Latest news from FE Week

Low-attendance college students aren’t ‘hidden NEETs’

The recent Children’s Commissioner report on ‘hidden NEETs’ highlighted the very real need for a national definition and record of post-16 attendance. However, it also made the claim that attendance recording in colleges is poor and needs to improve, that more than half of college students are ‘persistently absent’ and characterised young people with low college attendance as ‘hidden NEETs’.

This perspective has not gone down well with the FE sector. While the report’s recommendations are welcome, notably the call for free bus travel for all 16 to 18-year-olds, what was off-target was the implication that colleges are not consistently capturing or using attendance data.

In over 20 years of senior leadership in three different colleges, I must have interviewed and enrolled thousands of students and delivered hundreds of induction talks and assemblies of various kinds. In every single one of those talks, briefings and conversations I emphasised the importance of attendance and punctuality as part of our expectation of all students, set out clearly in the learning agreement that students sign. None of this was unusual. I was simply emphasising what all my colleagues were also saying across the college and across the sector.

In a blog I wrote in 2015, while I was a college principal in East London, I summarised our 10 key expectations of all students, backed up by a justification for each one. Entitled ‘sharing the secrets of success’ it was based on my welcome talk to all students.

It told them their attendance target should be 100 per cent, and that “being punctual is about respect; respect for your teacher, who has planned a full lesson, respect for fellow students, who are inconvenienced when you arrive late and of course, respect for yourself as a committed student”.

When students progress at the age of 16, it’s important to acknowledge that they have made a choice of where to study and could have enrolled elsewhere.

Once that decision is made, they need to sign up to the basic rules of the educational community they’re joining, not out of a fear of ‘punishment’ but because these are the rules that will make that community work for them and for everyone else. Conversely, if a student feels that the classes they’re attending are not working for them, or not worth attending, we need to listen and take their concerns seriously.

In every college I have worked in and in every college I know, high expectations of attendance are built into students’ learning agreements. And while we may not use the disciplinary methods of schools, such as detentions, we have a range of support systems to help students get back on track if their attendance slips, and there is the ultimate sanction of withdrawal, used as little as possible.

Colleges collect, record and use attendance data as part of their day-to-day work. They know that good attendance patterns need to be established early and they are ‘on the case’ quickly with students experiencing difficulties.

Some students will need more support and encouragement to establish good routines often with family and ‘wraparound’ support, and colleges often employ dedicated tutors or mentors to do this.

Clearly, 100 per cent sustained attendance is not achievable for everyone. Life gets in the way, people get sick, dependants need to be cared for, transport services break down. So realistically, aggregate attendance rates in the high 80s and low 90s can be consistent with students’ individual commitment to 100 per cent.

We also need to acknowledge the additional challenges faced by a sector which disproportionately serves communities facing barriers to participation and which is expected to spearhead the re-engagement of the disengaged. This will sometimes mean accepting low but improving levels of engagement rather than exclusion.

To describe young people with low college attendance as ‘hidden NEETs’ is misleading. Many of these students will be on a path to re-engagement in education after a period of disengagement. They are often ‘on their way in’ to education rather than ‘on their way out’.

If colleges have lower attendance levels than school sixth forms, this may be because they recruit the very students schools don’t retain after Year 11.

The fact that colleges offer an environment where these students feel welcome and supported is surely to be celebrated. Would we want colleges to stop the work they do to re-engage these young people and write them off in order to hit an arbitrary attendance target?

Colleges have no problem with being held to account for student attendance. They can see the need for a consistent national definition to make this possible and they are keen to help co-produce a system that properly recognises the work they do to engage and support the full range of young people they serve.

These important objectives can be achieved without misrepresenting colleges’ work.

Growth sectors need skills. Employer investment’s heading the wrong way

The UK’s modern industrial strategy identifies eight sectors with the potential to drive future growth – all of which depend on people with higher-level skills. At the same time, across these sectors and beyond, workers need to adapt to the changing skills requirements, as the AI and green transitions reshape the jobs people do.

While everyone wants to benefit from economic growth, not everyone is willing or able to invest in creating the skilled workforce needed to deliver it.

The latest evidence on employer investment in skills points in the wrong direction. The proportion of employers providing training fell by 6 percentage points between 2011 and 2024, while the average investment in training per employee fell from £2,400 to £1,700 according to the government’s 2024 employer skills survey.

Firms face genuine barriers to investing in training. They may struggle to meet the costs, be unable to release workers for training, or worry that workers will leave for another employer after being trained. These barriers vary across sectors and places. This raises the question of whether existing policy interventions are sufficient to help employers overcome the key barriers they face in different contexts.

In our new policy report exploring international approaches to increasing employer investment in training, the lesson is not that the UK should copy and paste another country’s policies. Rather, we need to adapt the principles underlying successful models to the UK’s own institutional context, where a lot of the relevant pieces are already in place.

Policies to incentivising investment in training cut across government departments and devolved regional governments, while the relationships between employers and education or skill providers are often local. This results in a coordination problem, where policy responses may be fragmented. We need stronger mechanisms to coordinate employers, education providers and government around shared priorities.

Two institutions in England could play a particularly important role.

First, local skills improvement plans (LSIPs) could be better aligned with the industrial strategy and local growth plans by adopting a whole-system approach and embedding higher education more systematically. There are lessons here from Wales’s regional skills partnerships, which demonstrate the value of bringing partners together around shared regional priorities. The latest guidance on LSIPs also provides opportunities to develop this approach.

Second, Skills England should have the capacity to convene partners and build new evidence. International experience, such as Canada’s Future Skills Centre, points to the value of institutions that not only oversees programmes, but also invest in innovation and experimentation.

Giving Skills England a stronger mandate for applied research, knowledge mobilisation and innovation would allow it to bring together government, employers, training providers and places, while building the evidence needed to direct support towards interventions that can have the greatest impact.

But better coordination is also needed across national and local government. We recommend that a dedicated cross-government policy workstream be created to produce actionable recommendations. The newly established Number 10 North, focusing on local economic growth and devolution, can also help improve the coordination between different levels of government.

We suggest that the organising principle for skills policy should be sectoral, particularly around the industrial strategy’s eight key sectors. Drawing on lessons from sectoral training programmes in the US, the government could enable places to pilot partnerships between employers, colleges and universities in sectors where there is sustained demand for skills and potential for higher wages and progression.

Sectoral employment programmes can also be linked to social impact investment opportunities where they can generate measurable improvements in employment and earnings for disadvantaged groups.

Financial incentives and public procurement conditions can provide additional levers to address barriers to employer investment. But these should be targeted towards firms, sectors or types of training where they are most likely to generate additional investment, rather than subsidising training that would have happened anyway.

The UK needs more than an individual new policy to implement. It needs national institutions that can build and share evidence, local institutions that can coordinate action, and policy tools that make it easier for employers to invest where the economy needs skills most.

Skills are essential for growth, but businesses and governments can only benefit from growth opportunities and successfully navigate AI and green transitions if we create a system that allows them to innovate, experiment and ultimately, invest in people.

WorldSkills 2026: Opening ceremony – follow live

‘Rushed rollout’ of V Levels risks damaging brand, survey warns

The first V Levels should be delayed until 2028 to avoid a “rushed rollout” that damages the new qualifications’ brand, a survey has suggested.

Research by the Edge Foundation found awarding organisations face a “tight turnaround” to develop subject materials ahead of the first three V Levels being taught from September 2027.

The charity’s report, published today, said the current timeline fails to provide “sufficient scope” for meaningful consultation with the FE sector on the design of the courses.

It also leaves a “very short timeframe” between the planned publication date for materials in spring next year and the start of teaching in September.

Researchers warned that widespread delivery problems caused by a “rushed roll out” could damage confidence in the new qualifications.

The report, ‘V Levels: Reflect and revise’, said: “Delaying roll-out by a year would allow providers a full academic year of dedicated preparation following publication of the first course materials.

“This would allow time for key preparatory activities such as curriculum redesign, employer engagement, staff recruitment, assessment planning, and development of marketing materials.”

The report also said the Department for Education needs more time to establish a “clear identity” for V Levels, while a large proportion of the college sector remains “unconvinced” about the case for scrapping applied general qualifications.

The Edge Foundation’s survey of 27 practitioners included responses from principals and vice principals, assistant principals, curriculum directors, and heads of department.

Representatives from eight colleges, Cambridge OCR and NCFE, the Federation of Awarding Bodies, the DfE, and the Treasury, attended the roundtable.

While the sample size is “small” and should not be read as representative of the sector as a whole, the consistency of several themes suggested a “clear indication of the issues that matter most”, the report authors said.

Survey responses showed there was “consistent concern” about the lack of detailed and timely information about the V Levels, such as who the typical learner would be, what gap they are designed to fill, and whether they are primarily a route to higher education, employment or apprenticeships.

One anonymised respondent said: “We need to know the structure, and which qualifications specifically will be run, so we can work out how we can possibly package them into a study programme.”

Four in five respondents said student recruitment and awareness was an anticipated delivery challenge, 74 per cent were worried about timetabling and curriculum design, and 67 per cent felt there is a lack of clarity on qualification structure.

Other concerns included staffing and workforce capacity, destination options and progression, and funding and resources.

Sector stakeholders also told the Edge Foundation that the DfE should publish sample subject combinations and progression pathways to help learners make “an informed choice”.

The “clearest” finding was low levels of preparedness, with only three respondents saying they felt prepared to teach V Levels.

Specific concerns included the lack of specifications, assessment information, teaching resources, or qualification combination rules.

Reflecting on their experiences of introducing T Levels, there was “broad consensus” that at least one academic year of dedicated preparation is needed before the first teaching of V Levels to ensure providers can implement them “confidently”.

Discussions from the roundtable also included questions about what problem V Levels are “trying to solve” amid uncertainty caused by the “rapidly evolving” level 3 qualification landscape.

The report said: “While flexibility was widely welcomed, several participants cautioned that introducing another qualification without clearly communicating its distinctive purpose risks increasing confusion for learners, parents and schools.”

College feedback included concern that offering programmes allowing V Level learners to combine with A Levels or other qualifications would require “substantial redesign” of their curriculum models.

This includes large multi-campus colleges and those that do not currently offer A Levels.

The feedback report comes days after the government’s update to its ‘post-16 pathways: implementation plan’, which delayed the planned defunding of three computing-related level 3 qualifications back by one year.

The remaining 154 level 2 and 3 qualifications – many of which overlap with the soon-to-be introduced V Levels and level 2 foundation and occupational certificates – will be defunded at the end of this year as planned.

The implementation plan has ruled out ‘partnering’ V Levels in the same subject area for at least the first two years, another key recommendation in The Edge’s report.

Officials confirmed, based on “initial scoping”, that none of the 13 V Levels due to be rolled out in 2027-28 and 2028-29 meet its criteria for partnering, which is only likely to be permitted in a “very limited number of circumstances”.

V Levels will have 360 guided learning hours (GLH) each, the same size as an A Level, while T Levels, which can be up to 1,360 GLH, will be the main level 3 qualification option allowing students to specialise in a single, occupation-focused subject.

Three V Levels in digital, education and early years, and finance and accounting are due to be launched in September 2027, followed by a further ten in 2028.

V Levels are the latest development in long running reforms to technical education at level 3 that include the introduction of T Levels in 2020 and their alignment with Skills England’s occupational standards.

The DfE declined to comment.

Let levy funds pay foundation apprentice wages and create VCSEs, says Fabian Society

Employers should be allowed to use growth and skills levy funds to cover half the wages of foundation apprentices, the Fabian Society has said, after just 160 young people started the new programme in its first nine months.

The Labour-affiliated think tank also wants 5 per cent of the annual revenue raised through the levy to be devolved to mayors to develop local pre-apprenticeship programmes, and for the government to introduce “VCSEs” as a vocational equivalent to GCSEs for 14- to 16-year-olds.

The recommendations were set out in a new report – ‘Pathways to Apprenticeships’ – which warned ministers risk missing their ambition to tackle youth unemployment unless they fix the “fragmented and opaque” route from education into an apprenticeship.

Apprenticeship starts among under-25s in England fell by 40 per cent, from 286,000 in 2014-15 to 172,000 in 2024-25, which represents the “largest decline among advanced economies”, according to the report.

Meanwhile, almost one million young people across the UK are not in education, employment and training (NEET).

The report comes as former Labour cabinet minister Alan Milburn nears the conclusion of his national review into young NEETs. Milburn has suggested his final report could recommend a “root and branch” review of the apprenticeship levy, now known as the growth and skills levy.

The Fabian Society said strengthening pre-apprenticeship pathways is key to efforts to reverse the decline in young people entering apprenticeships.

Redesign foundation apprenticeships

Foundation apprenticeships were introduced by ministers last year as entry-level paid jobs with structured training at level 2, lasting at least eight months.

They are currently available in construction, digital, social care, and engineering and manufacturing, and are intended to help young people progress into a full apprenticeship, skilled employment or further study.

But the scheme has got off to a slow start.

The government set an ambition for up to 30,000 foundation apprenticeship starts by July 2029, but just 160 young people started one between the scheme’s launch in August 2025 and April 2026.

The Fabian Society said the low take-up is partly due to limited employer demand, as well as a lack of interest from awarding organisations and training providers because of low volumes and relatively low funding bands.

It called for foundation apprenticeships to be offered at level 1 as well as level 2, expanded into all sectors and given higher funding bands to attract more providers.

Employers can currently receive incentives of up to £2,000 for hiring a young person onto a foundation apprenticeship, intended to cover costs including wages. A third of the payment is conditional on the apprentice progressing to a full apprenticeship within 90 days.

The growth and skills levy can be used to pay for the training of foundation apprentices, but not their wages.

The Fabian Society wants this rule changed so levy funds can cover half of a foundation apprentice’s wages.

It estimated this would save employers around £4,700 per young person and make them more likely to participate in the scheme.

The think tank estimated that its proposed reforms could eventually generate around 130,000 foundation apprenticeship starts over the next parliament.

The total cost of the foundation apprenticeships redesign, including both training and assessment and the employer wage subsidy, would be £236 million annually and would be covered by increasing and expanding the growth and skills levy to more employers.

The report repeated the think tank’s previous call for the levy rate to rise from 0.5 per cent to 0.7 per cent of payroll, while lowering the salary bill threshold at which employers become liable to pay it from £3 million to £1 million.

It estimated the changes would raise an additional £2.5 billion by 2029.

Give mayors levy funds to create bespoke pre-apprenticeships

Ministers recently set a precedent by handing £140 million of the apprenticeship budget to mayors to fund an apprentice brokerage pilot, which appears to be the first time apprenticeship levy funds have been used to fund initiatives beyond training and incentives.

The pilot will run in eight areas from autumn 2026 and is focused on supporting young people aged 16 to 24 who are, or are at risk of, becoming NEET.

The Fabian Society said the government should go further and task mayoral strategic authorities and other local areas with creating bespoke pre-apprenticeship training programmes.

Courses should be shorter than foundation apprenticeships – from eight to 16 weeks – and would be pre-employment provision linked to a guaranteed apprenticeship opportunity at a local employer, rather than being an immediate form of employment.

The Department for Work and Pensions should also allow young people who are on universal credit to continue claiming for the duration of the pre-apprenticeship, while mayoral strategic authorities should consider providing a stipend to NEET young people who are not claiming benefits.

These local pre-apprenticeship training programmes would be funded through devolving 5 per cent of the expanded growth and skills levy to create a new regional apprenticeship fund worth £311 million annually by 2029-30.

Jess Strenk, head of public affairs and stakeholder engagement at Youth Futures Foundation, said international evidence indicates that apprenticeships are particularly effective in getting young people into good work.

“Countries with higher youth labour market participation rates have much stronger links between education systems and employers, with opportunities for young people to take good vocational pathways earlier,” she added.

VCSEs to sit alongside GCSEs

New prime minister Andy Burnham unveiled plans over the summer to create new technical education pathways for 14 to 16-year-olds from September 2028.

Education secretary Lucy Powell has already said that new or reformed national GCSE-level qualifications may be needed as part of Burnham’s plans.

The Fabian Society said the government should develop a new qualification called VCSEs – to provide a vocational pathway alongside GCSEs.

The qualifications would provide a “broad introduction to a chosen occupational area, providing practical industry-specific knowledge, work-related skills, and a variety of interactions with employers”.

VCSEs should be available at level 1 or level 2, with students required to take them alongside a core of GCSEs, the report said.

The courses would be based on occupational pathways, enabling young people who want to pursue the vocational route to move directly into an apprenticeship or onto V Levels or a T Level.

Fabian Society highlighted that VCSEs – or the Vocational Certificate of Secondary Education – are being introduced from September next year in Wales.

Joe Dromey, report author and general secretary of the Fabian Society, said: “The prime minister is right to make getting more young people into skilled work a priority. But setting the ambition is not enough if the route into an apprenticeship does not work.

“Our findings show just how confusing parts of the current system have become. The government’s commitment to reform technical routes from 14 are an important step, but ministers now need to make sure these routes actually lead somewhere.

“That means fixing foundation apprenticeships, giving mayors the tools to build local pathways into real opportunities, and making it easier for employers to take on young people.”

The government was approached for comment.

We want medals, but WorldSkills is about much more

Team UK has landed in Shanghai and spent the weekend getting into the mindset to compete on the global stage, and I cannot wait to cheer them on. They are representing our country and our skills sector on the global stage and doing so at an extraordinary standard.

Every competitor wants to perform at their very best. We want medals, and we should never be embarrassed about saying so. Medals matter. They recognise exceptional performance, inspire others and show what UK skills excellence looks like on the global stage. We should be unapologetically ambitious for every member of Team UK. But WorldSkills is about much more than the medal table.

For each member of Team UK, this is a life-changing experience. They will test themselves against the very best young professionals in the world, under intense pressure and against exacting international standards. They will return with greater confidence, deeper technical expertise and a new range of skills ready to further their careers.

The competition matters to the UK for the same reason. WorldSkills gives us a rare opportunity to benchmark our technical education and training against the best in the world. It allows us to see where global standards are heading, understand how other countries are developing their young people and use those insights to raise standards in technical education and training right across the UK to benefit learners, educators, and employers.

We do this through our Centre of Excellence professional development programme in partnership with NCFE, which is already reaching more than 165 institutions and hundreds of thousands of learners and apprentices. I know first-hand the impact that this has had on my college, I have seen tutors remotivated, students inspired and attendance and achievement rates improved. WorldSkills UK also uses international expertise to power growth in skills through new teaching excellence package for Technical Excellence Colleges.

Team UK is competing in 25 of the 64 skills at WorldSkills Shanghai. While other countries are taking larger teams (Brazil and China both have 71 competitors, entered across all 64 categories) we have made a strategic choice to take a smaller team and focus our resources on spreading the benefits of international best practice to help young people thrive in the world of work.

There are two sides to the WorldSkills coin – competing at the highest level so that we understand what it takes to be the best and then taking international best practice back to the UK. Both are valuable and you can’t have one without the other.

None of this would be possible without the extraordinary commitment of the people behind Team UK, the training managers who give up evenings and weekends, the employers and training providers who invest their time and expertise, and the WorldSkills UK staff who work tirelessly to prepare and support the team and the official partner of Team UK, Pearson.

So, my ask of the sector is simple: get behind Team UK this week. Celebrate their ambition, recognise everything it has taken to reach this point, cheer them on as they represent the UK among the very best in the world. But let’s also make sure we bring home the learning, insight and ambition that can transform opportunities for young people across the UK.

The AI jobs debate is missing the skilled trades

For all the debate about AI and the future of work, we are still viewing the workplace through a narrow lens. Much of the public conversation has focused on those most visibly affected: software engineers, tech employees, knowledge workers and office personnel.

That debate matters. But it misses a larger and more immediate reality.

AI is also reshaping occupations rarely placed at the centre of the technology debate: skilled trades, public sector jobs and service roles. These are the people who maintain equipment, work in healthcare, keep infrastructure running and deliver the essential work societies depend on every day.

At the same time, demand for skilled workers is growing and will continue to grow as the world’s population ages and shrinks. It is time we focused more sharply on their future in the AI era.

Our new research report, For Every Future: Preparing Early-Career Skilled Trade, Technical and Service Talent for an AI-Infused World, finds that the remaking of skilled jobs and rising demand for these workers are on a collision course. From that emerges a new challenge: a rapidly developing triple capability gap.

The first gap concerns new capability. People entering skilled trade, technical and service roles increasingly need to understand how to work with AI: when to use it, when to question it and how to apply it safely and responsibly.

An early-career construction worker, for example, will increasingly work alongside AI-powered safety systems. They must know when to act on an alert, when to verify it and when to trust their own judgment if the technology misses a hazard.

In pharmacy, AI can support dispensing and stock management, but it cannot replace clinical judgment. Technicians still need the expertise to identify risks, challenge outputs and intervene when patient safety demands it.

The second gap is a consequence of the first. As AI reshapes roles, workers must strengthen the distinctively human capabilities it cannot replicate, including collaboration, communication and adaptability. These will become a primary source of value in an AI-augmented workplace.

The final gap concerns experience-based knowledge. Skilled occupations have always depended on practice, observation and learning from experienced colleagues. Workers learn how to spot the problem that is not in the manual or recognise the sound of broken machinery.

As experienced workers retire or leave in record numbers, that practical knowledge is becoming harder to access just as it becomes more important.

This is not simply an AI skills challenge. It is an expertise challenge: young workers risk lacking old and new knowledge at the same time. How do we skill people in an era that is AI-rich but experience-poor?

Closing the triple capability gap requires three things: role-specific AI literacy; stronger human capabilities, such as communication and collaboration; and more opportunities for experienced workers to pass on institutional knowledge through effective mentoring and structured knowledge bases.

Judgment. Ethical responsibility. Practical know-how. The capabilities that pass from one generation to another.

Our research found that AI is not replacing skilled workers. It is exposing how unprepared we are to train them for the workplace of the future.

Left unaddressed, the gap risks leaving a generation behind. We could have undertrained workers in safety-critical jobs and suffer real economic damage if employers cannot find, develop and retain the people they need.

But the opportunity is significant. AI can help people learn faster, access knowledge more easily and solve problems in new ways. It can improve productivity and open new pathways into meaningful careers. That will happen only if we are intentional about how expertise is built, training evolves and human judgment remains central.

Employers, educators, policymakers, industry bodies and technology providers must work together to redesign pathways into skilled work. We need training that reflects modern workplaces, stronger links between learning and practice and better ways to capture experienced workers’ knowledge before it is lost.

The future of AI will not be determined by technology alone, but by whether people are prepared to use it well. This report is a call to widen the conversation, recognise the essential workers too often excluded from it and ensure that, as work changes, people are not left behind.

Mayors’ 16-19 budgets won’t cover apprentices

Mayors will not take control of growth and skills levy funding for apprenticeships under the government’s 16-to-19 devolution reforms, skills minister Jacqui Smith has confirmed.

Ministers are preparing to hand mayors control of 16-to-19 education budgets, including funding for classroom-based qualifications in colleges.

But yesterday, Smith told the House of Lords levy-funded apprenticeships for 16-to-18-year-olds would be excluded.

Conservative peer Lord Willetts, a former universities minister, said there was a “tide of opinion in favour of devolving funding”, but added: “This is causing some concern.”

He quoted education secretary Lucy Powell’s statement last week that “for the first time, mayors will have control of the 16-to-19 education budget”.

Willetts asked whether this included “control of the expenditure of the apprenticeship levy for 16-to-18-year-olds” and classroom-based provision.

Smith replied: “Obviously, we are still working on the details of that, but no, it does not extend to the growth and skills levy provision for apprenticeships for 16-to-18-year-olds.

“It will cover the 16-to-19 budget as it applies, for example, to post-16 qualifications, including classroom provision in colleges.”

Prime minister Andy Burnham announced the transfer of 16-to-19 funding in July.

Proposals, legislation and an implementation timetable are due in a white paper alongside the autumn budget on 28 October.

Democratic Unionist Party peer Lord Weir of Ballyholme warned that local authorities had been “quite inconsistent” in supporting young people at risk of becoming NEET who did not qualify for an education, health and care plan.

He asked how ministers would ensure “consistent and full access to pathways” regardless of where young people lived.

Smith admitted this was “one of the big challenges” of devolution. Ministers were discussing with mayors the relationship between national entitlements and local flexibility while ensuring equality of access, she said.

Further levy changes possible

Smith also hinted at further growth and skills levy reforms following Alan Milburn’s review of young people not in education, employment or training.

Her comments came a day after an FE Week investigation examined Milburn’s suggestion that the levy should face a “root and branch” review.

Conservative peer Lord Johnson of Marylebone, another former universities minister, cited a Financial Times report that Milburn was minded to recommend the levy’s abolition, and asked how the government would replace the “£4 billion or so” it raised.

Smith said Johnson knew “as well as any of us that you cannot necessarily believe everything that you read in the newspapers”.

But she added: “There may well be further changes to the growth and skills levy, but we have been clear that we want to pivot it to young people.”

Labour peer Baroness Morris of Yardley, a former education secretary, asked how ministers would deliver mounting work experience expectations for young people aged 14 and over.

She recalled the former business education partnerships, which brokered links between schools and employers.

Smith said mayoral and strategic authorities would need support “to be able to broker those links locally” for T Level placements and other work experience.

She described Morris’s ideas about brokerage support as “very important and something we are reflecting hard on”.