This year’s level 3 results are barely out and already ministers are consulting on the plans to run exams and assessment in 2022. As Gavin Williamson said yesterday, we have to be on a “glide path back to normality”. But when can we really expect that to happen and what might “normality” really mean? 

Next year, exams might well run in ways more familiar to 2019 than 2020 and 2021, but all students sitting them will likely have experienced some significant disruption during their studies. Given that A levels (or any L3 qualifications) are mostly two-year programmes, and GCSEs likewise, then the first cohort without any disruption at all are likely to be in 2025. Even then, students are still likely to have “lost” some learning prior to beginning their GCSE or L2 courses) - as former catch-up tsar Sir Kevan Collins pointed out. And there will different impacts of this on different learners, institutions and places.

But, for education in England, we also know that ministers don’t really want to return to the landscape of 2019. They want to reform it - and radically so. From reintroducing Latin in schools and removing Btecs to rebalancing tertiary system and reducing progression to university. Williamson is on record saying that we should abolish Tony Blair’s 50 per cent target for going to university (noting that the actual target referred to 18- to 30-year-olds in any form of HE). 

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Department for Education ministers are fond of talking up alternative routes into higher education and better paid jobs. They are planning major reform to tertiary education (and, in the case of T levels and other L3 vocational qualifications, to the routes that take students to that stage too). But having handed over grading to teachers and schools this year - and seeing more numbers applying for full-time degrees - this is going to get increasingly difficult for them to achieve.

The government has spent much of the last two years promising to expand alternatives to university including more higher level and degree apprenticeships and new qualifications at L4 and 5. At the same time, they have been keen to drive down “low value” degrees at university. Ministers have reportedly been considering imposing entry tariffs, number controls as well as ways of increasing more repayment of student loans - via reduced repayment thresholds or increasing the time or rate that graduates repay. All are under consideration as part of the Augar Review response and the Treasury’s planned spending review in the autumn.

But with more young people overall and more of them getting higher grades, demand for traditional degrees continues to rise and it looks harder and harder to drive any changes in this way. 

University admissions body Ucas has estimated that 1 million students will apply for university by 2025, up from 700,000 now, an increase of around 40 per cent. No matter how many times ministers abolish previous targets or attack universities and degrees, yesterday’s results demonstrate that young people aren’t really taking any notice and certainly not from the most advantaged social backgrounds. 

In recent years, one of the more common headlines in speeches and opinion pieces has been to ask whether it is better to go to university or to do an apprenticeship. But we should note that at present, this isn’t much of a choice at all.

If you’re leaving school or college in England and want a degree or higher level apprenticeship, there just aren’t very many on offer (for 18- to 19-year-olds wanting to study at L4 or above). According to the House of Commons Library, there were just 2,800 higher level starts for 18 year olds in 2020 (down from 3,400 the previous year. Even if we include the starts amongst 19- to 24-year-olds, this only increases by a further 13,400. That’s a very small fraction of the 570,000 acceptances onto undergraduate university courses during last cycle. Just a few hours into this year’s recruitment, and already, a total of 388,230 applicants from the UK have been accepted for university places - an 8 per cent rise compared with results day last year. 

All of which goes to show that it’s one thing to say you want a more diverse system and fewer people taking the full time degree route, but it’s another to actually make it happen. Decisions taken about exams in 2020 and 2021 and in the years ahead are already pushing more students towards university degrees.

But like ministers, I fully support the expansion of Level 4 and 5 qualifications as well as degree and other higher level apprenticeships (and for all ages). But it’s plain wrong to say that these choices exist in meaningful numbers today. Likewise, it is wrong to say that these are low cost options that provide better value. Driving up the numbers of higher level apprenticeships must involve big increases in employer demand - and that almost certainly involves new financial incentives, tax relief and possibly compulsion.

Significant investment 

Similarly, for L4 and 5 qualifications to be a success and grow they will need significant investment in teaching, institutions and equipment. Like T levels, they too will require substantial employer involvement. None of this comes without ‘cost’ and nor should it. Let’s not pretend otherwise.

That may be the future that ministers want but it just isn’t the reality today. We are not yet out of a pandemic or it’s economic consequences and so employer investment and recruitment is still uncertain. Trends before the pandemic were not especially encouraging and so a future vision that depends on their involvement is going take time and money to realise.

During that time, is government really going to try and restrict demand for university degrees? Given the demand we see today, it would be a political risk to assume that there would be no backlash. But this doesn’t mean that they should hold back on their attempts to offer more choice in our tertiary system. It remains lop-sided compared to other countries and needs to be more diverse in the routes and modes that it offers as well as for the ages and circumstances of learners. But it does mean that they are going to have to do it properly.

The instability of the exam and assessment system creates more pressure on all of these policy objectives. Added to demographic changes and the increase in the numbers of young people coming through the school system, this is likely to intensify. So it is rather less likely that ministers can get away with reforms on the cheap. They will need strong, well funded options across all routes and strong well funded colleges and universities that develop and offer them. Alongside they will need new incentives and funds for employers to offer more apprenticeships especially at higher levels for school and college leavers. By far the best way of doing this will be to fund all routes, students and institutions at the same levels. 

As we know there is a spending review due in a few months. So to any politician wishing for a more diverse system with meaningful choices across full time degrees, higher apprenticeships or in new qualifications at level 4 and 5, yesterday’s lesson is reasonably clear: you’re going to have to put your money where your mouth is. That’s ”pecunia tua in quo posuit os tuum est” in Latin.

Andy Westwood is a professor of government practice at the University of Manchester