Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to encourage young people to take up BTEC qualifications.

From 2024, T Levels and A levels will be the qualifications of choice for classroom-based study. As part of the post-16 qualifications review, the department set out the types of qualifications that we intend to fund alongside T Levels and A levels at level 3 in July 2021.

T Levels are challenging qualifications developed with 250 leading employers, have significantly longer teaching hours, and include a meaningful nine-week industry placement that sets them apart from many current vocational qualifications. We believe that it is the right thing to do to remove funding for technical qualifications that overlap with T Levels once they become nationally available.

Students will continue to be able to study BTECs and other Applied General qualifications as part of mixed programmes alongside A levels, where they meet new quality standards and support progression to higher education. Students will also be able to study qualifications such as BTECs as their full programme of study where there is no T Level or A level.