Government announcement on technical pathways from age 14: IFS response

Imran Tahir, a Senior Research Economist at the IFS, said:

“The problems this announcement is designed to solve are clear: the share of young people not in education, employment or training has been rising, and many workers are in jobs mismatched to their qualifications. The vocational education system is a sensible place to look for part of the answer to these issues. This government is certainly not the first to reach for this lever –  constant reform has been the order of the day in recent decades. But today’s announcement differs by looking much earlier in life, at age 14. That brings its own challenges, not least the risk of asking young people to specialise too soon, though there are other countries which specialise even earlier. Getting employers to engage with designing – and perhaps helping to deliver – training programmes will be vital to their success. Recent experience with T Levels shows how challenging it can be to secure their involvement in delivery.”

Skills mismatch

The new Prime Minister has announced plans to introduce technical pathways in schools from age 14. The goal is to tailor these to the needs of local industries and combine skills training with practical work experience.  

Currently, there is a mismatch for many young people in England between the training they receive and the work they go on to do:

• The number of graduate jobs has not kept pace with the expansion of higher education in many places. More than half of graduates in Cumbria and Lincolnshire work in jobs that do not require a degree. England has the highest level of overqualification among OECD countries: in 2022, 37% of workers were overqualified for their jobs, compared with an OECD average of 23%.
• 41% of workers in England work in jobs that are not aligned to their area of study. This is not much higher than the OECD average of 38%. But countries with strong vocational pathways linked to local employers, like Germany and the Netherlands, have achieved lower field-of-study mismatch (33% and 31% respectively).

The latest in a long line of reforms

This government – like others before it – will hope that a stronger technical education system with greater engagement from employers will reduce this mismatch. However, technical education has already undergone repeated recent reforms:

• There has been a wave of reforms to technical education for young people in recent years, including ongoing reviews of post-16 qualifications and the introduction of T Levels in 2020, with a new programme of V Levels due to start in September 2027. These reforms have been aimed at improving the quality and recognition of vocational qualifications. But constant churn imposes costs, making it more difficult for schools, young people and employers to understand the options available and recognise the value of different qualifications.
• Recent reforms have mostly focused on post-16 qualifications, rather than the pre-GCSE ages covered by today’s announcement. But past reforms with similar aims have had limited success. The 14-19 diploma, introduced in the late 2000s, was dropped within a few years amid low take-up.  
• More recently, the rollout of T Levels has been hampered in part by difficulties in securing enough industry placements. This underscores the importance (and the challenges) of getting employers to engage in the design and delivery of more technically-focused education.  

Making career choices at an early age

Earlier specialisation comes with risks – that a local industry sees a downturn in hiring, or simply that a young person realises that a particular path isn’t for them. Preserving a core set of courses (in maths, English and science) will mitigate some of the risk, but whether and how easily students can “switch” between routes (technical-academic, or across different technical fields) will be important for young people making decisions about their specialisms.  

And if schools specialise (in academic or technical qualifications, or in technical qualifications in different fields), then young people may need to start thinking about these questions even earlier, when making decisions about what secondary school to attend.