Young People In Low Level Vocational Education: Characteristics, Trajectories and Labour Market Outcomes

Report authors Augustin de Coulon, Sophie Hedges, Vahe Nafilyan, Stefan
Published by Speckesser Centre for Vocational Education Research (March 2017)

There is a recurrent tendency to criticise the worth of technical and vocational provision at and below Level 2; a theme that can be traced back to Alison Wolf's Review of Technical Education in 2011 which reported that: "The staple offer for between a quarter and a third of the post-16 cohort is a diet of low-level vocational qualifications, most of which have little to no labour market value." This resulted in an overhaul of provision at this level, seeing off the old foundation learning tier and introducing study programmes. Notwithstanding this, the worth of provision below Level 2 is still routinely questioned. However, this paper from CVER in 2017 goes some way to filling the gap in hard evidence as to how valid such criticisms are.