Skills England is as of this morning a full-fledged executive agency within the Department for Education, and there’s ministerial guidance in its inbox.

The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) was shuttered in the early hours of 1 June, following legislation laid just before the bank holiday. The quango’s website now says that it is “in the process of transitioning information” to Skills England, though will continue to host and publish information about apprenticeships and qualifications.

The letter from Secretary of State Bridget Phillipson spells out priorities for the coming year, and much of what is there will be of little surprise – data-driven assessment on current and future skills needs (making use of the work of the Unit of Future Skills, which has been subsumed within Skills England), bringing together the “fragmented skills system”, and advising the government on its responses to skills gaps. This latter advisory role is quite different from the policy dynamism some envisaged from the new skills body while Labour was in opposition.

Skills England’s responsibilities as part of the “quad” – to reduce reliance on overseas workers by joining up skills with the migration system – gets a brief mention. Fans of the “skills triage service” that the industrial strategy green paper promised will be excited to see that this is still a thing:

Working across Government, you will develop a service to help investors navigate the UK skills offer, providing access to skills and talent development through convening key partners.

The green paper said this would be done in partnership with the Office for Investment, and apply to “strategically important investments” – we should learn more when the finalised industrial strategy arrives next week. Skills England’s role in the industrial strategy will – you would hope – stretch substantially beyond this.

For higher education, probably the key item to note is the Secretary of State’s instruction for the new quango to ensure a “key role” for both further and higher education provision within Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs). As DK’s been over previously, the formal absence of universities within LSIPs was controversial when they were developed, and Labour in opposition said it would change this. Skimming through the plans and progress reports that have been published so far shows that plenty of HE providers have been getting involved in their local plans. But there hasn’t heretofore been a statutory role.

Research last year by the Association of Colleges found that this is a bone of contention for FE stakeholders, who experience this as a lack of accountability for higher education institutions. The devolution white paper gives joint responsibility for LSIPs to local authorities – along with employer representative bodies, who under the Conservatives had sole control. It’s probably an area to watch in the forthcoming education and skills white paper, and as such it’s interesting to see Skills England’s guidance explicitly set it out.

Elsewhere this morning, the education secretary has updated Parliament on the decision to largely defund level 7 apprenticeships that was announced over recess. Despite the initial announcement first being made during the Labour conference last September, we get an overview of the engagement activities and analysis that Skills England carried out subsequently – and learn that it did not come up with a good reason to countermand the (already planned) defunding:

Skills England was asked to provide insight into the impact of defunding level 7 apprenticeships. They engaged with over 700 stakeholders from various sectors, employer representative bodies, and young people, which indicated that, in general, level 7 apprenticeships were high quality and were well supported by employers. Many learners who completed these apprenticeships saw higher wages one year after study, compared with the average UK salary. It was also clear that these apprenticeships are important for meeting the skills needs of the economy.

However, alternative routes are well supplied and Skills England’s evidence suggested there was unlikely to be a significant or unavoidable fall in the supply of these skills in the long term, post-defunding.

The analysis also “did not find a strong enough economic rationale to exempt a small group of level 7 apprenticeship standards from defunding” – this likely relates to advocacy from both employers and education providers for certain standards or occupations to be allowed to continue with L7 provision. It’s hard to know, as none of this analysis has been published, and no formal consultation was run.

Update: shortly after this article was published, Skills England released its analysis of the growth and skills offer – though this doesn’t substantively address the question of level 7 apprenticeships.