‘Functional skills aren’t functioning’

Lucy Powell was right to outline reforms to how we assess English and maths. Functional Skills qualifications just aren’t functioning. But it’s vital that the new “stepping stone” qualifications are led by the labour market and have the confidence of employers and young people.

Over the period in which the UK’s performance in maths and English rose against international peers in the OECD’s PISA ratings – which are important for understanding how effective education systems are at preparing students for the modern economy and real-world challenges  – the same assessments found that our young people were some of the least satisfied with their lives in the world. Something has been going very wrong with how our young people are being supported to prepare well for their futures.

The Tory theory of education lived and died on its “one size fits all” approach to achievement: young people were held to have potential in exactly the same way. Not all young people achieve the same standards at the same time, and when you hear from employers, as I did in my previous role as Shadow Skills Minister from 2023 to 2024, that the system is too inflexible and that they are prevented from bringing talented young people onto their apprenticeships, it is the responsibility of government to respond.

READ MORE: ‘We are failing working class children. We can change that’

Around a third of learners still fail Level 2 Functional Skills maths. We do need to see core numerical literacy and proficiency in reading and writing – and for that to involve good applied learning that young people are able to use in their work and in their lives. But for some learners, the Level 2 qualification is too blunt an instrument: it assumes that all learners will need a broad understanding of maths and English, regardless of where they’re heading. Repeated retakes and failures have not just slowed down young people making progress in different ways, but have also failed to recognise that the development of core maths and English skills can take place alongside learning a broader skill through an apprenticeship.

The outdated combination of a demanding qualification serving as an entry requirement for even intermediate apprenticeships has not just been demoralising, as UCL research has now shown. It is also a factor contributing to the NEET crisis before us.

Responding to the challenges we face, and to changing cultural attitudes towards young people’s talent and development, demands new thinking, led by the voices of young people and employers too. Too often, I heard from young people that they simply hadn’t been able to engage with maths at school, but that when it was taught in a different way in the workplace, it made much more sense to them. One young simulation technician I met while visiting colleges around the country – someone who creates scenarios for doctors and nurses to train with – was so inspired by his training and career path that he retook his maths and English GCSEs of his own volition. Success, purpose and relevance to his job gave him a reason to renew his academic learning, picking up from where he had reached at school – and for him, as for many, that sequence of events mattered.

This will never be about lowering standards for working-class people, as some of our critics argue. It is about creating opportunity through more flexible and pragmatic pathways. A 16-year-old who wants to work in the energy sector may connect with maths in a completely different way from someone who wants to go on to work as an actuary.

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Our reforms should therefore be co-developed with employers, trade unions and education experts. A culture of applied learning should also become much more the norm, so that learning the fundamentals becomes part of the experience of preparing for an exciting job, and the self-worth that brings, rather than simply another lesson. Stepping-stone qualifications should teach rigorous, transferable literacy and numeracy, but through contexts that make their purpose visible: calculating materials on a construction project, interpreting data in a care setting, communicating with customers, understanding measurements in manufacturing or analysing energy consumption.

And crucially, they must be stepping stones rather than educational cul-de-sacs. A more vocational route at 16 should never mean shutting the door on further study at 20, 25 or 40. The system should make it straightforward for people to build on what they have already learned.

That is both good pedagogy and consistent with Labour values. Opportunity belongs to everyone, but opportunity does not require everybody to travel along the same road. There is dignity in every form of skilled work, and there should be rigour in every route into it.

For too long, we have confused high expectations with identical expectations at every stage of a young person’s journey. The Milburn Review has to be a wake-up call that the systemic issues that have prevented us from joining up efforts to address barriers to learning and improve access to the world of work demand new thinking. The next phase of education reform should be about finding the route through which every young person can discover what they are capable of, and giving them a reason to keep going.

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