Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps the Government is taking to help prevent further closures of university technical colleges.

This government is committed to ensuring that young people have access to high quality technical education including through UTCs.

Learning from the experiences of the early UTCs, we are strengthening the programme through a number of reforms, including improving educational outcomes through partnerships with successful secondary schools and multi-academy trusts. We are also consulting with local authorities on potentially making changes to school information regulations to require them to write to parents of Year 9 children about options for study at age 14, to help ensure parents are better aware of the options open to young people at this age.

These changes are aimed at ensuring that we establish high quality, popular UTCs that meet the needs of the local, regional and national economy, and are able to attract sufficient students.