As far as minutes in the FE sector go, it was pretty damn exciting. No, come on, bear with me.

At 10.48am last Wednesday morning, the long-awaited announcement about which exam boards had won the multi-million-pound contracts to deliver the first T levels landed in my inbox: by any standards, a major story for the sector.

As the Tes FE news team was busy putting the breaking news story on our website, it would have been easy to miss another gov.uk email alert that arrived at 10.49am.

Quick read: GCSE resits: DfE updates English and maths policy

Want to know more? GCSE resits: Students forced to sit exams 9 times

Quick read: Exclusive: 'Don't retreat from GCSE resits', warns Wolf

For the uninitiated, an email bearing the anodyne-sounding subject line “16 to 19 funding: maths and English condition of funding” might have been swiftly deleted without a click. But no one in the FE sector needs reminding that it is this condition of funding that underpins the explosion in English and maths GCSE resits which has come to dominate colleges in recent years.

Added to that, the Department for Education’s fondness for burying news that it doesn’t want you to read at strategic times when it’s least likely to be noticed – late on a Friday afternoon, for example, or on the last day of term before Christmas – piqued my attention straight away.

GCSE resits change: underwhelming?

Having read through the note from the Education and Skills Funding Agency, it was hard not to feel a little underwhelmed, bearing in mind the emotive subject concerned.

On reflection, though, what may appear a small step in the right direction for colleges amounts to a far more significant move for the Department for Education.

In a sector that prides itself on offering second chances, the narrative of students retaking their GCSEs as many as nine times and failing to overcome the “brick wall” has a real resonance.

Whatever your views on the importance of GCSEs and them being the gold standard required in the workplace, the fact that not even a quarter of older students who took GCSE maths last summer achieved a grade 4 shows that, for many, the current policy isn’t working.

The change that never came

Let’s not forget that two years ago, the GCSE resits policy came within the thickness of a question paper of being scrapped.

Step one of the plan was moving the bar for a “good” pass (needed to avoid resits) under the reformed GCSEs from being a grade 5 to a grade 4 (albeit with this being rebranded a “standard” pass to try and obscure this prima facie watering down in standards).

The second step was that colleges would be given the discretion to put students with a GCSE grade 3 on functional skills instead of them having to resit. This announcement, to which former education secretary Justine Greening was known to be sympathetic, never came – thanks in no small part to vehement opposition from school standards minister Nick Gibb.

The move would have amounted to the first rowing back on the recommendations of the Wolf Report – and a perceived U-turn on English and maths standards proved to be something the DfE wasn’t ultimately prepared to stomach.

Two years of silence

Since then, the resits policy has appeared untouchable, with questioning on this matter by former skills minister Robert Halfon last June being coolly brushed off by education secretary Damian Hinds.

Then, after almost two years of silence, over the past month well-placed sources began to reveal that GCSE resits was once more back on the table for discussion, with firmer news expected in March. But then, all of a sudden, the announcement cropped up sooner than anyone had expected (reportedly to prevent it leaking out before the department was ready).

So what does this change mean? On the face of it, not that much. Even though the reformed functional skills – complete with phonics, Mr Gibb’s pet passion – are due to be introduced this summer, there is clearly not sufficient confidence within the DfE that they will be sufficiently respected by employers. So for those students with a grade 3, GCSEs remain the only option.

The change, coming in this summer, affects those with a grade 2 or lower. As is currently the case, these students can choose between a GCSE or level 2 functional skills qualification. But once they have achieved the latter, there will now be “no requirement to undertake further maths or English qualifications to meet the condition of funding”.

Small but significant

The policy change should affect a small but significant number of young people: around 20,000 students with a grade 2 in each subject, the Association of College has estimated, plus the even smaller number with a grade 1.

In college and providers, the overall impact will be limited. But make no mistake: for the DfE, this is a big deal. Barring the extension of limited “tolerance” to funding rules for colleges to operate within back in 2016, this is the first move away from Baroness Wolf’s recommendations on English and maths.

Symbolically, the move is far more significant for the department than for colleges – the fact it has been pushed through while Gibb still lives and breathes in Sanctuary Buildings is, for its proponents, an achievement in itself.

And its importance wasn’t lost on Baroness Wolf herself, who told Tes that she hoped it would not “signal further, future retreats from the teaching of maths and English to 16- to 19-year-olds”.

All about T levels

So why was the decision made? My take is that stubbornly protecting the resits policy in its entirety was deemed to be less important than protecting the DfE’s current policy priority: T levels.

The flagship new qualifications’ raison d’etre is to offer a high-quality alternative to A levels that is viewed as being of equal status.

For T levels, the condition of funding behind GCSE resits does not apply, the consultation document on their funding methodology makes clear. When it comes to English and maths, the rules are different: students “who do not hold a GCSE grade 4 (or above) or a level 2 functional skills qualification in maths and or English by the start of their T level will need to continue studying these subjects” in order to pass.

So for T-level students, level 2 functional skills is deemed to be good enough. Had the same not been the case for the existing A-level route, Hinds’ dream of achieving parity of esteem through T levels would have been strangled at birth by its own policies.

Could the change in policy be the start of a bigger shift later down the line? I’m not so sure. But while it may have been described as no more than a “baby-step forward” by AoC chief executive David Hughes, make no mistake: behind closed doors at the DfE, it will be regarded as a giant leap.

Stephen Exley is FE editor at Tes