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.
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