Employers offered £3,000 sweeteners to hire unemployed young people

Employers will be paid £3,000 for each unemployed young person they hire in a £1 billion expansion to the government’s youth guarantee scheme.

The government will also raise the upper age limit of the jobs guarantee scheme, which fully subsidises jobs for young people who have been unemployed for 18 months, from 21 to 24.

Latest quarterly estimates showed there are around 957,000 young people aged 16 to 24 not in education, employment or training (NEET).

Work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden will announce a £2.5 billion “new deal” for young people in a speech at Waltham Forest College tomorrow (Monday).

Around £1 billion of that has been earmarked for hiring grants and subsidies for businesses to encourage them to hire young people. The rest includes reforms to apprenticeships, such as new foundation apprenticeships, alongside existing anti-NEET policies. 

Prime minister Keir Starmer said: “We are determined to tackle the rise in youth unemployment by expanding practical routes into work, boosting apprenticeships and giving employers the clarity they need.

“These reforms underpin our ambition to create an economy that works for everyone, closing the skills gap and supporting more young people into meaningful employment.”

Jobs granted

Taken together, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) hopes the new youth jobs grants and the expanded jobs guarantee will create 200,000 jobs for young people over the next three years.

The new youth jobs grants will pay businesses £3,000 for each unemployed young person aged 18 to 24 they hire. To be eligible, the young person will have to have been claiming universal credit for six months. DWP estimated this would get 60,000 young people into jobs over the next three years.

It is not yet clear when the grants will be made available, or if there will be any other criteria around how long the young person needs to be hired for.

It comes alongside an announcement of an apprenticeship incentive payment worth £2,000 for each 16 to 24 year old hired by a small or medium sized business. FE Week understands eligible businesses could claim both the youth jobs grant and the apprenticeship incentive simultaneously.

Jobs guaranteed

Around 35,000 more unemployed young people will be eligible for a government-subsidised job through the jobs guarantee, McFadden will announce. 

The scheme’s current upper age cap of 21 will be raised to 24 in August. This means the number of young people hoped to benefit from the scheme has risen from 55,000 to 90,000 over the next three years.

Pat McFadden

Once a young person has claimed universal credit for 18 months, they will be eligible for a six-month paid work placement through the jobs guarantee. 

The government is promising to cover all of each young person’s employment costs for up to 25 hours a week, alongside wraparound support to help them succeed and “transition into sustained employment”.

Phase one of the scheme is due to launch next month in six areas: Birmingham and Solihull, East Midlands, Greater Manchester, Hertfordshire and Essex, central and east Scotland and south west and south east Wales.

DWP will enlist local delivery organisations that will be paid up to £2,650 to provide jobs guarantee participants with wraparound support and training.

Stephen Evans, chief executive of Learning and Work Institute, said: “The government is right to extend help like the job guarantee to those aged 22–24, as this group is more likely to be NEET than the 18–21 year olds the policy was previously focused on. 

“There is still lots of work to be done, including proactively engaging the one in two NEET young people outside the benefits system and helping employers to give young people the first steps on their careers. If we all work together so every young person is able to make the most of their talents, we will all benefit.”

First FE provider to receive Ofsted’s lowest new grade

An apprenticeship provider with a 20 per cent achievement rate has become the first FE provider to receive Ofsted’s new lowest possible grade.

The watchdog handed an ‘urgent improvement’ rating to London-based adult care training firm JS Consult in the ‘apprenticeship achievement’ section of its report published today.

Inspectors reported that “achievement rates are too low and have been for the previous four years”, adding that too many apprentices have “not been prepared well” for their final assessments and leave their apprenticeship after they achieve their adult care diploma qualification.

JS Consult, which had 47 apprentices and 21 skills bootcamp learners at the time of the inspection in January, recorded a 20 per cent achievement rate in 2023-24, way below the 61 per cent national average.

The London-based provider’s Ofsted report also showed three ‘needs attention’ grades, including for leadership and management, and four ‘expected standard’ grades.

Leaders ‘have not acted quickly enough’

Today’s report marks the first FE provider to be awarded the lowest Ofsted grade since the watchdog abandoned overall headline grades in favour of a five-point scale in up to 16 individual areas.

Chief inspector Sir Martyn Oliver has said the baseline expectation is for providers to achieve ‘expected standard’, while the highest grade of ‘exceptional’ will be awarded only in rare cases where exemplary practice in demonstrated.

JS Consult has been delivering apprenticeships in the health, social care and business sectors since it launched in 2009. It recently began offering skills bootcamps in adult social care.

Ofsted said the company’s leaders have expertise in the care sector and a clear curriculum intention of reducing skilled staff shortages. 

Apprentices also feel “well supported by tutors and value their guidance, frequent wellbeing checks and staff interest in their lives, especially when facing personal problems that affect their studies”.

But while leaders “know the strengths and areas for development of their curriculums, such as the very low-achievement rates for apprenticeships”, they have “not acted quickly enough to secure rapid improvement”. 

Inspectors made clear that achievement rates “have remained too low for too long”.

They added that although leaders now give apprentices more preparation for their final assessments and improved information and guidance on the importance of completing final assessment, it is “too early to assess the full impact of their actions”.

Staff were, however, praised for preparing apprentices appropriately to take their next steps, and noted that apprentices “move on to positive destinations such as sustained employment or promotion at work”.

Updated government accountability measures this year stipulated that apprenticeship providers will be considered ‘at risk’ if they receive an ‘urgent improvement’ judgment from Ofsted for any provision-type level evaluation area for apprenticeships.

The ‘at risk’ classification normally triggers a performance review and management conversation with the Department for Education. It can even lead to extreme measures such as contract termination.

JS Consult declined to comment.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 526

Jamie McVey

Chief Commercial Officer, Train’d Up

Start date: January 2026

Previous Job: Sales and Marketing Director, LMP Group

Interesting fact: With his grandfather having worked on Scotland’s steam trains, joining a specialist rail training company feels like a full-circle moment

Ross Crook

Chief Revenue Officer, Lifetime Training

Start date: March 2026

Previous Job: Global Managing Director – Talent Solutions, Morgan McKinley

Interesting fact: Ross used to compete in triathlons and completed 13 half iron man distance tris. These days it’s more padel, golf, and watching rugby!

More detail to come on 16-19 funding, says Phillipson

The education secretary has said the government will have more to say on 16-19 education funding following this week’s “disappointing” below-inflation per-student rate rise for the next academic year.

Principals reacted angrily to this week’s announcement that the 16-19 funding rate would only increase by 0.5 per cent in 2026-27, despite a pledge in October’s post-16 education white paper of “increased funding to provide real-terms per-student funding in the next academic year to respond to the demographic increase in 16-19 year olds”.

DfE also told colleges this week to plan for a freeze in the rate it pays to cover free meals for disadvantaged students in colleges in 2026-27 (£2.61), even though the equivalent funding has been increased (to £2.66) for schools.

Inflation was at 3.6 per cent when the white paper promise was made. Last month, it was 3 per cent.

Population-spiked colleges scrabble for cash ahead of real-terms funding cut

College leaders described this week’s 0.5 per cent increase to the 16-19 funding rate as a “betrayal” and told FE Week it would mean diverting funding away from areas such as high-needs provision and staff pay awards to cover the gap. DfE’s lagged funding model also means colleges have to front up funding for the rising number of students, which can cause cash flow challenges.

Following her keynote speech at the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) conference in Liverpool today, education secretary Bridget Phillipson told FE Week colleges should expect more detail on 16-19 funding “in due course”.

Asked specifically about the broken white paper promise, Phillipson said: “We’ll be setting out more detail around this, but we have seen a big increase in the number of young people in post-16 provision. 

“We face a demographic shift. There are more young people, but we’re also seeing a welcome increase in the number of young people who are staying on in education. That’s a good thing, because we know that too many young people are NEET at the moment. But we’ll be setting that out in due course.”

Ofsted piloting recruiting inspectors en-masse from FE groups

Ofsted has announced a new way of recruiting “groups” of school and FE leaders to work as part-time inspectors, in a bid to make inspections “more collaborative than ever before”.

School and further education inspections are currently carried out by full-time his majesty’s inspectors (HMI) and contracted Ofsted inspectors (OIs), who are typically serving leaders.

OIs typically join Ofsted “as individuals”, but the inspectorate says this “can restrict chances for two-way professional reflection and shared learning”.

Under a pilot announced this morning, Ofsted is trialling recruiting OIs as “groups of peers drawn from professional organisations and networks they’re already part of”.

This includes schools, multi-academy trusts, local authorities, independent learning providers and general FE colleges.

But inspectors will not be paid directly, with payments instead going to their employers.

The scheme is already underway, says Ofsted, and is hoped to encourage OIs to “form a professional community with each other and with HMI”.

OI not paid directly, under scheme

Currently, contracted Ofsted inspectors are paid directly for their work.

As a team inspector on a school or college inspection, they receive a daily rate of £335 a day.

Any additional specialist activities, such as quality assurance or complaints investigations, are paid at a rate of £392 a day.

Under the new pilot, “there is no separate inspection fee”. Instead, Ofsted will contribute to employers’ costs so that staff can become an OI “as part of their professional development pathway”, said an Ofsted press release.

Ofsted confirmed contributions will continue to be paid to their employers, once they are fully trained.

The inspectorate added that it is developing “additional learning and development opportunities to complement inspection training and make sure becoming an OI offers clear professional value for participants and their employers”.

Ofsted said the OIs will have regular opportunities to share feedback with each other and reflect on what they’re seeing and learning. These experiences “will then feed directly into how Ofsted continuously improves inspection”.

Announcing the pilot at the Association of School and College Leaders’ annual conference in Liverpool, chief inspector Martyn Oliver said he is “really excited” about it, adding: “It means we can bring in current sector insight in a more systemic way.

“It means more people in the sector, inspecting the sector. Even more colleagues who understand what it means to lead a school through challenges, to make the difficult calls you all make every day.”

Join us as an inspector, Oliver tells leaders

Oliver said he wants to “bring in as many people in from the sector as possible”, to give leaders chance to lend their expertise and “shape how inspection works”.

“I believe this should be part of every leader’s journey,” he said. “So join us. 

“I want to make inspection more collaborative than ever before. We should work together to challenge each other in the interests of children and learners and to keep raising standards.”

Oliver stressed OIs recruited through the pilot will be trained “to the same high standards as existing OIs” and will carry out the same inspection work.

The first participants in the pilot began inspector training in January and now currently taking part in shadow inspections, said Ofsted.

They are expected to be ready to take part in live inspections later this term, and further cohorts will begin training later in the year.

The pilot will continue throughout 2026 and feedback will be gathered, to help inform how Ofsted recruit OIs.

Ofsted said it is also exploring whether a similar approach can be adopted across early years and social care inspection.

Population-spiked colleges scrabble for cash ahead of real-terms funding cut

College leaders have warned millions of pounds must now be diverted to fund thousands of extra learners after ministers “betrayed” the sector with a real-terms funding cut.

The Department for Education this week confirmed the national funding rate for 16 and 17-year-old learners would rise only 0.5 per cent in academic year 2026-27, from £5,105 to £5,133.

The move broke a pledge made in October’s post-16 education white paper which said there was “significant investment” available to maintain “real terms per-pupil funding in the next academic year to respond to the demographic increase in 16 to 19-year-olds”.

Principals told FE Week they could be forced to re-evaluate course provision for high-needs students, facilities expansion and staff pay awards to find money for unfunded learners.

Sudden increases in student numbers are financially risky for colleges due to the DfE’s “lagged” funding model, which allocates cash based on the previous year’s enrolments. When numbers surge, colleges must absorb the cost unless there is in-year growth funding. 

No growth funding was announced this week, and in previous years it was limited due to affordability issues.

‘Betrayal’

The government’s recent £800 million cash injection will be swallowed up by the estimated 20,000 extra 16 to 18-year-olds who entered colleges in autumn, according to the Association of Colleges (AoC). 

The AoC said there are around 32,000 learners currently at college who are unfunded.

The white paper pledged an annual £1.2 billion of additional investment in skills by 2028-29 to recruit FE teachers and “respond” to the demographic increase.

Julian Gravatt, AoC deputy chief executive, said: “The DfE calculation that there will be a 1.6 per cent [average per-student] increase shows that this promise hasn’t been kept, and right now, there is a lack of information on the overall budget.”

University and College Union general secretary Jo Grady said the rate increase amounted to a “betrayal”.

“Just six months ago, in his keynote speech to Labour conference, the prime minister pledged that improving further education would be the “defining mission” of his government and promised to inject hundreds of millions more into the sector,” she said.

Bill Jones, chief executive of Luminate Education Group, said the news was “disappointing to say the least”, adding that colleges were expecting a rise of around 2.5 per cent “given previous promises that ministers made of real-terms increases per pupil”.

Real-terms drop

This week’s announcement marks the lowest increase since funding rates were frozen in 2021-22. Last year, the DfE applied a 5.4 per cent above-inflation rise to the rate.

Imran Tahir, senior research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, explained the marginal uplift would result in a real-terms funding decrease for colleges’ 16-to-19 income.

Analysis by the IFS found real-terms funding per student aged from 16 to 18 fell by 14 per cent in colleges between 2010-11 and 2019-20.

Increased funding in the last six years has only partially reversed earlier cuts, and per-student funding in 2025-26 remains around 8 per cent lower than in 2010-11 in real terms.

Tahir added: “It’s difficult to know definitively what’s going to happen to funding rates next year. In previous years there have been top-ups later in the year that have changed the picture for 16-to-18 funding.”

The IFS had previously called for an extra £150 million by 2028 just to maintain per-student spending in real terms.

No top-ups expected

Guidance documents published this week did not specify details of any additional funding to support significant enrolment increases.

The DfE expects to notify 16-to-19 providers of their in-year top-up payments to accommodate this year’s estimated 20,000 extra 16-18 students by the end of this month.

College chiefs told FE Week they were drawing up budgets on the assumption they won’t see any in-year growth funding.

Tony Lewin, executive principal of one of the country’s largest college groups, NCG, said due to funding lagging by one year, it would constantly be playing catch-up.

“We know next year will be the same again and again. It’s a sunk cost. You’re not able to recover that in the short term,” he said.

“We’ve still got a lot of ground to make up to get back to where we were just before austerity around 2009.”

He claimed NCG had over 500 unfunded learners in its colleges, representing a £3.6 million shortfall.

Lewin has funded learners using money that would have otherwise been invested in facilities and resources.

NCG also faces staff-related pressures from the 30 to 50 per cent premium of hiring agency staff due to struggles in recruiting permanent employees.

In the East Midlands, student numbers at Nottingham College have grown by a third in four years to over 8,000 students this year, but 1,300 students are unfunded, incurring a cost of £10 million.

“We have not been paid anywhere near the full amount in-year,” said Andy Comyn, chief financial officer at Nottingham College. 

The college was paid for half of its extra learners in 2022-23 and the following year, but this dropped to one third for the next two years.

Nottingham College CEO Janet Smith said: “Not only have we had to address that deficit ourselves from within the rest of the budget, but it also positions FE very unfairly compared with HE and schools, both of which are fully-funded for their growth.

“It’s another example of FE being disadvantaged relative to other parts of the education sector.”

Smith told FE Week the shortfall was squeezing its headroom for staff pay awards.

“We would like to pay our staff more and we can’t.”

Meanwhile, Jones was optimistic that a “guaranteed and generous” in-year top-up was on its way.

“I would be cautious of expressing too much anger about this week’s announcement because of that optimism I have that the £800 million will be distributed in a slightly different way. We need to wait to see the full picture,” he said.

However, Luminate fears it could have costs of around £2.4 million from unfunded learners, creating difficulties with cash flow.

“It feels like all of our funding streams are under pressure,” Jones added.

Pressures on high-demand courses

Matthew Butcher, vice principal of commercial, skills and partnerships at New College Swindon, said his big worry was the knock-on effect of pressures to non-core subjects.

“If we have a lot of students that need to retake GCSEs, then that puts pressure on our English and maths teaching, which then knocks-on into adult English and maths capacity,” he explained.

Butcher added the college will feel the “biggest pinch” to accommodate around 200 unfunded learners with high needs but without EHCPs, which carries high operational costs.

Workplace training dominated by ‘tick box’ courses

A “tick-box” culture at many UK employers means health and safety training is prioritised over productivity-boosting skills, a report has found.

An analysis of labour market data and international surveys by the Learning and Work Institute (L&W) revealed nearly one in five workers reported security or health and safety was the main focus of their training.

In contrast, training in skills such as advanced digital skills or project management has fallen behind many other developed countries.

More than half of training in the UK is also short (58 per cent) – lasting for a day or less – which was the highest proportion for a country in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 2023 adult skills survey. The international average was 44 per cent.

‘Tick-box training’

L&W chief executive Stephen Evans said: “We’ve got more of a focus on this really short, often induction, security, health and safety stuff, which is what we’re getting at when we say tick-box training, or a culture of compliance.

“Some of it you need, but it shouldn’t be the sum total, and the more developmental stuff has really dropped off quite a lot over the last couple of decades.”

The data shows that 19 per cent of employees reported security and health and safety as their main focus of training, which is “mid-level” compared to countries such as Switzerland (9 per cent) and Italy (33 per cent).

Meanwhile, 6 per cent of UK employees received project management or organisational skills training, which trailed the US (8 per cent), Singapore (10 per cent) and Japan (13 per cent).

L&W warned that while compliance training is “necessary”, failing to invest in transferable skills means the economy will struggle to build capabilities for “future productivity growth”.

Employer training investment falling

Employer investment in training has also “substantially declined” in recent years, with a 29 per cent drop since 2011.

Countries such as Germany or South Korea have increased their investment in developmental training, while the UK has a “lower skills base”, Evans said.

He told FE Week the UK risks falling even further behind because of its “low and skewed” investment.

The think-tank CEO added that the apprenticeship levy was originally “intended to be the minimum” training budget for employers, but has ended up becoming the maximum.

Teaching hours cut ‘not enough to revive T Levels’

A decision to slim down “bloated” T Levels is a “necessary” move – but shaving classroom hours alone will not be enough to boost take-up, experts have warned.

The Department for Education this week announced it would cut the size of new T Levels to 1,080 classroom hours, down from the current minimum of 1,180 hours, while also continuing efforts to shrink existing courses.

The move follows complaints from colleges that the flagship technical qualifications are too big and difficult to deliver at scale.

But while sector figures say the change should help make T Levels more accessible, many doubt it will be the silver bullet ministers hope for.

Ministers have also been warned the move risks leaving English students with even less teaching time than their peers in other countries that are international leaders in technical education.

‘Painfully bloated’

Robbie Maris, a researcher at the Education Policy Institute (EPI), said reducing hours was a “positive and necessary step” after receiving “consistent feedback from colleges, students and stakeholders that the volume of content has simply been too high – reaching up to 2,000 guided learning hours on top of a sizeable industry placement”.

This has “likely contributed” to relatively high drop-out rates – more than a quarter of students who started the fourth wave of T Levels and should have picked up their results last summer left their course early.

Maris said cutting classroom hours would bring T Levels closer to the three A Level benchmark they intended to equal, adding that this recalibration ensured the qualification remained a “substantial programme that develops high-level technical skills, while finally being proportionate and manageable for students to study and for colleges to deliver”.

The National Audit Office warned last year that T Levels may struggle to scale after student number forecasts were missed by three quarters in 2024-25, compared to original predictions.

Abysmal starts have led to a near-£700 million spending shortfall from T Levels’ launch in 2020 up to 2025.

Latest starts data for 2025-26, published on Tuesday, showed the DfE even missed its revised recruitment target for the academic year by almost a fifth.

Catherine Sezen, director of education policy at the Association of Colleges, backed the classroom hours reduction.

But to make T Levels “truly accessible” the DfE must “go beyond size and look at content, assessment and the nature of the industry placement”, she added.

Claire Green, post-16 and skills specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders, warned reducing hours without adjusting curriculum content or assessment load “will not ease pressures on providers and may ultimately jeopardise student achievement”.

She added that “persistent barriers such as limited availability of industry placements, demanding assessment requirements, and the high English and maths expectations continue to restrict colleges’ ability to deliver these programmes at scale”.

Claire Green

The DfE committed this week to making “further changes” to assessment and industry placements to support growth. New industry placement guidance will be published by June.

The minimum 315-hour industry placement, which is undertaken in addition to classroom hours, will remain. But officials signalled further watering down of the mandatory requirement, including enhancing current placement flexibilities such as conducting them across multiple employers, group projects or remote working.

Regulator Ofqual will also remove content “not absolutely necessary to demonstrate threshold competence” and cut the assessment burden, particularly the staff time required to administer exams.

Meaningful reform or cost-saving measure?

Currently, the smallest T Levels require a minimum of 1,180 classroom hours per learner over two years and attract £11,154 funding. The largest require a minimum of 1,730 hours and are funded at £15,430.

These funding rates are set to be reduced in 2026-27, and the hours cap for new T Levels suggests funding levels could fall further.

Green said cutting classroom hours “appears less like meaningful reform and more like a cost‑saving measure” – one that “risks leaving students worse off than their peers in other OECD countries, who already benefit from greater teaching time”.

Her concerns echo previous research from the EPI, which found T Levels were already relatively narrow and short compared with technical programmes in high-performing countries.

Vocational routes in systems in Germany, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands typically include classroom-based technical provision of around 1,000 supervised learning hours per year.

Mix-and-match opportunity missed

Tom Richmond, an education policy analyst and former adviser to education ministers, said the government should have gone further and made T Levels a size that allowed them to be studied alongside A Levels – which is the plan for newly proposed V Levels (see page 7).

He told FE Week: “I’m glad the DfE has recognised the painfully bloated nature of T Levels, although these changes fall well short of allowing students to study them alongside an A Level, despite some T Level students being denied university places due to the lack of A Level maths, for example. 

“It’s bizarre watching the DfE highlight the importance of allowing students to combine the new V Levels with A Levels, only to completely ignore the same principle for T Levels. I also doubt many schools and colleges will be persuaded to suddenly offer more T Levels just because a few hours have been shaved off the curriculum.”

The cracks are in the delivery system, not the qualifications

Skills minister Jacqui Smith described the government’s “phased transition” to new qualifications as giving “the certainty providers need, while ensuring that no young person falls through the cracks”. By pausing the defunding of applied general qualifications and setting out a carefully paced programme to introduce the new V Levels, she has certainly achieved her first goal.

But it’s unclear how the reforms will achieve her second goal of providing a much stronger education and skills platform for young people, because the proposed remedy doesn’t address the problem’s root cause. Poorly designed qualifications aren’t the problem; the real culprit is the chronically unbalanced design of our education delivery system.

The phantom menace

Since the Sainsbury review of technical education in 2016, the DfE have been pursuing the phantom menace of an over-complicated qualification system by pushing through a relentless campaign of simplification. The sheer number of vocational qualifications we’ve been told causes confusion amongst students, parents and employers, and makes technical education difficult to navigate. This is simply nonsense. Yes, there may be 872 level 3 qualifications eligible for funding. But most of them are niche subjects. And in reality most FE colleges offer 20-30 vocational subjects, which are clear in their content, goals and progression pathways.

The quality of applied general qualifications has improved greatly over time, they have gained wide acceptance from universities as valid HE entry qualifications, and the number enrolled on them has increased by nearly 70 per cent over the past decade. They are not the cause of the rise in NEETs or of the country’s continuing skills gaps.

Over the past ten years there has been a welcome change in the balance between academic and vocational courses. But it’s difficult to be precise because a significant number of students take a mix of both. In 2015, just under 338,000 students took A Levels; in 2025 it was 313,000. In 2015 around 200,000 vocational qualifications were awarded; in 2025 it’s close to 252,000.

Painful progress

Meanwhile, the DfE’s flagship vocational qualification – T levels  – has made painfully slow progress, reaching less than 3 per cent of total level 3 enrolments this year. It’s a far cry from the 100,000 a year predicted in 2021, or the stated intention when the programme was launched that T levels would become the main technical route for 16-19 year olds. Despite continued efforts to improve uptake, retention and results, there’s no sign of T Levels ever becoming more than a niche qualification for a minority of young people. We can only hope that the historic success of applied generals will provide a firmer launchpad for V Levels to take off from.

No qualification reform can address the continued failure of our education system to produce enough technically qualified workers to meet the needs of British industry. In 2015, there were 12,035 vocational qualifications awarded in engineering and manufacturing – representing 9 per cent of the total. In 2025 the equivalent figure was 9,300. An ageing workforce isn’t being replaced by younger entrants. More than a third of technical roles linked to key industrial sectors face chronic and worsening skills shortages.

Pipeline blockage

The blockage in our skills pipeline is our education delivery system. Virtually no schools offer any teaching of technical skills, other than in the practical elements of science subjects. Of those taking T Levels, 72 per cent attend college, and the great majority of those at school are studying education and early years, or business and administration. Imagine being 16, trying to find an engineering course near you. In Huddersfield, 82 per cent of technical courses are delivered by the two FE colleges. Only one (Kirklees) offers engineering. In Reading, only six of eleven state schools offer any applied generals. And only the UTC, sponsored by Activate Learning, offers engineering.

Introducing V Levels – or any other qualification reform – is not going to close technical education gaps that exist across the country. What’s needed is a radical reform of the secondary school curriculum, going much further than the Francis review’s recommendations, to reintroduce a technical skills element. And the pattern of 16-19 provision in each local authority needs reconfiguring to ensure that good quality technical and vocational courses are far more readily available, so every aspiring engineer or technician has local access to an attractive training pathway. This is the only way to close the cracks that Smith is rightly concerned about.