Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to improve the recognition of vocational qualifications.

Vocational and technical qualifications (VTQs) provide an important and valued route for many young people and adults. We are streamlining and improving the quality of post-16 qualifications at level 3 and below. Our reforms will put employers at the heart of the system, ensuring that all qualifications are fit for purpose, high quality and lead to good outcomes. We are creating clearly defined academic and technical routes at level 3, leading to future study and or skilled employment.

As set out in our level 3 consultation response published in July 2021, students will continue to be able to study qualifications similar to current Applied General qualifications where there is no overlap with T Levels. On 11 May we published a provisional list of 160 qualifications that overlap with the first two waves of T Levels. These qualifications will have funding approval withdrawn for anyone eligible to access the qualification through the 16-19 funding offer on 1 August 2024, unless awarding organisations successfully appeal their qualifications’ inclusion. The final list will be published in September 2022.