V-levels

Monday 23rd February 2026 Lords Chamber

Question

15:07

Asked by

[Lord McNicol of West Kilbride]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to communicate the purpose and value of the newly introduced V-Levels to students, parents, and employers, to ensure widespread understanding and uptake of these qualifications.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, V-levels will deliver a once-in-a-generation reform to 16-19 vocational education, supporting our goal for two-thirds of young people to reach higher-level study or apprenticeships. We will work with partners, including FE providers, local government, employers, higher education providers and the Careers & Enterprise Company, to ensure that V-levels are understood and valued. We will raise awareness of V-levels through our Skills for Life and future communications campaigns. Our consultation response will be published soon.

[Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend the Minister and welcome the clarity and reassurance she has given. Given the concerning new figures on youth unemployment, what steps are being taken to ensure that businesses engage with the meaningful work placements that are envisaged for V-level students, and have His Majesty’s Government considered financial or regulatory incentives to encourage employers, especially rural SMEs, to offer these placements for V-level students?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend is right that work experience often plays an important role in enabling young people to experience work and to reduce the risk of them becoming NEET, as does having the right routes for further study at level 3, which is part of what the V-level reforms are about. As well as this Government’s commitment to two weeks of work experience for students throughout their school career, we already have very effective industrial placements in T-levels, of course, and we will use the additional funding for the youth guarantee to provide the opportunity for young people who are out of work to experience work experience as part of the youth guarantee gateway.

[Lord Redwood (Con)]

For V-levels to succeed, they need to be linked with a good opportunity to get a well-paid job. So what measures will the Government take urgently to tackle the unacceptably high levels of youth unemployment brought about by high taxes and anti-business culture, when, for these V-levels to succeed, we need a welcoming approach by business to youth employment?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Lord is of course right that we need good jobs for young people. We also need investment in their education and training, which this Government are putting in place. The £1.5 billion that the Chancellor made available to support the youth guarantee and apprenticeships for young people will help to ensure more opportunities for apprenticeships, more opportunities to get young people who are currently out of work into work, and a backstop job guarantee for those young people.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

Will the Minister tell the House just how successful T-levels have been? Take-up by employers is said to have been mixed at best. That being the case, how is she going to persuade employers to take part in V-levels?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Nearly 85,000 students have started a T-level since the launch in 2020, and we saw considerable growth last year in the numbers of students taking them up. We are seeing improvements in the pass rate and in retention rates. There is a challenge to ensure that high-quality industrial placements are made available to more students. To ensure that that is possible, we have made some revisions to the requirements for industrial placements to enable even more students to benefit from them.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, T-levels have had very patchy coverage, particularly when it comes to the regions, so how is the Government’s communication plan going to be rigorous enough to ensure that V-levels, particularly in subject areas such as digital and engineering, reach out to areas that often do not engage with this, particularly in the north? The figures for youth unemployment and NEETs, particularly in the north, are very high.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I have had the chance to talk to students in colleges that are delivering successful T-level provision in the north, but I understand the point that the noble Lord is making. As I say, V-levels are an enormously important opportunity for young people who are not wholly clear what career pathway and occupation that they want to undertake but know that they learn better through applied learning and through assessment that is more practical—something that has been widely called for. The links to occupational standards that V-levels will include will also give confidence that young people will find a route through to work or to higher study as a result of V-levels. As I said in my initial Answer, we will also work hard to make sure that awareness of these opportunities is spread as far as possible.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, HND is well known as a qualification, and many employers have been delighted over many years now to employ people who have obtained that qualification. However, does the Minister not think that, with these various different qualifications, employers in many cases are still confused as to precisely what qualifications they are looking at when they are employing new people?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Lord makes a fair point, which is why at level 3 we want to ensure that there are three clear routes—through A-levels, T-levels and V-levels—while at levels 4 and 5, which is where HNDs sit, we want to improve our current position, where insufficient numbers of young people go on to get qualified. That is why the Prime Minister set the target of two-thirds of young people achieving level 4 or above, and V-levels are an important route to that further study that the noble Lord was talking about.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that it is not the recent tax increases that have damaged the economy but the cost of Brexit, which cost £100 billion? That is another mess that has been left by the previous Government.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The only thing about which I disagree with my noble friend is that that is not the only mess left by the previous Government that we have had to clear up.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Perhaps I might build on the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, about T-levels. My experience of talking to pupils who are studying T-levels is that they are almost universally incredibly enthusiastic about them, but if one goes to a school that does not deliver T-levels one finds that no one has heard of them, so the communication problem still exists for T-levels—as it will do for V-levels. I wonder whether the Minister could say what the Government are doing to address that.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

We have seen a considerable increase in the awareness of T-levels. It is also the case that we want to ensure—through reforms that we will have more to say about in the near future—that T-levels are both accessible to more students and scalable for more students to be able to take advantage of them. In doing that, we are talking not only to colleges where T-levels are going very successfully but to sixth-form colleges and school sixth forms.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, as an ex-head of department, I can assure everybody that it is the heads of department who get to choose the exams in a school. Schools are finding it really difficult with T-levels to link up with the employers; colleges are finding it much easier. Can the Minister tell us how the Government are going to persuade heads of department and the careers departments in schools to get together to get these really meaningful employment opportunities?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

As a former head of department, I am not sure that I completely agree with the noble Lord that all the important decisions are made by heads of department, but it is certainly the case that quite a lot of them are. That is why it is important for us to provide clarity for schools about the responsibility to provide work experience for all students and that we make industrial placements—for example, for T-levels—more deliverable on a larger scale than they are at the moment. It is why we need to continue the work in careers education to ensure that there is greater awareness and understanding of the range of options available to young people. Having clarity about the three routes for further study alongside apprenticeships for those aged 16 to 19 will help make that route for young people clearer.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, the main problem with communicating exactly what these exams are and how they fit into the employability of a person can be addressed only by better careers training. Can the Minister point out now how this fits into careers advice given to children, probably as young as primary school age, and their parents, so that they will be able to start to plan?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right that good careers advice is important. Some 96% of secondary schools and colleges are now in careers hubs, connecting them to employers and apprenticeship providers in their areas. Over 3,500 business volunteers work with schools and colleges to inspire young people about career opportunities, including the vocational and academic pathways into their sectors.