BTEC Qualifications

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Mark.

I, too, thank my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova), for leading this hugely important debate. I also thank all the 108,000 people who signed the petition and the #ProtectStudentChoice coalition for their unprecedented campaign, bringing together teachers, learners, parents and businesses from across the country to ask the Government to think again on the issue.

I welcome the new Minister to her place. She has on a plate the chance to change the opportunities of thousands of young people across the country by looking again at this policy. I hope that she is listening carefully and will take this action as her homework over the summer, but urgently, because once defunded, the BTECs will be hard to put back into place. It would be much better to stop, rethink and not defund the BTECs.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I am conscious that our education system in Northern Ireland is different from the one here, so the debate is slightly different for us. Every time there is a major educational change, one to two years’ worth of children always pay the price for those changes to teaching and marking. Children cannot afford to be the losers, so does the hon. Lady share my concerns that the Minister and the Government must be cognisant of making any changes or deciding to go in a different direction?

[Fleur Anderson]

The hon. Member makes a good point: the changes will be detrimental. That is what teachers are telling us all—the MPs present today and many others. They have said that through the petition and they have told us. That is why I am in this Chamber—because the heads of my local institutions have told me of the detrimental damage if the change goes ahead.

I speak on behalf of colleges and sixth forms in Wandsworth, which are deeply concerned about the impact, especially on disadvantaged young people. The outcome will be perverse, the exact opposite of what the introduction of T-levels is supposed to do. No one present objects to T-levels; we object to taking away the three-track system.

One college, South Thames College, has already been mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea. The South Thames Colleges Group has 21,000 students across south London. I have talked to those at the group, and they have a large number of students who are taking business BTEC, but would not move to the T-level because, first, they cannot work part-time—a T-level is full-time. Many people have to work part-time to make ends meet for their family, and they will not be able to do so. Their families will say, “Sorry, you cannot carry on in education. We need you to work,” so they will have to drop being able to go to South Thames. I met several of those students, who say, “I have been able to come here to do a business BTEC and my siblings want to come, but my family says they probably won’t be able to if moving to a T-level, which is full-time.”

Secondly, the college will find it hard to find enough business placements in our area. As has been mentioned by other Members, there is a high number of SMEs—small businesses—in Wandsworth that will not be able to take on the business placements, especially as so many are struggling at the moment. Just this morning I met the head of the Wandsworth chamber of commerce, who said it will be very hard for businesses to be able to support T-levels. They really want to see more students doing business BTECs and other business qualifications, but the Government’s change will have the opposite effect and will be damaging to our local economy.

The third reason why students will find it difficult to stay in education is that there are barriers to higher-level entry for T-levels. T-levels are supposed to replace BTECs as the step into post-16 education, but BTECs do something that T-levels do not. Finally, those who have to stay on and do their GCSE maths, English and catch-up will have to spend a year doing that and then start the T-level, which puts them a year behind their peers. Their peers will be going ahead with their qualifications, and they will feel that they are behind. It will not be attractive to take up a T-level, having had to spend a whole year catching up with GCSEs. If they could do the BTEC alongside catching up with GCSEs, it would be far more attractive and would keep young people in education.

South Thames College notes that the Department for Education’s impact assessment for its consultation acknowledges that students from more disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to be taking the qualifications that the Department is planning to remove, and that it will need mitigation action to avoid causing them detriment. St Cecilia’s Church of England School in Southfields shares exactly the same concerns as those of South Thames College. It offers BTECs in business, travel and tourism, music tech and applied science. I have introduced South Thames College teachers to previous Ministers so that they could talk about their concerns, and I invite the Minister to meet those teachers in order to talk to the people who know what effect the change will have.

At St Cecilia’s, BTEC business attracts more pupils than other subject—about 25 a year. It is a popular subject at GCSE, and many then want to progress from the level 2 course to the level 3 course. It is the most valued and popular BTEC, accounting for about 25% of the school’s BTEC students, who cannot just switch from BTEC business to T-level business. The cuts would mean that a significant number of pupils in year 11 would not be able to progress to the sixth form. Worryingly, I am hearing that schools are saying they will not be able to offer anything except A-levels if we move to the proposed system. That is not what Ministers want to be the outcome of introducing T-levels, but it will be if there is no stop, reset and rethink.

Most sixth forms the size of St Cecilia’s will struggle to offer T-levels. They lack the space, the resource and the ability to merge the qualifications into a timetable in which other BTECs and A-levels are offered. St Cecilia’s says that it will not have the staff capacity to organise all the business placements that are needed, which would be another barrier. The school would be competing with other sixth forms and colleges in an already packed market in Wandsworth. If that is true in south London, how much more will it be true around the country? How much more will rural areas be affected? I just do not see how the needs of the new business T-level can be met. The head of St Cecilia’s says:

“Many pupils in Year 11 at St Cecilia’s opt to take a blended courses of BTEC alongside A levels, and so not being able to offer Business would reduce the rich diversity in our current Sixth Form too.”

If schools cannot offer T-levels for those reasons, they may switch to A-level business, but that would be a barrier to entry for pupils who prefer or need to study in a different way, for many reasons. St Cecilia’s leadership believes that defunding BTECs would go against the Government’s clear principle of placing curriculum development at the heart of school improvement. It is not trusting our student leaders, heads of education and teachers to make the best decisions, and it goes back to pupil choice as well. School leaders should be given the freedom to decide which courses are best suited to their cohorts, because they know them very well. That means a choice between BTECs, T-levels, A-levels and apprenticeships.

I would like to know what the Department is doing to address the concerns of institutions such as South Thames College and St Cecilia’s. Will the Minister come and meet them? I particularly want to know what mitigations are being proposed to help disadvantaged young people who will affected by the change. Has there been an evidence-based assessment? The Minister should look at the evidence base for making this huge decision. Will she commit to permitting a wider range of part-time work options to count as an industry placement? Will she relax restrictions on the number of placements that can make up the industry placement total?

Those are all important questions, but the most important question is whether she or her replacement will look again at this ill-thought-out and reckless policy. I implore her to rethink and not to defund BTECs. Colleges, sixth forms and students oppose it, and the losers will be the most disadvantaged.

In one fell swoop, this change will disproportionately cut educational opportunities for black and Asian students, for students from financially disadvantaged backgrounds, for students with learning disabilities, and for students with mental health challenges. It is not too late to look again at the policy and stop it. By doing that, the Minister will improve the educational opportunities of young people across the country.