Looking Ahead at 2026

The final months of 2025 brought a flurry of government announcements across FE and skills, from the Post-16 White Paper and apprenticeship assessment reforms to a new review of young people not in education, employment, or training (NEETs). As the dust begins to settle, let’s look ahead to what 2026 may hold for our sector.

V Levels

The Level 3 and Below Consultation, which closed on 12th January, is at the top of many inboxes. In October 2025, the Government confirmed its intention to introduce V Levels – a new qualification designed to sit alongside A Levels and T Levels.

The ambition is to simplify a qualifications system that learners, teachers, employers, and parents alike often struggle to navigate. Our research with King’s College London has revealed just how difficult it is for young people not pursuing the university route to understand their options.

However, the proposed timeline is extremely tight. With a planned roll-out in 2027, there is little time to develop the resources and understanding that teachers, employers, and universities will need and which will be crucial to success, as shown in our T Levels research. Close scrutiny of their design is also vital to make sure these qualifications deliver value for money.

NEETs

Tackling the growing number of young people who are not earning or learning has also risen sharply up the Government’s agenda. December saw a flurry of announcements linked to the Youth Guarantee – £820 million to fund 350,000 training and workplace opportunities, 360 Youth Hubs, guaranteed work placements for 55,000 young people on long-term benefits, and £725 million to create 50,000 additional apprenticeships.

While questions remain about timelines and whether this is genuinely new money, the message is clear: this is a government committed to what Chancellor Rachel Reeves promised in her speech at the last Labour Party Conference – ‘nothing less than the abolition of long-term youth unemployment’.

The review into youth unemployment led by former Health Secretary and Chair of the Social Mobility Foundation, Alan Milburn, is set to report in the Spring, and promises to take ‘a radical, system-wide approach that matches the urgency of the task at hand’. Crucial to this will be understanding the underlying causes of the NEET crisis, something we have explored in our research with the University of Bath. We look forward to sharing our insights with the review panel.

Apprenticeships

2026 also brings significant changes to the apprenticeship landscape, not least the long-awaited introduction of the Growth and Skills Levy. From April, employers will be able to use levy funds to pay for shorter apprenticeship units, including courses in AI, digital and engineering.

Our concerns around increased flexibility in the levy are centred on the pressure it may place on an already constrained budget and the potential impact on the number of young people starting apprenticeships. Key questions remain unanswered: how much levy funding will be available for these units? Will non-levy-paying employers have equal access? Getting these details right will be critical to maintaining employer confidence.

There is also the prospect of a new £140 million mayoral pilot aimed at connecting young people with apprenticeship opportunities. This presents an exciting opportunity to show how effective brokerage can encourage more employers – particularly SMEs – to engage with apprenticeships. Providers, employers and learners will soon be grappling with a host of additional changes: the full roll-out of new assessment reforms by August; the removal of funding for most Level 7 apprenticeships; new funding rules to fully cover training for under-25s in SMEs (which we cautiously welcomed); the removal of the 10% uplift to levy accounts; and a reduction in the expiry window for levy funds from two years to just 12 months. Reform is, of course, no bad thing, but care must be taken so that employers, providers, and learners feel like this is something happening with them, not to them.

This is only part of what lies ahead. Last September, the Prime Minister pledged to transform FE, describing it as the Cinderella sector of our education system. If that promise is to be realised, we need far greater clarity on how it will be delivered, backed by robust evidence and close collaboration with the sector. It’s going to be a busy year…

By Alice Gardner, CEO, the Edge Foundation