Andy Burnham has been warned not to “reheat” old ideas in his push to boost high-quality technical education for 14-year-olds. The new prime minister unveiled plans earlier this week to create new technical education pathways for 14–16-year-olds from September 2028. Nine in ten mainstream state secondary schools entered at least one pupil for a technical award at key stage 4 in 2025, analysis of government data by Schools Week shows. But the government has said its reforms will “boost the quality, availability and status of the offer” – though the details of the policy are yet to be set out. While the spirit of the policy has largely been welcomed, there are concerns it could constrain options at too early an age. Others say it will take more than creating a new qualification or pathway to change parents’ and children’s attitudes to technical education. Schools Week spoke to policy experts about the government’s next steps. Don’t narrow choices There is broad support for the idea that technical education should be placed on a more even footing to academic subjects, in order to better equip pupils for the workplace. Reza Schwitzer is a former DfE official and director of assessment reform at exam board AQA. He is now principal consultant at Avencera. “The key is not should we do it, it’s how we do it,” Schwitzer argues. His biggest concern is making sure the policy opens up choice for 14-year-olds, rather than narrowing it. “The danger here is that this ends up consigning certain people to a route, not because they choose to, but because they are not as strong academically. “That’s not what we want, we want it to be a genuine choice.” Reza Schwitzer Tom Richmond, another former DfE adviser, said high-quality technical education “is absolutely achievable” from age 14, but working out which students should take this path is “fraught with difficulty”. “If they become a dumping ground for low-attaining pupils this could quickly undermine the esteem attached to technical education. “That would obviously work against the government’s broader aims around seeking parity between academic and technical routes.” Mary Myatt, educational consultant and author, said: “A technical pathway must still provide a rich academic entitlement and allow pupils to change direction later. “We should be particularly careful that disadvantaged pupils are not steered towards narrower options while their more affluent peers retain access to the full range of knowledge and future choices.” How have vocational qualifications changed? The 2004 Tomlinson report called for bold changes to the qualification system, including replacing GCSEs, A-levels and vocational qualifications with a new single diploma for 14–19-year-olds. This diploma would have had four levels of difficulty, and students would progress to each stage at their own pace. The idea was ultimately rejected by the government. The early 2000s also saw a huge rise in pupils taking General National Vocational Qualifications (or GNVQs), which were equivalent to up to four GCSEs. The subsequent Wolf Review in 2011 found that 14 to 16 year old pupils were being encouraged to take “low-level” qualifications with little value to employers, because they boosted schools’ standing in performance tables. A study by data analysts Simon Burgess and Dave Thompson found that pupils on free school meals were most likely to be affected by the problems identified in the Wolf review. The DfE implemented most of the review’s recommendations, including to only include approved technical and vocational qualifications in performance tables. Warwick Sharp, a long-serving former DfE official who worked on the rollout of T-levels, said the “political momentum behind technical education is exciting”. But despite the “pressure to move quickly”, the GLF Schools boss said the government “should resist the temptation to simply wrap together existing schemes”, and recognise that quality design is “a significant undertaking”. Warwick Sharp “The reality is that Britain won the First World War in less time than it took to design and implement the first T-levels. “Technical education routes are only valuable if they have real line of sight to work and create genuine pathways.” Schwitzer added: “Our ability to align technical education with what the labour market actually needs through AI and other technology is in a completely different place to where it used to be. “I think we need to not reheat stuff that was done decades ago. We need to look with a new lens [at] how we can do this in an exciting and modern way.” 9 in 10 schools offer vocational subjects Data from the call for evidence for the curriculum and assessment review last year showed that 43 per cent of pupils took at least one technical award alongside their GCSEs. Analysis of subject and qualification entry data shows that 2,882 mainstream secondary schools entered pupils into technical awards at the end of key stage 4 in 2024-25. This amounts to roughly 91 per cent of mainstream state secondary schools in England, not counting specialist vocational schools like UTCs, private schools or special schools. There were 367,196 entries to technical awards by key stage 4 pupils from these schools – averaging around 127 entries per school. The most popular subjects were sports studies (59,528 entries), health studies (55,191), computer related qualifications (49,430) and hospitality/catering studies (38,971). Just under three quarters of those qualifications were BTECs or Cambridge Nationals, while just 0.3 per cent were vocationally related qualifications (VRQs). Just 17 per cent of private schools (194) offered technical awards, and those entries averaged just 6.6 per school. There were 1,048 technical award entries from 169 special schools, and 45 per cent of those schools were either independent or non-maintained schools, with 433 entries. A TeacherTapp survey of 1,030 secondary senior leaders found that 24 per cent of them had not seen Burnham’s plans for technical education. Of those that had, 67 per cent felt positive, 23 per cent felt neutral, and 10 per cent felt negatively about them. ‘Ingrained cultural problem’ The perception of vocational qualifications having a lower status than academic ones is a “deeply ingrained cultural problem”, according to Schwitzer. He added that this cannot be solved just by creating new qualifications, but by engaging with parents and young people. “If we’re going to change behaviour, it has to start with young people and parents.” Reforms needed to be “grounded in genuine high-quality user research and understanding of how people make these decisions” about their educational choices, he added. Despite the 2028 target, Schwitzer said he would encourage the DfE “to think about how to phase and sequence this in a way that can build credibility, and not try and do everything at once.” Writing in The Times last week, education secretary Lucy Powell argued the “one-size fits all” approach to education had become a “straightjacket” for some children, and has “left too many being branded a failure – again and again – instead of being able to realise their full potential”. Daisy Christodoulou, director of education at No More Marking, wrote in a Substack post that there were issues with the assumption that all pupils who struggle academically are necessarily “good with their hands” instead. She added that many high-quality vocational pathways “have quite challenging academic demands”. If vocational courses are viewed as an alternative for students with lower academic attainment, “it will often make it harder to run the kinds of vocational courses that have the greatest labour market value”. “You also won’t help the low-attaining students: in many cases, they might benefit from stronger support in the English, maths and science GCSEs that underpin vocational success.” Burnham’s announcement does not signal any changes to the requirement for pupils who do not achieve a grade 4 in GCSE English and maths to continue to study the subjects in sixth form, sparking concerns about the so-called “forgotten third”. Martin Robinson, a drama teacher and educational consultant, said: “Our system is built in such a way at 16, that up to a third of kids fail […] and about 18 to 20 per cent of those manage to pass by retake. “Parity of esteem between academic and technical is not the issue. There’s no parity of esteem between those who fail and those who pass at GCSE. “We are pushing [20 to 30 per cent of children] out into the system who do not get the basics in order to get most jobs, or a foot in the door.” He argued that there should be a test in English and maths which can be taken between the ages of 10 and 14 when pupils feel ready, which assesses whether their ability is at an “employer standard”, rather than forcing certain pupils into resits. What about curriculum reform and Progress 8? The government responded to the curriculum and assessment review last November, with draft programmes of study due to be published in September. Schools Week understands that ministers do not plan to reopen the review, which already set out the need for stronger vocational pathways. Myatt believes it would be “unhelpful for technical pathways to become a late addition running alongside the review rather than being integrated coherently into its thinking about curriculum breadth, qualifications and progression.” Mary Myatt The Department for Education also launched a consultation to reform the progress 8 accountability measure earlier this year. Schools are given a progress score based on pupils’ improvement in eight subject “buckets”. At present, up to three vocational qualifications can count towards the measure. The government’s proposal was to change the bucket system to create new slots for science, “breadth” and “choice” subjects. Vocational subjects would count towards the “choice” slot, but the number of technical awards that count towards the measure would be capped at two. Richmond noted that the government was trying to promote creative subjects through the reform, but that “you can’t have an endless number of priorities within performance measures”. “If the government now wants a clear technical pathway from age 14 then progress 8 may need to be revisited for the second time in a matter of months.” Myatt said the measure “matters because accountability shapes what schools are able and encouraged to offer” and that technical qualifications deserved to be included. But she added: “[T]he question should be how accountability can recognise ambitious technical learning without encouraging schools to enter pupils for qualifications primarily because they benefit the school’s performance figures.” The government was due to publish its response to the consultation by the end of the summer term, but this has already passed. The DfE was asked when it would publish the response, and whether it would be delayed by Burnham’s announcement. It did not respond. Regional ties ‘not a ceiling’ Burnham’s reforms take inspiration from MBacc, which he implemented as mayor of Greater Manchester to give weight to technical subjects, and was developed in partnership with regional employers. Schwitzer said that while understanding the needs of local businesses is important, “that also shouldn’t be the extent of our ambition for the young people.” Myatt added: “Strong partnerships between schools, colleges and employers would be valuable, but local relevance should be a starting point, not a ceiling on young people’s ambitions. “Opportunities and employer capacity vary considerably across the country, and high-quality work placements cannot simply be announced into existence.” The four exam boards – AQA, Pearson, Cambridge OCR and WJEC Eduqas– all welcomed the direction of travel. Myles McGinley, managing director of Cambridge OCR, said pointed to his organisation’s Cambridge Nationals, which “create an explicit link between school and work for hundreds of thousands of young people. “Scaling that up will open new opportunities for a whole generation.” Colin Hughes, AQA’s CEO, said the policy “is one of the missing pieces in the current vocational reform programme” and that they should “provide a strong foundation” for new V-levels, with the first subjects set to be taught in 2027. WJEC chief executive Ian Morgan said the sector should work collaboratively to “help ensure that future qualifications reflect regional skills priorities while creating meaningful opportunities for every learner to realise their potential”. Freya Thomas Monk, managing director of Pearson Qualifications said: “Vocational and technical learning has an important role to play alongside GCSEs in helping young people develop the practical knowledge and skills needed by employers in local industries and growth sectors.”