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SFCA responds to PM's announcement of an 'Advanced British Standard'

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SFCA responds to PM's announcement of an 'Advanced British Standard'

Commenting on the Prime Minister's announcement of an 'Advanced British Standard' today at the Conservative Party Conference, Bill Watkin, Chief Executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, said:

The prime minister is right to identify that the sixth form curriculum in England is narrow by international standards, and that students spend less time in the classroom. SFCA published an influential report in 2016 that showed sixth formers in England only receive around half of the tuition time of sixth formers in other leading economies such as Canada and Singapore. This partly reflects the chronic underinvestment in sixth form education in recent years – sixth form funding is 15% lower in real terms than it was in 2010. 

Getting investment levels right and tackling issues such as teacher recruitment and retention are two of the building blocks required to make the sort of broad curriculum envisaged in the Advanced British Standard a reality. The development of the ABS is not being presented as a quick-fix and that is welcome news. We think the government’s priority should be to get the basics right first, and then to engage in a genuinely inclusive dialogue about what the sixth form curriculum of the future should look like. What we have seen today is the presentation of a ready-made plan with the promise of further consultation. 

We have struggled for decades to achieve parity of esteem between academic and technical education. You only have to look at faltering T Level numbers to appreciate the level of difficulty and the scale of the challenge. It is surprising that the government appears to have brought the T Level journey to an end at such an early stage and after making such an eye-watering financial investment in the project. As the chaos caused by the plan to scrap most BTECs is now being followed by a plan to scrap A levels and T levels (until this morning described by the government as ‘gold standard’ qualifications) there could be turbulent times ahead for the sixth form sector.

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