If we expand level 4 and above, who is going to study on these courses?

The Prime Minister’s commitment to seeing two thirds of young people in some kind of higher level education or training has a key dependency.

The loosely sketched “higher level” opportunities here started at FHEQ Level 4 – equivalent to the first year of a traditional university degree. Much policy attention has been paid to the lower end (Level 4 and 5) of this categorisation, but nearly every route – be it vocational, academic, or a full-on apprenticeship – requires that applicants hold a Level 3 qualification.

The Department for Education collects data on participation in higher level education before the age of 25, the so-called CHEPS25 indicator, which currently shows that participation hovers around 50 per cent.

Less famously (it doesn’t even have its own acronym!) there is also data on the number of people that hold a Level 3 qualification by age 25, and the most recent data – based, as you might expect, on the cohort who were 16 in 2017-18 – was published today.

Almost exactly two-thirds (67 per cent) of under 25s currently hold at least a Level 3 qualification – and that’s been a stubbornly consistent situation for at least seven years. The bulk of this happens in the early post-compulsory years.

If we assume study Level 4 and above necessarily follows at least some kind of Level 3 qualification, to meet the Prime Minister’s target every single person who currently holds a Level 3 qualification would have to progress to Level 4. And on the face of it, this feels like a tall order. Not everyone with Level 3 will have qualifications of the right type (or grade!) to progress further. And – frankly – not everyone will want to.

Any expansion of Level 4 provision will require investment – in staff, resources, and curriculum development. But there will most likely need to be a similar level of upscaling at Level 3, to expand the pool of available students to exploit these new Level 4 opportunities.

There is, however, an alternative in the form of the foundation year. These, somewhat counterintuitively, sit outside of FHEQ almost entirely – but are generally considered to sit somewhere in the middle of Levels 3 and 4. Rather than a qualification in its own right, a foundation year can be seen as a path into higher education for people without Level 3 qualifications.

The trouble here is that the Department for Education – in one of its periodic attempts to address issues caused by the largely unregulated and unplanned expansion of franchise and partnership provision – has rather set its face against the foundation year. For classroom-based provision (which, given the role FYs have in meeting prospective students where they are and developing them to a level where they can study on a degree course, tends to be more intensive than Level 4 study) the fee cap has been cut substantially.

Something here will have to give, and it will be expensive. Either we need to massively expand Level 3 participation and success – via new qualifications and opportunities, better results and less attrition – or we need to properly invest in something like the foundation year to get people to a point where Level 4 and above (and the skills, career potential, and self-actualisation that comes with it) is a realistic option.