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Russell Lynch: A-Levels get the headlines but T-Levels are key to growth

Russell Lynch: Chancellor Phillip Hammond found an extra £500 million for technical education in March’s Budget: Getty Images
Russell Lynch: Chancellor Phillip Hammond found an extra £500 million for technical education in March’s Budget: Getty Images

First, congratulations to all those who got the grades they wanted in Thursday’s A-Level results; if you didn’t, console yourself with the fact that the likes of Sir Richard Branson and Lord Sugar did pretty well without them.

But the acres of headlines devoted to the “gold standard” qualification contrasts with the relatively scant coverage given to the difficult birth pangs of arguably much more significant reforms in the sector: namely the overhaul of the UK’s technical education regime.

This kind of stuff tends to get so little attention that Tony Blair once said that if he wanted to declare war without anybody noticing he’d do it in the middle of a speech about further education, but it is incredibly important.

To recap: in July 2016, Lord Sainsbury’s review of the technical education sector called for the replacement of thousands of different qualification with a new streamlined set of T-Levels offering routes to skilled employment in 15 areas ranging from agriculture to engineering and digital businesses.

They were to be A-Level equivalent, designed by employers with high-quality work placements and would put an end to the traditional snobbery over “vocational” qualifications.

Reform of the current mishmash on offer is badly needed, for as Lord Sainsbury pointed out, the UK is near the foot of the league table among developed economies on “professional and technical” skills.

Chancellor Phillip Hammond found an extra £500 million for technical education in March’s Budget, but the skills minister Anne Milton announced last month (again to virtually no coverage) that the new qualifications are being delayed for a year until 2020 amid complaints from the awarding bodies that the original timetable was totally unrealistic.

More worrying still, there are reports in the specialist press from last month of a lack of appointments from business to the advisory panels to help develop the new qualifications, which were originally due to begin work in March.

Granted, getting things right rather than rushing them out makes sense. But when the lion’s share of the Government’s energy is devoted to the monumental challenge of Brexit, there’s a real risk of taking its eye off the unglamorous long-term stuff.

Things such as T-Levels don’t win votes beyond a five-year election cycle, but done properly, they’ll have a real impact on the UK’s still-dire productivity performance.

As Lord Sainsbury himself noted a year ago, the potential benefits of increasing the skills base are huge. He wrote that if all young people in the UK acquired basic skills by 2030, then the economy could be 13% or £3 trillion bigger by the end of the century.

That’s a number to make the politicians sit up and take notice.