Recommendation 18

HM Government · verbatim extract Not Addressed

ACCEPT The strengthened provider access legislation (PAL) is an important means of ensuring that young people understand all available routes at key transition points. We accept the Committee’s recommendation to monitor and report annually on compliance with this legal duty, so that all young people have opportunities to meet providers of apprenticeships and technical education qualifications to inform decisions about their next step. The Department will keep under consideration how we respond to the compliance data and the threshold for intervention. We published careers statutory guidance in May 2025 which includes a ladder of support and intervention for the provider access legislation. This ensures that there is a transparent and consistent approach to helping all schools and providers to meet the requirements of the provider access legislation and to taking action to respond to cases of non-compliance. The CEC provides support at a national level and locally through careers hubs. National support includes a dedicated webpage , specific tools and advice (for example on how to meet PAL in SEND settings) , and a single point of contact for providers to raise concerns where they think schools are not meeting the requirements of the enhanced legislation. DfE has a role in monitoring compliance and intervening in response to concerns or complaints about non-compliance. To date no providers using this process have chosen to escalate concerns to the Department for Education. Wider evidence suggests that compliance is improving but it remains a mixed picture. As a result, DfE has committed to begin publishing compliance data on an annual basis. DfE careers statutory guidance, published in May 2025, states that: “ During the academic year 2025 to 2026, we will ask the CEC to publish annual national level data on compliance with the provider access legislation to shine a light on progress and identify where there is more to do to meet the requirements. ” We are working with CEC to agree the content and timing of this data publication, expected to be in spring 2026. Data on compliance with provider access legislation is part of a broader range of data sources that we ask CEC to collect and analyse, including: The Future Skills Questionnaire a survey of over 330,000 students (in 2024/25) includes questions on understanding of apprenticeships and other technical routes. The data gathered shows young people are nearly twice as likely to report awareness of apprenticeships between Year 7 and Year 11 (up to 79%, almost on a par with A levels) by year 11, and awareness of other vocational pathways improves too. The Apprenticeship and Technical Education Transitions Framework which measures the relative impact of different factors that impact young people’s transitions into technical and vocational pathways. This analysis covers all 44 careers hub areas across England and harnesses the insight of over 500 experts from across education and business. The latest analysis showed year to year improvement against 7 of the 8 factors, including the promotion of vocational pathways. Compass – a national dataset of 4,863 state-funded mainstream schools , special schools, alternative provision and colleges (94% of secondary institutions) which measures school and college performance against the independent Gatsby Benchmarks of careers education. This year saw the greatest increase in Benchmark 7: Encounters with further and higher education (up 3%pts from 2024/25). We have asked CEC to publish data on provider access compliance in this broader context, allowing us to have the fullest possible understanding of progress and remaining barriers to awareness and take-up of apprenticeships and technical routes.