London’s deputy mayor for business is taking on the capital’s £402 million skills budget, following a reshuffle of Sadiq Khan’s top team.
Khan announced last Friday that his recently appointed deputy mayor for business and growth, Howard Dawber, will oversee the capital’s skills and adult education spending – the largest budget of any devolved authority in the country.
The move pairs skills with business after eight years under Jules Pipe, who was also deputy mayor for planning and regeneration.
However, it is unclear why Dawber’s job title does not include “skills”, despite the brief being the largest of the Greater London Authority’s (GLA) budget areas and four times larger than the mayor’s £102 million business and economy budget.
A spokesperson for Khan did not respond to questions about the title, but said pairing the two briefs would require “close collaboration” between London’s businesses and training providers.
“The mayor will continue to champion adult learning and build on his previous success in this area to support even more people to attain the skills they need to acquire good jobs,” the spokesperson added.
Dawber was a managing director at the Canary Wharf Group until 2022 and has an advisory role at the University of East London’s business school.
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, he said he met with shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson this week to talk about Labour’s plans for “skills and future reform”.
The GLA has had responsibility for the capital’s skills spending since 2019, following devolution of the adult education budget from Whitehall.
According to the GLA’s most up-to-date statistics, there were 230,000 funded learners in London in the 2022-23 academic year, up from 213,000 in 2019-20.
An external review of its skills policies between 2019 and 2022, published last summer, found the capital “performed well” in learner participation and enrolments, which have increased 10 per cent.
Areas that are managed directly by the Department for Education have increased 2 per cent.
Pipe, who is now deputy mayor for planning, regeneration and the fire service, said it had been a “pleasure to work with stakeholders and partners across the adult education sector over the last eight years and to have played a part in delivering skills programmes that support Londoners”.
Previous Job: Principal Consultant FE, Peridot Partners
Interesting fact: Sarah has had a varied career. She has found herself ordering diggers, recruiting call handlers, advising on mortgages, spotting shoplifters, and most recently appointing over a 100 chairs, governors and senior leaders across the FE sector
Martin Rigley
Chair, East Midlands Institute of Technology
Start date: April 2024
Concurrent Job: Business Development Associate, Devtank Ltd
Interesting fact: Martin’s OBE for ‘services to the community’ during the first Covid lockdown was for organising fellow manufacturing businesses to donate PPE to frontline medical staff
Philip Le Feuvre
Governor, London South East Colleges
Start date: May 2024
Concurrent Job: Chief Operating Officer, NCFE
Interesting fact: Philip worked as a hospital porter, in a muesli factory, on an airport check-in desk before getting into teaching and then the FE sector
Staff at the University and College Union are planning to strike at its upcoming national congress to protest allegedly “shameful” handling of workplace racism and breaches of a collective agreement.
They voted this week in favour of action that will target day two of the union’s flagship annual meeting in Bournemouth from May 29 to 31.
The union could be forced to cancel FE and HE-related policy motions, fringe meetings and the conference dinner on May 30 as it “cannot guarantee appropriate staffing levels”, according to an email sent to congress delegates seen by FE Week.
It urged delegates not to cancel any plans to attend and said it was “fully committed” to finding a solution ahead of the meeting.
“UCU’s actions as an employer go against the core values of trade unionism”
A spokesperson said it was “unfortunate” the strikes would disrupt the “important policy-making functions of our union”.
Talks between the UCU and Unite, which represents UCU staff, began this week, but the strike remains on the cards.
UCU bosses will meet with Unite at an ACAS meeting on May 24 and have invited Unite’s general secretary, Sharon Graham, to attend as an indication of how “seriously” it is taking the dispute.
If the strike goes ahead, it will be the first in UCU’s 18-year history that its own staff have taken action.
Nearly three-quarters of the union’s 182 members of the Unite voted earlier this week to strike. Turnout was 79 per cent.
The ballot followed an internal dispute over UCU’s “institutional failings” into how it allegedly treats black staff, the Unite black members’ group claimed in March.
The group alleged that black staff were disproportionately targeted for punitive action – 45 per cent of all UCU cases handled by Unite had an element of race discrimination.
UCU said in March it was in the midst of “sourcing an external independent party” to review the allegations, but did not confirm at the time of publication whether an appointment had been made.
According to a provisional timetable, the final day of UCU’s congress will hear a call from the equalities committee for general secretary Jo Grady to take “decisive action” on the black group’s allegations.
“The failure of UCU leadership to offer anything more than warm words in response to a situation that is unacceptable to us as members of a union which should be anti-racist,” the motion stated.
The move is a further escalation of the ongoing internal dispute at the union after Unite ramped up a pay dispute with UCU and accused bosses of “prioritising” senior management pay.
Shortly after, FE Weekrevealed that Grady had accepted a near-£18,000 salary rise to help her pay damages from a libel case.
Unite also accused UCU of repeatedly breaching its agreement that it be the sole union for UCU workers, after it recognised a separate staff union for senior leaders.
A Unite spokesperson said: “It is shameful that as an employer UCU has overseen a culture of racism within its own workplace, imposed new working conditions on staff without agreement and continues to breach collective agreements with its staff union, Unite.
“UCU’s actions as an employer go against the core values of trade unionism that we and the rest of the trade union movement campaign for every single day.”
A UCU spokesperson said: “UCU is proud to offer its staff some of the best pay and conditions in the movement – our staff work incredibly hard, and their work is rightly valued and rewarded highly.
“We recognise the strength of feeling amongst staff and are fully committed to finding agreed solutions and creating the best possible working environment for our staff.”
The Department for Education will go to trial this December to defend allegations it acted unlawfully in last year’s adult education budget (AEB) procurement.
Learning Curve Group and its seven subsidiary training companies are suing the department for “acting unlawfully” in evaluating their unsuccessful bids for a contract.
New High Court documents reveal Learning Curve’s case will be heard at the Technology and Construction Court, Manchester, in a four-day trial that begins on December 16.
The trial will finally determine whether the DfE broke procurement rules by rejecting Learning Curve’s bid.
Alongside claims for damages and costs, Learning Curve Group also wants the court to rule that the AEB procurement was run unlawfully and should be re-run.
It launched its case in August last year after it was one of several major training providers to have their adult education budget bids rejected by the Education and Skills Funding Agency.
The DfE has denied Learning Curve’s claims that it acted unlawfully in its evaluation of their bids that “deprived” them “of a real chance of winning a contract”.
Government lawyers filed their first defence against the claim in October.
The case rests on a dispute over a section in Learning Curve’s bid that forecasts training courses and learner numbers, known as its Q1B1 submission. The DfE’s defence claimed Learning Curve’s tender “fails to provide the forecast of the number of learners per course, which is an entire deliverable asked-for”.
Learning Curve refiled its claims in November, following disclosure of procurement evaluation documents. The company alleged that documents showed evaluators had initially scored its Q1B1 response as 100 – enough to be considered for a contract – but this was downgraded to 50 by “non-evaluators” that “did not apply the published award criteria”.
The DfE’s next defence admitted that the initial evaluators “failed to apply” the award criteria for that crucial question. As a result, the usual “consensus score” process, where two evaluators agree on a final score for a question, did not apply and a moderator decided the lower score.
At a court and case management conference earlier this month, Judge Stephen Davies ordered that a liability trial take place this December. Once the court rules on liability, additional proceedings may then follow to decide the value of any costs or damages.
Government forecasts of teacher recruitment should include further education as it is the “worst impacted” sector, MPs have said.
At present, the Department for Education’s teacher workforce model, which sets annual recruitment targets based on projections of incoming learners and teacher flows, only looks at the needs of primary and secondary schools.
This is despite FE facing an increasingly acute staffing crisis, widely understood to be caused by salary increases failing to keep up with inflation and falling short of what is offered in schools and industry.
Following an inquiry into teacher recruitment, MPs on the education committee have urged the DfE to include post-16 education in its modelling to ensure it has a more “holistic picture” of staffing needs “throughout all stages of education”.
During the inquiry, schools minister Damian Hinds said the range of expertise needed and competition with “really well-renumerated” jobs in the private sector left FE facing “particular” challenges.
It is unclear why the DfE does not include FE in its workforce modelling, which it has run for at least a decade.
However, it is unclear if inclusions would boost staffing numbers.
Statistics published by the initial teacher training census suggest recruitment targets for schools have only been achieved once since 2015-16.
Anne Murdoch, a senior adviser at the Association of School and College Leaders, said it made “no sense” for colleges and other FE providers to be excluded from the model.
“The post-16 sector is woefully underfunded, and this is the greatest barrier to improving recruitment and retention.
“Schools and colleges must be properly resourced to enable to them to afford levels of pay which attract and retain teachers.”
Low pay is widely understood to be the main cause of FE’s staffing crisis, with one in four staff in 2019 leaving within their first year of work.
David Hughes, the chief executive of the Association of Colleges (AoC), said that while he supported the committee’s call for the government to include FE in its modelling, challenges such as the pay gap should also be “eradicated”.
According to AoC estimates, based on DfE workforce data, the average gap between annual salaries of school and FE teachers reached £9,000 last year.
This follows years of real-term cuts to FE teachers’ pay, which has increased at a lower rate than inflation in every year since 2010, except 2015.
The government has long recognised that recruitment is a problem and has tried to increase public awareness of the sector through its Teach in Further Education recruitment campaign, launched in early 2022.
Committee members also called for the expansion of government schemes to boost the appeal of the sector, such as financial incentives of up to £6,000 for teachers starting in STEM and technical subjects.
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We are investing £470 million over two years to help FE providers address key priorities – including the recruitment and retention of staff.
“We will continue to support the sector to attract new staff with measures including teacher training bursaries worth up to £30,000 tax-free, a national recruitment campaign and programmes supporting providers to recruit those with relevant knowledge to retrain and teach.
“We are also extending the levelling-up premium to all FE colleges for the first time. We will give eligible early career teachers in key STEM and technical shortage subjects, working in colleges, up to £6,000 after tax annually on top of their pay.”
Committee members also want the department to plan for a “demographic bulge” in secondary school pupils, which is expected to peak this year.
2U landed a multi-million pound contract in October 2022 to deliver front-end web development bootcamps to thousands of adults in England through its subsidiary edX Boot Camps (UK) Limited.
But Ofsted said its offer, delivered wholly online by tutors in the US during out-of-work hours, was marked by high dropout rates. There was no personal teaching and few participants entered work.
2U has now told FE Week it is winding down its UK skills bootcamps.
A spokesperson said the company paused starts in January, although there was no mention of this in a recent Ofsted report that followed an inspection in March.
edX Boot Camps (UK) was also still advertising upcoming programmes in the UK at the time of going to press.
The spokesperson said: “Universities regularly review student feedback and attendance to determine if a course remains effective or viable and adjust their offerings accordingly. Similarly, 2U routinely develops and iterates new programmes, and monitors their outcomes to determine that they continue to serve the best interests of students, our partners, and 2U.
“In January, under new leadership and as part of our focus on sustainability, we decided to proactively wind down the boot camps we offered through the Department for Education.”
2U’s stock price hit $98.58 (about £74) in 2018 but has been trading below $1 for much of 2024. Last month it published an article titled “setting the record straight” on its website, denying it was on the verge of a shutdown.
FE Week understands that a whistleblower reported edX Boot Camps (UK) to the DfE last year over the treatment of students and the safety of public funds after its US overseers allegedly reneged on promises to employ England-based coaches.
It was also alleged that 2U management was not concerned about edX UK student outcomes as the company would make a profit on the contract, even if no bootcamp participant moved on to a job.
2U’s bootcamps contract through edX was initially worth £4.8 million, but it would have received an extension, with more funding, towards the end of 2023. 2U and the DfE refused to tell FE Week how much money the company has received in total.
The half-a-billion-pound flagship scheme
The bootcamps were launched in 2020 as part of then-chancellor Rishi Sunak’s attempts to train more adults in areas of national skills shortage, such as construction, manufacturing and digital.
More than half a billion pounds has been committed to the intensive free courses that are studied at levels 3 to 5, last between 12 and 16 weeks, and end with a guaranteed job interview.
There has been concern about oversight of the programme, given that much funding to run the training was handed to commercial companies initially outside the scope of any Ofsted inspection.
The watchdog was finally given powers to inspect all bootcamp providers in late 2022.
Inspectors that visited edX said leaders drew on their teaching of “bootcamps” online in America to plan courses in front-end web development in England, intended to fill skills gaps in the digital sector.
However, they “underestimated the challenges that this would pose, particularly in teaching courses over fewer weeks than those to which they were accustomed”.
edX Boot Camps (UK) does not employ anybody in the UK, according to its latest published accounts at Companies House.
But the US company told FE Week that it had “many” employees in the UK, but that they worked under an unnamed different subsidiary and only for “administrative efficiencies”.
Mental health has become the primary cause for student absence in colleges, new data suggests, particularly for learners forced to resit GCSE English and maths.
Nearly nine in 10 colleges say poor mental health is the main reason for absenteeism this year, an almost 40-percentage point jump from 2019, according to a survey by the Association of Colleges (AoC).
Half of the 68 colleges that responded also report that cost-of-living pressures are alsoforcing students to opt for paid work rather than go to class.
Perfect storm
While the overall attendance rate among 16 to 18-year-old learners and adults has remained stable at between 86 and 84 per cent over the past four years, the reasons behind absences have shifted.
The AoC’s survey asked colleges to select the top three reasons for poor student attendance in the 2023 autumn term and compared the figures to 2019.
Most (88 per cent) respondents selected poor mental health, almost double the 50 per cent cited pre-pandemic.
Increasing reasons behind non-attendance – poor mental health, getting a job and transport issues – demonstrate the “perfect storm” of pressures directly impacting learners, according to Catherine Sezen, the AoC’s director of education policy.
Learners generally call into college and speak to staff to notify them of their absence.
The government’s FE student support champion Polly Harrow suggests that students are “a bit more confident than they used to be” in naming mental ill health as their reason.
Principals have told FE Week mental health absence is harder to manage and have called on the government to speed up the “glacial progress” of rolling out mental health support team leaders.
“Mental health absence is so much less predictable. We have a team of welfare support coaches who identify those learners with frequently lower attendance than we would want and work with them to understand what the barriers are and how we might help support them,” says Andrew Cropley, the principal of West Notts College.
College leaders say they have a growing responsibility to provide support to young people in crisis, following cuts to primary care and local authority budgets, and lengthy waits for NHS mental health services.
“There is an unfunded burden on colleges to provide mental health services,” Harrow says.
Sezen adds: “Without additional funding for mental health services in colleges, and cost of living support, colleges will be limited in what they can do to support students who are facing barriers to attendance.”
Not all colleges provide direct counselling services, but some have introduced free breakfasts, free transport and even therapy dogs during exam season to alleviate anxiety.
“It’s about the wraparound support you have put in place support them to attend,” says Ben Manning, City College Plymouth’s executive of curriculum, quality and student experience.
Mental health issues can worsen during exam season, leading to extra accommodation from colleges and increased staff support services.
FE Week reported in April that student anxiety and other mental health issues were triggering a wave of learners needing special exam access arrangements such as smaller rooms, extra time or rest breaks.
“We almost literally have to carry some of them into exam rooms to get through that distress,” says Cropley.
‘Stress’ of English and maths resits
The AoC findings add further evidence of the “stress” of English and maths resits.
Both had the poorest attendance rate – 76 per cent – out of all the subject areas in the 2023 survey, followed by construction, planning and the built environment and health and care.
“Having to attend maths and English after failing at school causes high levels of stress,” Harrow says. “That might lead to then refuse to attend education.”
An FE Week investigation last month found rising mental health concerns among the reasons for the “worst” student behaviour college leaders have seen.
They have consistently called for a review into resits, with colleges having to accommodate more as school pass rates fall.
But the government has doubled down on its intention to improve pass rates. As part of the controversial maths and English condition of policy, from September all colleges must enrol students in English and maths resits or risk losing funding.
Meanwhile, Cropley backs a creative and flexible curriculum to improve attendance in all subjects. West Notts, for example, adapted its curriculum so construction students couldbuild a kitchen garden for the college restaurant, leading to 100 per cent attendance as well as full attendance for the English and maths lessons beforehand.
His advice? “Make it too good to miss. Make it like getting tickets for a Taylor Swift concert and everyone will want to come.”
Take up of mental health training low in FE
The government has made efforts to boost staff training in mental health.
In 2018, NHS England and the Department for Education rolled out the delivery of mental health support teams (MHST) to provide external specialist services. They would help the senior mental health lead in each college deliver “evidence-based interventions” for mild to moderate mental health issues.
But data published this week shows out of the more than 728,000 learners in post-16 education – 35 per cent – have access to mental MHSTs. That equates to just 23 per cent of colleges with access, compared with 59 per cent of secondary schools.
Meanwhile, FE remains the lowest sector to take up a £1,200 grant to fund the training of a senior mental health lead. Sixty per cent of colleges completed their grant application as of March 31, compared to 81 per cent in schools.
Margaret Mulholland, the SEND and inclusion specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders, says the figures show “glacial progress”.
“This should be no cause for celebration when set against the increasing demand for support and growing unmet needs.
A DfE spokesperson said: “We are supporting the mental health of post-16 learners in colleges through programmes including senior mental health lead training to foster a whole-college approach to mental health and wellbeing.
“We have also introduced Mental Health Support Teams to schools and colleges to provide evidence-based interventions for mild-to-moderate mental health issues, along with a resource hub and toolkit for staff.”
“We have appointed Polly Harrow as the first FE Student Support Champion, tasked with providing strategic leadership to enhance colleges’ ability to support learners’ mental health and overall success over the next two years.”
Over 70 qualifications have passed the first cycle of a new “rigorous” approvals process and will survive the government’s controversial cull of level 3 courses.
Skills minister Luke Hall announced 74 qualifications will be funded for young people and adults alongside A-levels and T Levels in the latest milestone of the government’s post-16 reforms.
Awarding organisations had to make a special case for these qualifications to retain funding from August 2025. A key plank of the government’s strategy for school leavers is to steer students towards A-levels or T Levels.
The approved courses can be taken alongside A-levels or T Levels under a new system which ministers believe will “simplify” and “streamline” qualification choices.
Today’s announcement reveals newly approved qualifications in the construction, digital, education and early years, engineering and manufacturing, and health and science sectors.
Approvals for other subject areas will be carried out in the coming years.
Of the 42 submissions DfE received for new alternative academic qualifications (AAQs), five were withdrawn by awarding organisations and 30 were approved.
For technical qualifications, which had to be approved against the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education’s occupational standards, 50 were approved by IfATE with 44 of those then winning DfE approval for funding.
Alongside A-levels and T Levels, this “simplified” landscape will include a selection of alternative academic qualifications (AAQs), occupational entry qualifications and additional specialist qualifications.
Small AAQs, such as BTEC national extended certificate in health and social care, have been approved for students to take alongside A-levels from August 2025.
Other popular applied general qualifications (AGQs) that will become approved AAQs are the BTEC extended certificated in applied science, IT and engineering and the Cambridge Technical in health and social care.
Approved AAQs range from 180 to 360 guided learning hours so can be taken alongside A-levels.
However, popular existing larger courses, like the BTEC level 3 national extended diplomas in applied science and health and social care, will be defunded.
Analysis by the Sixth Form Colleges Association suggests that 17 of the possible 55 AGQs have been re-approved as AAQs.
Technical occupational entry qualifications have also been approved, but most of them will only be funded for adults. The few that will be available to young people were personal trainer and pharmacy technician qualifications – subjects not covered by T Levels.
These qualifications had to pass strict “occupational relevance and employer demand” tests set by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education. For the AAQs, awarding organisations had to prove demand and progression to higher education.
Pressure for Labour
In a written statement to parliament, skills minister Luke Hall, said: “By ensuring that approved qualifications meet new, more rigorous criteria for public funding, young people can be confident that they will be able to progress to university and higher technical education, and directly into apprenticeships and skilled employment.”
Education campaigners, through the Protect Choice Campaign, have condemned the defunding of applied general qualifications (AGQ) and put pressure on the Labour Party to pause defunding if it wins the general election.
Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, announced in 2023 that Labour would “pause and review” the defunding of qualifications but has offered no further information since.
James Kewin, deputy chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association and convenor of the campaign, said: “Ministers made a commitment in Parliament that only a ‘small proportion’ of applied general qualifications like BTECs would be defunded through the level 3 reform process.
“Not content with scrapping popular BTECs, the government has also introduced a new suite of bureaucratic regulations that will remove the freedom of colleges and schools to combine different qualifications in students’ study programmes.”
He added: “But as we head towards a general election, many of these developments appear increasingly irrelevant.
“The Labour party’s commitment to adopt the Protect Student Choice campaign’s recommendation to ‘pause and review’ the scrapping of BTECs means that the government’s plan is increasingly unlikely to be implemented.”
Spilling the T Levels
Hall’s statement poured praise on T Levels: “Students have gone on from T Levels to outstanding destinations, including moving directly into employment, undertaking higher apprenticeships, or progressing into higher education.”
However, the minister’s statement didn’t mention the government’s review of each T Level in the wake of low student recruitment and high number of dropouts, as reported by FE Week last month.
Catherine Sezen, director of education policy at the Association of Colleges, said T Levels “are not suited to every student who wants to take a vocational qualification at level 3 and the 45-day placement is stretching employer capacity.
“The modest total of 23,500 student enrolments on T Levels needs to be put into the context of 250,000 young people on current vocational technical qualifications. Even with rapid growth, we expect the total number of T Level enrolments to be less than 100,000.”
The government’s reform of level 3 qualifications has been steadily marching in the wrong direction since it began in 2019. Characterised by a minister-knows-best approach and aversion to evidence, the process continues to disappoint.
Yesterday saw the publication of the list of qualifications that will be defunded in July 2025, alongside guidance on the combinations of qualifications that colleges and schools can offer.
But as we head towards a general election, these milestones in the inexorable level 3 review process appear increasingly irrelevant. A change of government would result in a very different approach to these reforms and avoid the dire consequences that would be triggered by the hasty removal of BTECs.
The Labour Party’s commitment to adopt the Protect Student Choice campaign’s recommendation to ‘pause and review’ the scrapping of BTECs is both extremely welcome and a potential game changer. The campaign coalition has worked very effectively over the past few years, but securing the support of Labour and the Liberal Democrats may turn out to be what has the biggest impact.
But of course, the challenge of planning for September 2025 remains.
If the current government is re-elected, students will have to choose from the greatly reduced menu of options published yesterday, and colleges and schools will be required to assemble study programmes within the boundaries set by the latest suite of bureaucratic regulations. Replacing local decision-making and flexibility with top-down diktats is unlikely to benefit students.
Things would be different under Labour, but how different? What will ‘pause and review’ mean in practice? Guiding the implementation of ‘pause and review’ is as important to us as securing the commitment.
Things would be different under Labour, but how different?
The key features of our position are set out below. We have shared a more detailed version with the opposition parties and will continue to help refine their plans as the general election draws closer.
Within one month of a general election, formally pause the defunding of level 3 qualifications. Confirm a single defunding date (1st August 2027) to ensure that students can enrol on all 134 existing applied general qualifications (AGQs) up to and including 2026/27
Agree a revised set of principles to guide a streamlined and refocused review of level 3 qualifications within the current three-route framework
Formally discard plans to a) present students with a choice of A Levels, T Levels and a small number of ‘alternative’ qualifications approved by exception and b) limit the ability of colleges and schools to combine qualifications
Oversee a review of T Levels involving students, employers, colleges, schools and a broad range of other stakeholders to identify the key adaptations and flexibilities needed to ensure they can play a more meaningful role in the future qualifications landscape
Confirming the duration of the pause would ideally happen before the general election. In reality it is likely to be made shortly after.
Crucially, because of the 12-month delay to defunding secured earlier in the campaign, all 134 applied general qualifications (including the 36 condemned yesterday) will still be in play when a potential Labour government takes office. A pause would therefore be straightforward to implement.
The level 3 reforms could then be focused on approving updated versions of applied general and technical qualifications, or new qualifications where there is evidence of demand.
Awarding organisations can build on their recent work developing alternative academic qualifications (AAQs) in their submissions, but it is updated AGQs we want to see, not AAQs designed to plug gaps in a two-route model of A-levels and T Levels.
Recalibrating the reform process in this way would provide a firm foundation for the Labour Party’s proposed curriculum and assessment review that will look far beyond the range of level 3 qualifications that are available to young people.
The government’s level 3 reform process lost credibility a long time ago. But with a general election on the horizon and clear blue water between the political parties on this issue, uncertainty and frustration are now tempered by hope.
The Protect Student Choice campaign will continue to work with the opposition parties on the implementation of pause and review to ensure that no young person is left without a high-quality pathway to higher education or skilled employment.
