‘Skills, skills, skills: Why Labour should embrace technical education’

The Labour government has rightly made growth its number one priority. Unpinning this, made clear by both the new Prime Minister and Chancellor, needs to be nothing less than a home-grown economic revival that ensures Britain is able to pay its way in the world.

Hand in hand with that revival needs to be a revolution in the way we deliver skills and training.

Across the four pillars of Labour’s Industrial Strategy: the foundational sectors of our economy, the global champions that are the envy of the world, the innovative sectors offering future successes and the everyday economy on which we all depend, we face critical skills shortages.

As the former Labour Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, makes clear in his foreword to our new report, Delivering Skills for Growth, “..if the challenge 25 years ago was summed up as ‘education, education, education’, today it is ‘skills, skills, skills’.”

To meet this challenge we are calling for a renewed introduction of T-levels and reforms to other Level 2 qualifications which would fundamentally change this landscape, providing a clear and valuable pathway for our future workforce.

Meeting the challenges

The UK is an outlier in technical education and faces a critical skills gap, with 40% of workers in jobs they are not properly qualified for. In 2022, 36% of all vacancies were due to skills shortages, up from 16% in 2011. By 2030, the UK may face a shortfall of 1 million engineers.

These shortages are leaving businesses with little room to grow, forcing them to scale back activities and costing the economy up to £39 billion each year. Aligning our skills system with OECD best practices could boost productivity by 5%, crucial for reigniting growth.

Our report underscores the urgency of this by recommending a kick-start to that skills revolution. The UK’s economic growth hinges on a skilled workforce ready for future demands.

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But for too long, those not taking the A-level route have faced a post-16 education system mired in confusion.

Students face a choice of over 12,000 vocational qualifications that often overlap, with little idea of what future opportunities these qualifications offer if they invest their time, effort and dedication.

The attraction of lower-quality technical courses might be that they are cheap to teach and easy to pass, but the reality is that they are suppressing talent rather than releasing it. Employers don’t value such courses when hiring new workers.

No wonder students, parents, and employers are left bewildered.

Labour should target 100,000 T-Level enrolments

As our report shows, T-levels have the potential to create a new skilled workforce, offering good pay in sectors with key shortages and in emerging industries. Developed with employers, T-levels ensure students acquire market-relevant skills, and include a 9-week industry placement directly linked to even more practical and relevant skills.

Early outcomes are promising, with many T-level graduates securing jobs with their placement organisations. Employers like Lloyds Bank have shown strong support, increasing their T-level student intake from 6 to 120 in just two years.

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While T-levels are a vital step forward, BTECs and other qualifications can still play a strong role   both for students not yet ready for more rigorous T-levels courses, provided there is reform to ensure they meet national standards and don’t overlap with T-levels.

Despite their potential, T-levels are underutilised due to low awareness. A DfE survey in June 2023 revealed that only half of parents and pupils were aware of T-levels. The new Government has a chance to fix the failures of the last Government and prioritise raising public awareness and accelerating the rollout of T-levels.

There should be a target of at least 100,000 T-level enrolments by the end of this current Parliament. This aligns with Labour’s mission to drive economic growth and prepare a workforce for high-demand sectors like health, construction, and digital technologies.

Our report recommends a number of key actions for Government: boost the roll-out and awareness of T-levels, improve access through the T-levels Foundation Programme, and continue with existing reforms to ensure the content of every taxpayer-funded post-16 qualification meets national standards.

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By embracing and expanding T-levels, Britain can realise the potential of the transformative changes the Government has planned and achieve the sustained economic growth we need without a skilled workforce.

We can deliver a highly-skilled domestic workforce competitive both at home and on the global stage. Most importantly, we can give all young people the post-16 opportunities and life chances they deserve.

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