business wants and needs. We are already seeing strong take up of standards, accounting for nearly 60% of starts in the first half the 2018/19 academic year. Our new apprenticeships campaign, ‘Fire It Up’, aims to change the way people think about apprenticeships by showing them as an aspirational choice for those with energy and passion and encouraging everyone to consider them.

T levels, alongside apprenticeships, will raise the prestige of technical education and provide students with a high-quality, technical alternative to A levels. With longer teaching hours and a meaningful industry placement, T levels will be excellent preparation for skilled work or higher level technical training. We are working closely with the providers selected for first delivery of T levels in 2020, to ensure that T levels are high quality courses from the very start. A communications campaign will launch later this year to raise awareness of T levels, where they can lead, and how they fit in with other post-16 choices.

Alongside the introduction of T levels, we are reviewing post-16 qualifications at level 3 and below, excluding A levels and GCSEs. The aim is to simplify the qualifications landscape so all qualifications are necessary, have a clear purpose, are high quality and have clear links to further study or employment. The first stage of the review, launched on 19 March, asks for views on defining these principles further. We are also reviewing how higher technical education (at levels 4 and 5) can better address the needs of students and employers. This includes ensuring that there is widespread clarity and confidence that qualifications at this level deliver the skills employers need.

We have also made £170 million funding available through our competition to establish Institutes of Technology (IoTs) across England. IoTs will be a new kind of prestigious and high quality institution, drawing on the strengths of FE colleges, universities and leading employers to deliver higher level technical training tailored to the specific skills needs of local areas. We will announce the outcome of the competition shortly and expect the first IoTs to open in the 2019/20 academic year.