Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department plans to continue funding Level 3 vocational qualifications in music and the arts beyond 2026; and what assessment she has made of the potential impact of removing these qualifications on access to creative careers for students who do not follow A-Level routes.

On 12 December 2024, the government published the review of level 3 qualifications reform which can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/review-of-level-3-qualifications-reform-provisional-outcomes. The review aimed to ensure that qualifications reform supports the government’s missions of spreading opportunity and delivering economic growth, and considered all qualifications that were due to have funding removed in either 2024 or 2025.

The routes in scope of this review were:

• Health and science.
• Education and early years.
• Construction and the built environment.
• Agriculture, environment and animal care.
• Digital.
• Engineering and manufacturing.
• Creative and design.
• Legal, finance and accounting.
• Business and administration.

Qualifications at level 3 in other subjects, such as music and the arts, will continue to be funded as before. No decisions have been made to defund these qualifications. When we published the results of this review, we were clear this provided certainty on which qualifications will remain funded up to 2027.

We will consider the future of level 3 qualifications following the recommendations from the Curriculum and Assessment Review, due later in 2025.