A 10-year plan: Prime minister Rishi Sunak wants those pupils entering primary school this term to be the first cohort to take the new the Advanced British Standard (image: Adobe Stock)
This single new 16 to 19 qualification will see students taking a larger number of subjects at “major” and “minor” levels – with most candidates expected to study five disciplines.
Students will have the freedom to take a mix of technical and academic subjects although every student will be required to study some form of maths and English to age 18.
There will also be a new minimum of 1,475 hours of classroom study across two years (this compared to 1,280 hours for a typical A level and 1,000 hours for a typical technical student).
The plans are long-term – with 10 Downing Street stating that they will “take time to get right and extra funding to deliver effectively”. The prime minister said it would take a decade and his ambition is that pupils starting primary school this year will be the first cohort to take the new qualification.
Once fully rolled out, the Advanced British Standard will replace A levels and T levels.
A consultation over the plans will open “this autumn” and “will seek to determine how best to design and implement the Advanced British Standard”.
The plans were unveiled by Rishi Sunak in his address at the end of the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester on Wednesday (October 4).
They are wide-ranging and ambitious plans, although the elephant in the room is next year’s General Election. If the Conservatives lose at the polls, these reforms may very well bite the dust just as Labour’s 14 to 19 Diploma qualifications did in 2010.
The government has pledged an initial £600m in funding over two years to support the teacher recruitment and retention required to ensure the capacity in the system that will enable all students to study English and maths to 18.
However, the lack of qualified teachers is significant, with teacher training targets being constantly missed at secondary level.
Teacher training figures from 2022/23 show English under-recruiting by 16% and maths by 10%. And DfE figures published in September showing initial teacher training applications for courses starting in the 2023/24 academic year reveal that around 13,800 candidates have been recruited, recruited subject to conditions, or have deferred places compared to the target of 26,360. Within these numbers, maths has 1,954 potential trainees against a target of 2,960 and English has 2,171 against a target of 3,035.
This on-going lack of specialist English and maths teachers is another elephant in the room of the prime minister’s plans.
The initial funding will go towards trying to fix this issue with a tax-free bonus of up to £30,000 over the first five years for teachers in key shortage subjects.
The government also plans to “significantly increase” funding for 16 to 19-year-olds who haven’t yet met its standard in both English and maths by age 19. Currently this equates to one in four students, rising to two in five for disadvantaged young people.
This proposal will cost £150m and will mean that if a student is retaking English and maths GCSE while studying at Level 2 or below, they will attract the same funding as those studying at Level 3.
Prime minister, Rishi Sunak, said: “Education is the closest thing we have to a silver bullet – it is the best economic policy, the best social policy and the best moral policy.
“The plan we have set out today – backed by an initial £600m of new support – represents real, meaningful reform that will put technical and academic education on an equal footing and ensure that all young people leave school or college knowing the basics in maths and English.
“The Advanced British Standard will help spread opportunity and benefit students for generations to come.”
Education secretary Gillian Keegan added: “The Advanced British Standard will transform post-16 education so that every child, wherever they live, wherever they come from, receives an education that sets them up for success.
“These reforms will provide pupils with a broad and world class education, drawing on the best of our existing qualifications.
Reaction to the Advanced British Standard
Daniel Kebede, National Education Union
"The government's long-standing failure to hit its own training targets, compounded by the haemorrhaging of teachers due to high workload and below inflation pay, made the prime minister's call in January for more maths teaching an impossible dream. His government's reduced training targets were again missed this summer.
“There is no magic wand to create English and maths teachers in sufficient numbers to educate 11 to 16-year-olds, let alone at A level too.
"We already have a shortage of secondary teachers. One in six English teachers and one in five mathematics teachers do not have a post A level qualification in the subject. We need an additional 4,300 mathematics teachers and 2,600 English teachers to cover current needs.
"Post-16 curriculum reform is worthy of debate, but simply increasing the number of hours taught would require an additional 5,300 teachers. This year the government missed their recruitment target for secondary teachers by 48%.”
Geoff Barton, Association of School and College Leaders
“There is a great deal of merit in the idea of bringing technical and academic qualifications into a single qualification. We have long called for parity of esteem between technical and academic pathways and we are pleased that this is reflected in this announcement.
“We also support the principle of greater curriculum breadth in post-16 education as the current system is too narrow – at least partly because of previous government reforms which downgraded the status of AS levels.
“However, while the principles of these proposals are good, the practicalities are daunting because of the severity of the teacher recruitment and retention crisis. There aren’t enough teachers to teach existing subjects never mind extend teaching on this scale.
“We’re not convinced that the prime minister’s plan for an early career bonus payment for teachers in key shortage subjects in schools and colleges will be anywhere near enough. Teacher shortages are widespread and very problematic in many subjects. This problem requires a much broader strategy to improve pay, conditions and education funding.
“Without this commitment the prime minister’s plans are likely to prove a pipedream.”
Jack Worth, National Foundation for Educational Research
“Further intervention to increase teacher supply in shortage subjects is desperately needed as recruitment and retention is a huge challenge for schools. Evidence suggests that early career payments are a cost-effective way to improve supply in shortage subjects.
“The NFER has previously recommended that the government should redesign levelling up early career payments by widening eligibility to all schools nationally and increasing payment generosity. The current scheme has a maximum value of £15,000 for teachers during their first five years, so a proposed £30,000 could have a real impact on teacher recruitment and retention. Although the government needs to clarify which teachers would be eligible to receive this increased payment.
“This plan to end the denigration of technical education, while welcome in principle, is concerning, as T levels were only launched as the new 'flagship' alternative to A levels three years ago. Time is needed to allow these new qualifications to bed in and be evaluated in terms of their fitness for purpose. This announcement, during T levels Week, must be demoralising not only for providers but on the young people who have already completed or are completing their T levels. With the looming defunding of BTECs and other applied generals from 2024 onwards, this hardly presents a period of stability for post-16 education over the next 10 years.”
Luke Sibieta, Institute for Fiscal Studies"Increasing total teaching time by 195 hours will require more teachers and more funding to pay for them. The Prime Minister has said that post-16 education will big a big priority at future spending reviews. However, there is more than a bit of catching up to do. Colleges and sixth forms saw large real-terms cuts in funding per pupil between 2010 and 2019. Despite recent increases, spending per student aged 16-18 in colleges is still expected to be 5% lower in real-terms in 2024 than in 2010, and spending per student in sixth forms is expected to be 22% lower."The prime minister has also set himself a hard problem to solve in recruiting the teachers to deliver these qualifications. Most school teacher salaries in England this year are about 10% lower in real terms than they were in 2010. College teachers have seen an even faster decline in real-terms pay of 18% since 2010. A bonus worth up to £6,000 a year would boost the salaries of the newest teachers by about 20%, but this would only apply to the newest teachers in shortage subjects in deprived areas (probably about 1-2% of all teachers). Recruiting large numbers of extra teachers for a wider and more intensive post-16 curriculum might require more ambitious policy changes. Extending the teaching bonuses to college teachers is a small step in this direction."
Sir Peter Lampl, The Sutton Trust
“The proposed (Advanced British Standard) is a major step which will significantly improve social mobility. Under the current A levels system, young people are forced to specialise far too early. This impacts disadvantaged youngsters the most, as they are less likely to have access to good careers guidance or advice from family members.
“They are also much less likely to gain knowledge outside of their A level courses. For those who aspire to university, it means they are making choices that can limit their options at age 15, and many also leave school lacking functional maths and English skills. While there is much still to be worked out, (this) is a very positive step for improving social mobility.”
Paul Whiteman, National Association of Head Teachers
“To date, there has been no meaningful engagement with the profession on any part of this announcement. While the government may suggest that this is just the start of a process towards further reform, it would appear they have already decided on the destination without talking to school leaders. Once again, there is a sense that ministers in Whitehall think they know better than the teachers and leaders working with pupils on a daily basis.
"The announcement raises so many questions, most importantly where all the additional teachers needed to deliver these reforms will come from. There are also huge questions around what this means for the curriculum and for higher education.”