Gordon Brown has urged Sir Keir Starmer to end the “wild west” of post-16 technical education, which is “suppressing talent” amid the UK’s skills shortage.
The former Prime Minister has called on his successor to accelerate changes to post-16 training, including the roll-out of T-levels to a target of 100,000 pupils.
Writing the foreword of a report titled ‘Delivering skills for growth’, Brown wrote that T-levels – which were developed alongside businesses and should include a nine-week industry placement – could “create a new skilled workforce for the next three-quarters of our century”.
But he also dubbed them “probably the best-kept secret in the education world” and warned a “veritable wild west” of competing courses left pupils “bewildered” and “suppresses talent”.
The WPI Strategy report called on the government to accelerate the rollout of T-levels by cutting public funds for lower quality and overlapping courses – and that improving UK skills matching to OECD best practice levels could see a five per cent national productivity boost.
School leavers not pursuing A-levels face an array of 12,000 vocational qualifications, the report found, with no one set of national standards aimed at meeting employers’ needs.
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This is despite the government launching the first T-levels in 2020, following the recommendations of an independent review in 2016, led by Lord David Sainsbury.
But the wider rollout of the remaining courses – two-year post-GCSE technical qualifications for 16-18 year olds – has been delayed multiple times, and criticised by regulator Ofsted.
“Low-quality technical courses might be cheap to teach and easy to pass, but they suppress talent… employers don’t really value such courses when taking on workers,” Brown added.
“It would be calamitous and costly to slow the rollout of T-levels or pause the changeover of funding from lower quality to higher quality qualifications.”
Both ex-minister Lord Sainsbury and Labour’s former executive policy director Claire Ainsley also backed the report, urging Starmer to prioritise skills to deliver economic growth.
A Department of Education (DfE) spokesperson said: “Under the system we have inherited too many young people leave education without the qualifications they need to get into high-quality apprenticeships and good jobs.
“We will transform the education system so young people get the opportunities they deserve. We support T- Levels as a high-class vocational qualification which give young people a firm foundation for their future, and will confirm our next steps shortly.”