A cross-party group of Lords have urged the education secretary to withdraw “disastrous” plans to axe funding for recently reformed applied general qualifications.
Six peers, including two former education secretaries and two ex-universities minister, warn that scrapping these “popular” alternatives to A-levels and T Levels would have a damaging impact on social mobility, economic growth and public services.
Writing to Gillian Keegan, the Lords “express deep concerns” and “disappointment” that commitments made to them about the scale of the government’s level 3 reforms “do not appear to have been met”.
The letter follows an FE Week article and Protect Student Choice campaign analysis which revealed more than half of the 134 applied general qualifications, like BTECs, currently available to and taken by around 200,000 young people and included in the DfE’s performance league tables would be ineligible for funding from 2025.
