Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of how students on practical university degree courses will be offered extra support before entering the job market to make up for lost teaching time during the covid-19 lockdown.

Education has always been a priority for this government, and we were committed to getting all students back into university as soon as the public health situation allowed. We prioritised the return of students on practical and practice-based courses because we realised the importance of them being able to return to their studies in person.

The higher education (HE) regulator in England, the Office for Students (OfS), has made it clear that all HE providers must continue to comply with registration conditions relating to quality and standards. This means ensuring that courses provide a high-quality academic experience, students are supported and achieve good outcomes, and standards are protected, regardless of whether a provider is delivering its courses through in person teaching, remote online learning, or a combination of both.

We have worked across the sector to understand what more we can do to support graduates who are looking to enter the labour market at this challenging time. We have worked closely with the Quality Assurance Agency, professional bodies and the OfS. Our message to employers and students is that standards have been maintained and that the qualifications awarded will be of the same academic standard as in previous years.

To provide additional support, we have also developed the graduate employment and skills guide, published on 10 May 2021 on the OfS website here: https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/employment-and-skills/. The guide signposts graduates to public, private and voluntary sector opportunities, to help them build employability skills, gain work experience or enter the labour market, as well as providing links to further study options and resources on graduate mental health and wellbeing. To encourage graduates to take advantage of the support and resources available, we have worked with Universities UK to develop a sector statement of support and with HE providers to produce a collection of graduate employability case studies.

As part of the government’s skills recovery package ‘Plan for Jobs’, we are also investing an additional £32 million in the National Careers Service up to March 2022. This investment will support delivery of individual careers advice for over 500,000 people whose jobs or learning have been affected by the COVID-19 outbreak by the end of the 2021/22 financial year, representing an increase of 22%. The Service has introduced a range of new initiatives to continue to support all customers, working with a wide range of partners to offer careers guidance activities designed to support employers, furloughed workers, graduates, students, those who have recently lost their jobs and anyone whose career path has been impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak.

On 29 September 2020, we added additional courses to The Skills Toolkit covering digital, numeracy and employability skills. The new content includes a range of courses to develop ‘work readiness’ skills that employers report they value in their new recruits.