Select committee: Education Committee
Conclusion 19
6th Report - Further Education and Skills
Published 23 Sep 2025
Addressed to Department for Education
Education Committee Further Education and Skills All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
Information about post-16 pathways can be fragmented, with no single platform covering both academic and vocational options. Apprenticeship applications are particularly complex due to the absence of a national framework and regional inconsistencies. Additionally, vocational application timelines are misaligned with university admissions, making it difficult for 93 young people to consider all options equally. These issues contribute to a lack of parity of esteem, with academic routes appearing more accessible and structured than vocational alternatives. (Conclusion, Paragraph 75)
From: Education Committee, 6th Report - Further Education and Skills (HC 666), 23 September 2025
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 9 December 2025 (deadline 23 November 2025).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government welcomes the Committee's report and shares its views on the importance of skills and the FE sector, accepting some recommendations, saying others are already in place or under review, and not taking forward several others.
- It accepts the recommendation to monitor and report annually on compliance with provider access legislation, with the Careers and Enterprise Company data publication "expected to be in spring 2026".
- On Skills England, it says the review committed to by Ministers is due "within 18 to 24 months" of it becoming an Executive Agency, and that leadership structure is best considered within that broader review.
- It does not take forward devolving 16 to 19 funding, stating "it is important to maintain a national offer which is consistently high quality across the country" and that "16 to 19 funding has not been devolved".
- It does not take forward re-introducing all-age Level 7 apprenticeship funding, saying public funding should be prioritised "towards those at the start of their working lives", and says there are "currently no plans" for a pay review body for FE.