Overview of the Act
The Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022 ("the Act") includes measures that:
Provide the statutory underpinning for local skills improvement plans, introducing a power for the Secretary of State to designate employer representative bodies to lead the development of the plans, with duties on providers to co-operate in the development of, and then have regard to, the plans;
Introduce a duty for all further education corporations, sixth form college corporations and designated institutions to review how well the education or training provided by the institution meets local needs, and assess what action the institution might take to ensure it is best placed to meet local needs;
Introduce additional functions to enable the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education ("the Institute") to define and approve new categories of technical qualifications that relate to employer-led standards and occupations and to have an oversight role for the technical education offer in each occupational route, including mechanisms to manage proliferation;
Ensure that the Institute and the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation ("Ofqual") maintain a streamlined collaborative system for approval and regulation of technical qualifications;
Strengthen a requirement on maintained schools, academies and pupil referral units in England to allow education and training providers to access their pupils in order to inform pupils directly about approved technical education qualifications or apprenticeships;
Introduce specific provision reflecting the lifelong loan entitlement policy which aims to make it easier for adults and young people to study more flexibly – helping them to space out their studies and take up more part-time study;
Enable the Secretary of State to make regulations for the purpose of securing or improving the quality of further education initial teacher training;
Put beyond doubt the Office for Students’ (OfS) ability to assess the quality of higher education providers in England and make decisions on compliance and registration by reference to minimum requirements for quality;
Enable the Secretary of State to make regulations to provide for a list of post-16 education or training providers, in particular Independent Training Providers ("ITPs"), to indicate which providers have met conditions that are designed to prevent or mitigate risks associated with the disorderly exit of a provider from the provision of education and training;
Extend statutory intervention powers applicable to further education corporations, sixth form college corporations and designated institutions under the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. This measure will enable the Secretary of State to intervene if there has been a failure to meet local needs and to direct structural change if that is required to secure improvement;
Make amendments to clarify and improve the operation of the insolvency regime for further education bodies, relating to the use of company voluntary arrangements, transfer schemes and the designation of institutions;
Make it an offence for individuals and organisations to provide or arrange for another person to provide, in commercial circumstances, contract cheating services for students at post-16 institutions, sixth forms and higher education providers in England and any other person over compulsory school age who has been entered to take an examination relating to a regulated qualification at a place in England, and the advertising by them of those services.
Enable the Secretary of State to designate a 16-19 academy as having a religious character and to make related regulations about the process for designation;
Give an explicit power to the OfS to publish notices, decisions and reports, with the publication protected by qualified defamation privilege.