The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) – formerly the Institute for Apprenticeships – has been central to reforms aimed at increasing standardisation and quality in technical education at all levels in England since 2017.
As it slips into the shadows from where Skills England is about to emerge, we wanted to explore how IfATE’s work establishing a quality assurance process for level 4 and 5 technical education – launched in 2020 – could be built upon and improved.
Since IfATE introduced the process of approving level 4 and 5 qualifications as Higher Technical Qualifications (HTQs), more than 80 FE colleges, universities and awarding organisations have successfully submitted their qualifications. We decided that their experiences – and their views on the future – were a good place to start.
We interviewed 46 individuals from 17 organisations to explore their motivations for being “early adopters” of HTQs, their feedback on the approval process itself, and their recommendations for making it better. Ultimately we were keen to find out what would encourage and enable more organisations to apply for HTQ status for their qualifications, and in this way help address the “missing middle” of England’s workforce skills. The full report can be read here.
Managing a heavy burden
Unsurprisingly, a strong recommendation was to make the approvals process less burdensome. There was widespread appreciation of the support provided by IfATE, and evidence of their responsiveness to early adopters’ feedback across all five cycles of HTQ approvals. This said, respondents noted that mapping qualifications – particularly those with multiple pathways – to the knowledge, skills and behaviours of occupational standards remained complex and time consuming.
It was clear that the level of resource and responsiveness shown by IfATE needs to be maintained by Skills England, particularly as occupational standards continue to evolve, and new awarding bodies come into the fold. However, our respondents also noted that manageability could be improved if the approvals process became more integrated with extant internal and external quality assurance and approvals processes, including professional body accreditations.
Gaining traction, but slowly
Reassuringly, many of our respondents reported that one positive outcome of getting their qualifications ready for HTQ approval was the stimulation of renewed engagement with employers – with benefits that went beyond simply endorsing the qualification at hand.
Similarly, for some respondents the decision about whether to put forward a qualification for approval had acted as a catalyst for the further engagement and support of senior leaders in their organisation with higher technical education (HTE) – as part of their widening participation commitments and/or their portfolio diversification and growth.
Yet alongside this positivity, respondents reported that awareness of the HTQ quality mark, and what it represents, remains low among prospective students and employers. A key reason for this was seen to be a lack of commitment from the Department for Education (DfE) to widespread and visible brand backing.
DfE did make funding available to successful applicants via the HTE Growth Fund in 2021, and two further rounds of HTE Skills Injection Funds (including funding for localised marketing) – but the potential clawback of these funds should recruitment not meet projected numbers led to some uncertainty about the benefits of applying for short term and unconfirmed funding streams.
If even those organisations who have already been successful in getting HTQ approval are feeling dubious about the future, then clearly much more needs to be done to encourage those who have not yet entered the field.
Let’s not forget the missing middle
There is no reason to doubt that the current government cares about addressing the skills gap known as the “missing middle”, as ignoring it may pose serious risks to growth and opportunity missions. So we – and the many organisations that have invested in HTQs and wish to see them flourish and thrive – have a couple of hopes.
First, that Skills England maintains strong and continuous engagement with current and future HTQ providers – providing good labour market data on what qualifications are needed, offering personalised support during the approval process, and engaging with the wider sector in order to improve the process.
But also, we hope that DfE can quickly resolve funding uncertainties for HTQs – including their potential for funding under the growth and skills levy and their primacy in the rollout of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement – and that the department showcases this commitment through a national marketing campaign. This could include building an HTQ ambassadors network, and an annual HTQ celebratory week (similar to those currently supported for T levels and apprenticeships).
The latest data from DfE shows that in 2022–23 numbers of entrants for Level 4 and 5 education increased after a long period of decline. The contribution of HTQs to this increase may well be small but the strong focus on HTE since 2017, from which HTQ approval arose, will have contributed. We’ve made a great start – let’s not lose momentum now.
