The government is taking a wrecking ball to 16-19 education by scrapping BTECs

Does it really matter if the Secretary of State for Education promises one thing and then the government does another? Does it matter if it is actually one of the minister’s successors who breaks the promise? Does it matter even more if the promise was actually made by the minister to the House of Lords no less?

Well, this is exactly what has happened as a result of the government publishing its latest guidance on reforms to level three qualifications – or as we might more accurately refer to it – the slashing and burning of BTECs.

This new guidance, which was quietly sneaked out in early January, indicates that nearly two-thirds of the hugely popular and successful Applied General Qualifications (of which BTECs make up perhaps 80%), are going to be scrapped from 2025 and 2026.

And that government promise? It was made by Nadhim Zahawi, the education minister in April 2022, who wrote a letter to the Lords stating that “only a small proportion” of BTECs were going to be defunded under the government’s plans to persuade young people to take a T level qualification instead. One doesn’t need to have availed of Rishi Sunak’s ambition of studying maths until 18 to know that a “small proportion” and “two-thirds” are very different amounts indeed.