Over 150 qualifications (70%) due to be defunded from 31 July 2025 have received a reprieve following the Department for Education’s “rapid review” of post-16 qualification reforms set in train by the previous government.  The funded post-16 qualifications will sit alongside A Levels and T Levels.

Following a sector-by-sector analysis, qualifications in sectors key to the government’s economic growth mission that were previously scheduled for defunding will continue to receive funding from September 2025 for one or two years depending on the sector, until “reformed alternatives” become more established.  This includes sectors such as agriculture, environmental and animal care, engineering, manufacturing, health and social care, legal, finance and accounting, business and administration, and creative and design.

Qualifications that overlap with T Levels will be able to coexist whilst reformed qualifications are developed and improved.  The DfE is committed to the long-term delivery of T Levels as the large technical qualification of choice for young people but has announced that further enrolments will not take place for the Onsite Construction T Level due to a lack of demand.

As part of these post-16 announcements, the DfE has also said that it will not tell providers and students which types of qualifications they can combine.

The DfE has confirmed that over 200 post-16 qualifications that had either no or below 100 enrolments per year over the last three years will have their funding withdrawn from 1 August 2025.

These announcements setting out plans to 2027 come in advance of the report of the ongoing government Curriculum and Assessment Review which the DfE says will take a view on the curriculum more broadly. An overview of what the post-16 announcements mean for OCR qualifications is available here.

Further information from the DfE on the reform of post-16 Level 2 and below qualifications will follow.