It was an honour return to the Education Select Committee this morning in my capacity as Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher education to give evidence to their ongoing inquiry on post-16 qualifications and skills.
I began by setting out my passion to create a ladder of educational opportunity for every student – a vision I know the Department for Education shares.
As the Minister for Skills, I am committed to creating parity of esteem for skills and vocational education. This is why the Government is spending £3.8bn over this Parliament to support and boost skills learning opportunities, making the ladder of opportunity available to everyone.
I am also delighted that T-Level Transition programme aims to prepare pupils for the new gold-standard T-Level qualifications. It is in its early stages, but already we are seeing 49% of students go on to do Level 3 qualifications after completing this first stage.
During the Committee session, I was also able to champion my favourite phrase - “degree apprenticeships”. The Government have allocated an additional £8m of funding to support providers and we are seen the uptake increase by almost 150,000 since 2014.
Finally, I was able to re-affirm that the Department for Education is not scrapping all BTECs. Around 5,000 have been removed because of low-to no enrolment in these courses after lengthy consultation with providers and awarding bodies; however, BTECs remain in place and will continue to do so whilst T Levels are rolled out.
