Universities may be feeling some relief that the plan to defund some BTECs and technical qualifications from September has been paused.
Rightly, many institutions and mission groups have been vocal in their support of the campaign to save BTEC qualifications.
However, even though the immediate changes are paused, with a commitment from Bridget Phillipson to “review the diversity of options at level 3”, there is more that the sector needs to do.
A pause may not be enough
We need to maintain the pressure on government to rethink the removal of BTECs in the longer term. There are already concerns being expressed by the Sixth Form Colleges Association that the announced pause is very brief, and doesn’t cover qualifications that have already been announced as defunded from 2025, which is when the bulk of the changes that will impact on universities are due to happen.
The HE sector arguments for saving BTECs have been well-rehearsed; BTECs have been a crucial element of the sector’s widening access success stories over the last decade. Students who have studied BTECs are disproportionately likely to have previously been eligible for free school meals, to be male, and to be from a Black, Asian or minority ethnic background. T Levels are not a straightforward replacement, as they often have higher entry requirements, are less widely available, and often cover a very different, less broad, curriculum.
If we don’t do something to either save BTECs, or find a more accessible alternative, some parts of the sector will see significant drops in student numbers. As well as the impact on the prospects for the students themselves, and the financial impact for (often) regionally-focused anchor universities, there are potentially big impacts on professional courses in shortage areas, particularly in health and engineering. There’s a strong self-interest for the sector in retaining BTECs or a similarly broad equivalent.
Supporting students with BTEC entry qualifications
However, if we’re going to argue to save BTECs, we need to spend much more time thinking about how to support students who have studied them once they get into HE. Nuffield Foundation research concluded that these students are around 1.4 times less likely to graduate with a 2.1 or above than a similar student who studied A Levels. Ethnicity attainment gaps are also larger for students who have studied BTECs than for those who have studied A Levels.
There is some research on what’s causing these differential outcomes (though not much – I’m doing a PhD looking at it). Almost all of the research is based on students who studied the old-style BTECs, which were reformed for students entering HE from 2018. These reforms removed the option for students to repeatedly resit units, and introduced far more exams into BTEC assessments. So the lessons from qualifications taken a decade ago might not hold now. Plausible hypotheses to explain the gaps are similar to those used to explain other awarding gaps in HE; teaching, learning and assessment styles; institutional culture and cohort identity; prior knowledge and dispositions.
Entry qualifications in EORR?
These are all issues that universities are grappling with for other student groups. It seems strange then that whilst all of the characteristics that are more likely to be seen in BTEC students are listed in the OFS equality of opportunity risk register for universities to address in their Access and Participation Plans, qualification type is not. It was in the original TASO research that informed the register, but the OfS chose not to include it as one of the risks that all universities have to consider.
Despite the omission from the OfS, some institutions will have been thinking about how to best address differential outcomes for BTEC students as they submitted their recent Access and Participation Plans. If this work had the level of sector engagement and focus that the EORR provides for other groups, we could make faster and more effective progress.
If we don’t deal with differential outcomes for BTEC students now we risk doing a disservice to a cohort of students, and also undermining a qualification that brings thousands of students a year into HE.
