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1 October 2026

Latest news from FE Week

The chancellor must raise apprenticeship funding bands

Ministers have set out what they want from manufacturing: more investment, more innovation, higher growth and a bigger industrial base across the country.

Manufacturers want the same. Our members can tell you which machines they would buy and which lines they would open.

The harder question is asked less often. Who is going to do the work?

Advanced facilities need engineers. New lines need technicians, welders, machinists, fabricators, controls programmers and maintenance staff. Reindustrialisation cannot be legislated into existence. It is delivered by trained people, and we are still not training enough of them.

Manufacturing produces £220 billion of output, supports 2.6 million jobs and accounts for 42 per cent of UK exports. Its average salary of £41,200 is 8 per cent above the national average. These are precisely the skilled regional jobs ministers want.

But the route into them is narrowing. Apprenticeships in engineering and manufacturing have fallen by around 40 per cent since the levy arrived in 2017. Engineering starts fell 25 per cent between 2017 and 2024, with level 2 – the entry point for school leavers – down by more than half.

There are currently roughly 48,000 live vacancies in manufacturing, while close to three-quarters of manufacturers say technical skills shortages are their biggest recruitment barrier.

Meanwhile, in the first three months of 2026, more than one million young people aged 16 to 24 were not in education, employment or training – 89,000 more than a year earlier. A record number of young people are outside work and study while employers cannot fill skilled vacancies. Those are not two separate problems. They are one problem, handled by two different parts of Whitehall.

An apprenticeship is the most direct connection between them. It pays from day one, carries no debt and ends in work the wider economy demonstrably needs. Visit almost any factory and you will meet plant directors, engineering managers and chief executives who started on the shop floor at 16 or 18. That is a ladder of opportunity, and it worked without anyone writing a strategy about it.

So what should the chancellor do in the autumn budget?

Start with funding bands, because they are doing the most damage. Many have never been uprated, while equipment, energy and instructor salaries have risen sharply. Where a band no longer covers training costs, the employer pays the difference – often several thousand pounds per apprentice – or the provider withdraws the standard altogether.

Make UK is asking the chancellor to raise the maximum band from £27,000 to £35,000 and prioritise advanced manufacturing occupations in the funding review. With 86 per cent of manufacturers expecting employment costs to rise again this year, asking employers to absorb a widening shortfall will produce fewer apprentices, not more.

Second, spend the money already collected. More than £1 billion raised from business for skills is not returned for training. Make UK estimates that ringfencing the growth and skills levy and immigration skills charge could fund around 234,000 additional starts. Employers find it hard to accept that a levy introduced to fund training depends on how much the Treasury snaffles away for other “priorities”.

Third, explore skills tax relief for employers who invest in training. Manufacturers receive tax support to invest in physical capital, but investment in people is not supported to the same degree. The Treasury should review existing relief on work-related training and consider how it could encourage investment in critical roles and skills.

Any relief must be laser-focused on technical training for critical roles.

None of this will hold together unless skills and industrial policy are written in the same room. An industrial strategy that names advanced manufacturing as a growth sector, alongside a funding system that makes its apprenticeships uneconomic to deliver, is not a strategy. It is two documents pointing in opposite directions.

There is a wider argument that outlasts any budget. For decades, we have described the technical route as the thing you do if university is not for you. Most young people do not go to university. They are not a residual category, and their route should not be treated as one.

The test for this Budget is not whether ministers restate their commitment to reindustrialisation. It is whether the system allows an employer in Harlow, Halifax or Hartlepool to take on an apprentice next September.

Build the rungs and the ladder of opportunity does the rest. Leave them out, and the ambition stays on paper while another cohort of young people is told to wait.

New ‘vocational GCSEs’ to replace KS4 technical awards

New nationally-set “vocational GCSEs” will be introduced in schools to replace existing technical awards, with league tables due to be adjusted to take account of them.

The new qualifications will sit alongside existing “traditional” GCSEs, with assessment for 16-year-olds “aligned to 16 to 19 progression routes including A Levels, T Levels and the new V Levels”.

Ministers have also announced a new “national mission” on work experience, which aims to create 200,000 placements.

Earlier in the summer, the government announced that it would create new “technical pathways” for 14 to 16-year-olds.

Education secretary Lucy Powell also suggested new GCSE-level technical qualifications may be needed as part of these pathways.

The vocational GCSEs will be rolled out as early as 2029 for some subjects, the government said, a year after technical pathways are due to be introduced.

Accountability measures will be adapted to recognise the new qualifications and give schools an incentive to offer them.

The government said local leaders, schools, colleges and employers will “play a key role in deciding the subjects to reflect skills needs”.

A consultation will be launched later in the year to shape what the qualifications will look like.

They will be developed alongside the ongoing review of existing GCSEs prompted by last year’s curriculum review, to create “complementary qualifications” and to avoid “duplication or unnecessary overlap”.

Subject options could include business management and finance, creative media production, digital tech, child development and building and construction, the DfE said.

‘Nationally-set’

The qualifications, which will be the same size as GCSEs, will have “nationally-set content, grading and assessment”, unlike existing technical awards.

The DfE said technical awards “currently vary by provider with no nationally set content, and do not consistently support progression to further study”.

Like existing GCSEs, assessment and grading for the new qualifications will be regulated by Ofqual. Subject content will be based on subject expert advice.

Technical awards were introduced in 2015 under the coalition government. They were designed as vocational qualifications “on par with GCSEs” that had to meet “tough new criteria on employer value”.

In 2024-25, 45 per cent of students in state-funded schools took at least one technical award.

Analysis by Schools Week found that around nine in ten mainstream schools in England offered them in that same academic year.

Not about ‘different routes’

Prime minister Andy Burnham said: “We’ve all heard someone say ‘school wasn’t really for me’ because they were not given the chance to study vocational courses as well as traditional subjects.

“That one-size-fits-all approach isn’t working, so we’re building an education system that values both academic and technical paths.”

Education secretary Lucy Powell said: “Our new Vocational GCSEs will give young people a stronger connection to the careers and industries shaping our economy, helping them discover and develop their talents while maintaining high standards across our education system.

“This is not about creating different routes for different children. It is about ensuring every child has access to a rich and ambitious education that opens doors, creates opportunity and prepares them for life beyond the classroom.”

‘Well-intentioned’

Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of ASCL, said the reform was “well-intentioned”, but said the government needed to “ensure schools have the staffing and resources” to deliver the new qualifications.

Ministers should also campaign to raise public awareness of vocational and technical routes, he said.

“Without this wider action, revamping qualifications will simply mean more upheaval and workload for hard-pressed schools, without actually achieving the objective of boosting vocational and technical pathways.”

He also welcomed the plans to change performance measures, but that there needed to be “flexibility between vocational and technical pathways”.

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of NAHT, said: “If delivered in the right way, these GCSEs have the potential to increase awareness among parents and students of alternatives to more traditional academic routes, and boost the status and esteem in which vocational and technical options are held.”

He added that they should avoid the pitfalls of existing GCSEs, where content became “unwieldy” and where there was “over-reliance on final exams”.

Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU, said: “Success is dependent on government providing sustained investment, resources, time and capacity for schools and teachers to develop and deliver high-quality vocational provision.

“These proposed changes will fall at the first hurdle unless there is sufficient investment in schools and the workforce.”

Meanwhile, David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said: “We are delighted to see this announcement in support of the Prime Minister’s promotion of young people having the opportunity to explore more vocational and technical options from 14.

“Whenever they are asked, young people say they want to learn relevant skills to help them see a route into work after school and college. This announcement should help to achieve that, resulting in more young people feeling engaged and motivated by education at a crucial stage in their lives.

“At the design stage, it will be crucial to work with the college sector to dovetail new KS4 qualifications with post-16 T levels, V Levels and occupational certificates to ensure they do help young people make a flying start at 16 when they be embark on their technical learning routes.

“Colleges are ideal partners for schools in delivering the new qualifications because they offer industry standard facilities, staff experience and links to employers which will mean the learning experience is authentically different to school and properly employment focused.

“The national mission on work experience should also embrace and bring into one place the promotion of post-16 work experience to employers to ensure that all young people on T Levels and other study programmes have access to high-quality work placements.”

200,000 work placements

The work experience mission will work alongside businesses, including the Good Business Forum, to boost work experience opportunities in schools.

Mayors and local authorities will help make links between schools and employers, which could include accountancy firms, digital media companies and construction companies.

Number 10 North, Burnham’s flagship northern headquarters, will also set up work experience placements for 14 to 16-year-olds this academic year.

From this month, schools have to ensure pupils get two weeks of work experience between year 7 and year 11.

WorldSkills 2026: Day 1 round-up – Smells like Team spirit

Team UK have been riding the emotional highs of waving the flag in front of thousands of people at last night’s WorldSkills opening ceremony.

The team of 28 UK champions were up early on Wednesday morning to compete in their first day of competition in Shanghai.

But they were running on sub-optimal sleep after celebrating the stunning opening of the competition into the early hours of the morning.

Chemical laboratory technician Ruth Douglas, from Northern Ireland, said the parade through the arena was a “surreal experience” for her.

“I’m quite a reserved person, I’m not really into big events, but honestly I loved every second of it. The team spirit and being in that atmosphere and that environment was so amazing,” she said.

“It really boosted my confidence for the week ahead,” she added.

Wigan-based Sam Jones, the UK’s refrigeration & air conditioning competitor, said that the build-up to the event was a highlight for him.

“Getting ready, everyone was a bit jittery and nervous but when we walked up onto the stage it was like something you see on TV,” he beamed.

Both Jones and Douglas had short tasks today, meaning they had a relaxed afternoon to prepare for busier days ahead.

Jones’ first task on day one was installing and commissioning an air-to-water heat pump at his workstation, which is used to heat water in a house, a steer away from his usual air-to-air heat pump training.

“I suppose that is the way the trade is going, so it has been nice to train and practice on that and work on something new,” he said.

Going into the subsequent days, Jones added that he was in a “good and positive” mindset for tomorrow and “smash it again hopefully”.

Douglas was also a little out of her comfort zone today with her four-hour task using an auto-titrator, a piece of equipment that determines the concentration of a substance in a solution.

“I’m used to doing manual titration,” she said. “It was a challenge using that equipment and getting it to do what I wanted it to do.”

Luckily, Douglas had previously had a day-long one-to-one training with the manufacturer of the auto-titrator, so was familiar with the technology.

Robot systems spotlight

Jason Scott, a former competitor in robot systems integration at WorldSkills Lyon, was also in Shanghai supporting the team.

Robot systems integration is a fairly new skill, having just been launched at WorldSkills in 2022. Scott, along with his teammate Charlie Carson, won a medal for excellence in 2024 and has been training the duo on the side of his day job.

The competition involves setting up an industrial robot to be automated for use in factories.

 

(left to right) Claire Riddle from Pearson, Pratham Lohia, Peter Jenkins, Marion Plant chair of WorldSkills UK

Peter Jenkins and Pratham Lohia have been training together for the competition for just six months, but Scott, who has been their assistant trainer and even let them sofa surf, has all the confidence in the duo to do well.

Lohia is the software czar of this skill, setting up the programme, while Jenkins works in “the cell”, making sure the machinery is up to scratch to perform the programme once launched.

“After this morning, it was absolute panic, but now they’ll hit the flow state; they’ll hit the rhythm of this competition. That will be really required especially for tomorrow when the tasks get harder and harder,” Scott explained.

These systems have hundreds of applications, from an Amazon warehouse to a Tesla factory, and are used by countless corporate customers.

Tomorrow, Jenkins and Lohia will run their programme but will be thrown “curveballs” as the hypothetical customers become more demanding.

At the end of the competition, the team will have to document their programme and present to their peers and experts.

Scott said his words of wisdom to this year’s team were to make sure their presentation was concise and eloquent and to enjoy every second of the experience.

“This will be a lifelong memory that they will never forget.”

We’re losing the Saturday job and gaining a bigger problem

Britain’s NEET rate looks better than it did twenty years ago. That should be reassuring. It isn’t.

In late 2005, around a million 16-24-year-olds were not in education, employment or training, a rate of 14.4 per cent. By late 2025 the count was slightly smaller and the rate had fallen to 12.8 per cent. But roughly six in ten of that group had never held a paid job, against four in ten twenty years earlier: some 155,000 more young people with no work history at all. The problem has not widened. It has deepened.

Something specific has disappeared. Young people employed outside full-time education fell from about 48 per cent of the age group in 2001 to 38 per cent in 2025. The Saturday job, the holiday shift, the weekend work alongside college: this was how a work history was built before one was needed. A young person who becomes NEET today arrives with nothing to show an employer.

That changes the diagnosis. Policy has focused on skills, work experience and making young people “job ready”. But does Britain lack employable young people, or employers willing and able to employ them?

The youth labour market is a market, and employability programmes add candidates to one side without adding vacancies to the other. A town with 100 openings and 130 credible applicants does not improve when a programme produces 50 more job-ready candidates. Some find work; others take jobs that would have gone to other young people, and the programme records the same outcomes either way.

Demand has weakened. Vacancies have been falling while employers have absorbed sharp increases in the cost of hiring: higher employer National Insurance, substantially higher minimum wages, stronger employment rights, each with strong arguments behind it.

But young workers are concentrated in labour-intensive sectors, where hiring is decided at the margin. The question is not whether an experienced worker is worth the minimum wage, but whether an inexperienced applicant, whose productivity is uncertain, is worth the risk.

Employer-side measures are different in kind: the government’s youth jobs grant and the jobs guarantee both make saying yes to an inexperienced applicant cheaper. But subsidies leak, through deadweight, paying for a hire that would have happened anyway, and displacement, a subsidised recruit filling a post another young person would have taken.

Kickstart delivered more than 160,000 placements, and its evaluation suggests roughly eleven additional young people in unsubsidised work two years later for every hundred who took part. Jobs supported and jobs created are not the same number.

Design decides how much leaks, and the largest example is hiding in plain sight. Employer National Insurance relief for under-21s is deadweight by construction: it is given for age, not for a hire that would not otherwise have been made, and it expires at 21, before many young people and most graduates make their first substantive entry. An employer weighing up someone who has never worked receives nothing. The disadvantage that matters is inexperience, not age.

That is the argument we put to HM Treasury this month in our Budget representation: redesign the under-21 relief as relief on the first 12 to 24 qualifying months of substantive employment for anyone under 25, so the incentive lands at the transition into work rather than on a birthday.

We also propose an interest-free apprentice employment advance of £5,000 to £7,500 for SMEs creating an additional apprenticeship, repaid where the recruitment succeeds, and a short, funded unit for that apprentice’s supervisor – because what often stands between an inexperienced applicant and a job offer is not cost but the capacity to bring someone on. None of it needs new delivery machinery.

One caveat applies throughout. Most young people who are NEET today are inactive rather than unemployed, and a growing share report health conditions. Neither more vacancies nor a wage subsidy will reach them: what they need first is a supported experience of work.

The strongest interventions combine both sides: a real employer, a real job and structured learning that raises productivity while the young person earns. That is a good apprenticeship, which is why the fall of more than 40 per cent in apprenticeship starts for 16–18-year-olds over the past decade is such a costly own goal.

Three things follow for government: stop subsidising youth as a category and start incentivising the transition into work; judge programmes against counterfactual outcomes rather than placement counts, publishing evaluations before schemes are closed and reporting how many previously NEET young people are still in work at 24 months; and protect entry-level apprenticeship starts.

Employers, including our own members, control those roles in short supply: the Saturday job, the holiday shift, the T Level placement, the entry-level apprenticeship.

The question is no longer only how Britain makes young people ready for work. It is how employers are made ready to offer it. The Budget is where that work can start.

New ‘class unit’ must decide what problem it’s trying to solve

Despite its slightly sinister name, the government’s decision to establish a “class unit” within the Office for Equal Opportunities to “drive forward government work to improve life chances” and to abolish the Social Mobility Commission will undoubtedly have supporters. But it is not clear who the class unit is going to help, largely because it has an unresolved problem of purpose.

So far, it has been described in terms of class; the white working class, low-income groups and the disadvantaged. This is muddled.  Those categories can only be treated as interchangeable if we assume class background is a fixed identity that is easily defined and closely aligned with income and disadvantage. It is not.

Class is very messy. It still matters in shaping identities. The Social Mobility Commission’s research found that 54 per cent of people say they are working class and 65 per cent say their family was. Yet what they mean by this varies enormously. Some define their class in terms of parents, others include grandparents. Many keep the identity even when their occupation and income suggest otherwise.

Consumption, culture and lifestyle are all influential in shaping perceptions of class. But so is social mobility. There have been huge changes in Britain’s occupational structure, particularly upwards. In 1971, 25 per cent of the male workforce were in professional jobs and 45 per cent in technical or routine occupations (working class).  Today, these figures are almost completely reversed.

Fewer people are working class and fewer come from working class backgrounds – despite what they say. Alongside this is a smaller but significant group who have experienced downward mobility.  Once they are added in, most people (two thirds) are in a different social class from their parents. And this pattern has remained remarkably stable for decades.

This raises an obvious policy question. Should interventions focus on class origins, even though many people from working-class backgrounds are progressing successfully without special assistance? Or should policy focus on those most likely to experience poor outcomes, regardless of where they started?

Low income is in some ways a simpler focus than class, and it is misleading to conflate the two. Every FE college knows there are occupations commonly perceived as working class that earn significantly more than many graduate professions. Train drivers, electricians and plumbers often earn more than primary school teachers, social workers and journalists. It would be contradictory for government to champion technical education while simultaneously implying that working-class status, low income and disadvantage are synonymous.

If ministers wish to focus on low-income households, they should just say that. There is a case for concentrating on persistent low income, which is different to being poor temporarily. The Commission is aiming to publish research which shows how “sticky” the welfare system really is. But even this is not the full story. Income alone cannot explain outcomes.

Many children from low-income families do extremely well. Chinese pupils on free school meals are an outstanding example. Outcomes between low income families differ.  Those in London generally perform better than those living elsewhere.  And it is difficult to correlate improved income with better outcomes, as the evidence from projects such as Baby’s First Years shows.

All of this points to the need for a much clearer definition of what we mean by disadvantage.  If it is not synonymous with class or income, what does it mean? And how do we remedy it?  The class unit will need to grapple with these complexities if it is to develop policies that genuinely expand opportunity.

The recent Independent Inquiry into White Working Class Educational Outcomes illustrates the challenge. Despite its title, the report does not actually analyse “white working-class” outcomes because it struggled with definitions and data limitations.  So it used free school meal eligibility as a proxy for low income and analysed achievement gaps on this basis.

The report’s claim to be examining class rests largely on qualitative research into attitudes and experiences. From this, it concludes that the education system is not designed to serve white working-class children and families effectively.  This conclusion sheds more heat than light on the problem, and the methodology highlights the dangers of clumsy class analysis.

Participants are divided into broad A/B and CDE groups, categories commonly used in market research. This produces average differences between the groups but obscures variation within them.  It assumes that skilled, high earning “Cs” hold the same views and values as “Ds” and “Es”.  There are likely to be differences and they may be important. Not all children in CDE households perform poorly. Why do some succeed while others struggle?

The report itself offers clues. It shows that too many children across all backgrounds spend too little time reading, but the problem is most pronounced among white children in the CDE categories. Reading is crucial to cognitive development, emotional, educational and later lifetime outcomes.

Understanding why some families foster strong reading habits while others do not would give policymakers a far more practical route to improving opportunities than broad claims about the class character of the education system.

English resits are treating the symptom, not the cause

Decades of data show GCSE English resit pass rates languishing at historic lows – hovering under 20 per cent overall, and barely 10 per cent for 18- and 19-year-olds. If Ofsted inspected the Department for Education on this dismal record, it would be a severe finger-wagging moment. Yet successive policy interventions have done nothing to alter the downward trajectory.

Why? Because sector leaders and policymakers have consistently tried to address the symptoms of under-performance rather than root causes. As with any quality-improvement journey, the golden rule remains: you can never fix under-performance by treating the symptom. You can only fix the root-cause issue. But what is it?

During an inspection, I once observed a level 2 beauty therapy class. Resplendent in their uniforms, the students arrived early, took great pride in managing their learning challenges with minimal instruction. They loved what they were doing.

An hour later, my next observation was a GCSE English resits class. Sitting in that room were those exact same beauty therapy students. Their behaviour was appalling, exhibiting complete disrespect for a hard-working teacher. They hated English. They endured it, and coped only by humiliating the teacher to avoid studying.

They simply did not see the need or relevance of what they were being taught.

This is not the fault of the students, nor is it the fault of dedicated English teachers. It lies squarely with the individual vocational curriculum designers. We cannot expect resit teachers to magically reverse years of ingrained failure in a couple of hours a week. With pass rates sitting at 19.8 per cent, the data proves they cannot.

To understand the real issue, look closely at Ofqual’s nine assessment objectives for GCSE English language. They are fabulous. They set out the expert, independent learning skills needed to succeed in any subject: reading critically, writing for a specific audience, structuring thoughts, evaluating evidence, listening, and presenting ideas. In fact, if you stripped away the subject title, those nine outcomes form a perfect blueprint for a level 3 course in expert learning skills. They are precisely what every employer and vocational teacher wants.

‘To make this really explicit, I’ve created a mapping from ‘the GCSE nine’ (and the Functional Skills 28) to the 18 essential expert learning skills we all want our students to develop.

Now run a quick thought experiment: imagine asking your vocational teaching staff if they know what these nine objectives actually are. In my workshops across further education, the answer is almost universally no.

After nearly 40 years in FE and skills, I have become convinced that students’ poor attitude towards English is the most significant root-cause issue to address. An issue that, sadly, begins much, much earlier in school life.

Before Covid, I spent Friday mornings sitting on tiny chairs in my local first school’s reception class, researching an early reading scheme I was writing.

One day the teacher said she would include Lucy for extra support. Lucy had been on book nine for three weeks and was struggling.

Think about that four-year-old. She can’t do it, but for three weeks she has been forced to reopen the same book again and again. She squirms, looks around and searches for distraction. Eventually, through repetition, she memorises the story and appears to read it. Then she moves to the even harder book 10…

Now wind back to the first book in the Oxford Reading Tree scheme. In the first weeks of reception, children often begin by learning to read the sounds s, a, t and p. So what do you think are the first words in book 1?

“Oh, Floppy!”

Incredible. We teach a skill, then give children material that bears no relation to that skill. Is it any wonder that Lucy, and perhaps a quarter of her class, begin to hate reading?

So what should FE do?

Every vocational teacher should proactively include at least one learning outcome from ‘the nine’ in every lesson. Make the development of these skills explicit. Show students that these are not “English skills”; they are the expert learning skills they need for work, life and whatever technology comes next.

And finally, here’s thought experiment number two: what do you think would happen to GCSE English resit rates if every vocational teacher proactively develops every learners’ ability to understand, use and master the nine expert learning skills (GCSE English outcomes) in all of their lessons?

This isn’t about GCSE English. Every quality improvement initiative requires the staff involved to make an investment: in this instance, it’s the time needed to redesign their scheme of work.

But for an improvement initiative to actually work, there has to be a pay-off for the ones making the investment. And the pay-off for vocational teachers is students who will find it much easier to learn in class and and learn through the production of their course work, leading to more commitment in lessons and easier marking workloads. It will allow teachers to enjoy their vocation again.

And by the way, the primary aim of my reading scheme is not to teach children to read, but to teach them to love reading. It’s my attempt to resolve this ultimate root-cause issue.

 

 

WorldSkills 2026: Final competition day – follow live


Team UK flies the flag as WorldSkills Shanghai officially opens

Li Qiang, premier of China’s State Council, has declared the 48th WorldSkills competition officially open at a high-energy opening ceremony in Shanghai.

Twenty-eight young people representing the UK paraded through the arena, led by flagbearer and aircraft maintenance competitor Elyot Harmston.

Four days of competition begin tomorrow morning.

Earlier today, Harmston told FE Week that Team UK was “feeling positive about the coming days”.

This year’s competition features more than 1,400 competitors representing 68 countries and regions.

Each team entered to roars of applause from thousands of supporters gathered at the Shanghai World Expo Cultural Centre.

From tomorrow, each competitor will be tested and judged in one of 64 skills, ranging from bricklaying to hairdressing, cyber security to restaurant service.

Medals on Sunday

Their performance over the next four days will be watched closely by judges, with the highest-scoring competitors in each skill earning gold, silver or bronze medals. The results will be revealed at the competition’s closing ceremony on Sunday, 27 September.

Competitors who score enough points to demonstrate an international standard of excellence will be awarded a medal of excellence.

At the last WorldSkills competition, in Lyon, France, in 2024, Team UK won three silver medals, one bronze and 12 medals of excellence.

Team UK in the parade of nations
Team UK in the parade of nations

Minister on her feet

All 68 teams completed the parade of nations, with Jacqui Smith, the skills minister, and Susan Acland-Hood, permanent secretary at the Department for Education (DfE), spotted on their feet when Team UK passed.

Guests at the ceremony included Anwar Ibrahim, prime minister of Malaysia, and Francis Hourant, president of WorldSkills International.

The parade was followed by dance and acrobatic performances representing the emergence of key skills in Chinese history, including woodwork, textiles, the age of steel and the age of information.

The competition’s slogan is “Master Skills, Change Your Future”.

Performances culminated in what organisers said was the world’s first dance performance between humans and humanoid robots.

A competitor and an expert then gave the WorldSkills oaths, promising to compete and officiate fairly and respect the codes of ethics and conduct.

Dance performance between humans and robots
Dance performance between humans and robots

‘The age of AI’

In a congratulatory message read at the ceremony by Shen Yiqin, a state councillor, president Xi Jinping said:

“Today, the new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation is advancing at a faster pace and bringing profound influence to global skills development.

“The WorldSkills competition closely aligns with industrial development and serves as a good platform for skills excellence and mutual learning.

“China will take this session as an opportunity to encourage and guide more workers, especially young people, to pursue a path to success through skills.

“China will deepen exchanges and cooperation with other countries to promote the WorldSkills movement and better serve global economic growth and livelihood improvement.

“I wish this session a full success.”

Hourant acknowledged the competitors’ families, teachers and industry partners who “stand with them”.

He added: “Together we are building more than a movement. We are shaping systems that build better futures. Education that turns a young person’s talent into direction and a nation’s ambition into reality.

“We stand at the edge of a new industrial revolution. The age of AI. The smarter machines become, the more human we must be. Creative. Resilient. Brave. The world’s most pressing challenges will be solved by skilled hands.”