V Levels Must Stand For Variety

Did you know that Sainsbury’s stocks over 30 different types of baked bean? There are low-sugar and non-sugar options, organic versions, and several with added extras like mini-sausages. The main brand, Heinz, is famous for its “57 varieties” slogan.

This is mentioned because Lord Sainsbury, whose great-grandfather started the grocery business,  chaired the highly influential Independent Panel on Technical Education. Its 2016 report was one of the first to  raise concern about the over-proliferation of vocational qualifications in the UK. The figure of 900 qualifications, put forward in the Post-16 White Paper as the main justification for introducing a simplified system of V Levels for 16-18 year old students, is a direct descendant of the 3,000 Level 3 vocational qualifications available to young learners that the Sainsbury Review counted. This, the report argued, was confusing to employers and applicants, and inefficient.

No-one would argue that thousands of vocational qualifications is too many. But the idea that this can be reduced to just a few dozen is, to say the least, questionable. Sainsbury recommended 15 Technical Education routes as a way of simplifying the field, covering both apprenticeships and classroom based courses. Despite the recommendation being accepted, and following a decade of sustained effort, there are currently 917 different apprenticeships available and over 700 apprenticeship standards. In 2017, Frontier Economics, in a report commissioned by the government, noted that in Denmark there are 111 VQs, in Singapore 331, and in the Netherlands, 612.

This is for the simple reason that in the modern economy there are hundreds of professional occupations, many of them requiring a qualifications framework that is tailored to staff at several different levels of seniority. Most of them are much too specialised for 16-18 year olds taking their first steps towards a technical or vocational career, but as successive waves of simplifiers have discovered, it’s a huge and tricky undertaking to find a balance between skills training courses relevant to future employers and broad based introductory courses suitable for beginners.

Given the inherent difficulty in designing vocational qualifications that are simultaneously general and specialised, considerable progress has been made since 2016, so that now there are just 138 Applied General (BTECs, City & Guilds, OCRs, etc) subjects, far from the misleading figure of 900. So what exactly is the problem that V Levels are going to solve? How are they going to simplify the current range of Applied General courses -  many of which are very popular and in high demand - without unnecessarily reducing student choice?

Take plumbing, for example. Sainsbury found 33 plumbing qualifications available for young people; now there are closer to half that number. There are qualifications at three different levels, offered by four Awarding Bodies, with fast-track versions, and some combining plumbing with domestic heating installation. For the student, training provider, and employer, this really isn’t that complicated or confusing. There is always room for clearer, simpler qualification design, but not at the expense of reducing the variety of skills training essential for a complex labour market.

The example provided in the Post-16 White Paper illustrates the danger vividly. A student taking a V Level in Finance and Accounting, alongside A Levels in Geography and Environmental Science, will gain “hands-on experience of tasks valued by employers in the finance sector”, but we are told, “may move on to an apprenticeship, working in the renewables sector”. Taking a V Level in Finance and Accounting will therefore not necessarily be a stepping stone to a career in Finance and Accounting, presumably because it won’t develop the practical accountancy skills needed. So what’s the point of taking it? Why not just do an A Level in Business instead?

The V in V Levels must stand for variety. There will need to be lots of them to cover the full range of occupational clusters. For the 16-18 year old learner they must provide a progression route from Level 1 and 2 courses, and a platform for progression to further skills training, either at a higher level or in more specialised industry-relevant subjects. For this to happen the content of V Levels will need to be mapped against whichever vocational qualifications a young person will be expected to have to be employable in the industry to which they aspire, and decisions taken about incorporating key industry standards. A V Level in Finance and Accounting will have to include elements of the skills training in preparing accounts that’s a core element of the AAT Level 3 Diploma in Accounting if it is to prepare students for a career in accounting. Alternatively, if as the White Paper suggests, the main purpose is not to develop specialist occupational skills but “core skills such as analytical thinking, digital literacy and communication”, let’s be clear that V Levels are essentially a preparation for technical and vocational training, not the thing itself.

The White Paper is full of really positive proposals for enhancing the FE sector, but the introduction of V Levels is a potential fly in the ointment. The danger is that it will waste a huge amount of time and money, and confuse the market by replacing familiar and popular brands with untried newbies. Worse still, it will distract attention from the real problems in 16-18 vocational education - teacher shortages, inadequate funding, too many small school sixth forms offering limited choices, and weak careers advice. A re-badging of existing Applied Generals with a bit of streamlining would be a much more sensible approach, and far less of a distraction.