The first priority of qualification reform is purpose

When reforming qualifications, it is tempting to focus on the immediate practical questions, the ones perhaps at the forefront of teachers’ minds - what should be taught and how should it be assessed?

But qualification design begins with a question that takes one step back from this: what is this qualification actually for?

That question sits at the heart of a report that Ofqual publishes today: Designing Qualifications that will be Fit for their Purposes.

It sets out some of the important thinking that has informed our approach to regulation and qualification reform, including the introduction V levels, a new qualification that will sit alongside A levels and T levels.

As we note in the report, academic research into this area is fragmented, and we hope this publication is a useful contribution to the development of qualifications well beyond our statutory jurisdiction of England.

Qualification design is partly an exercise in curriculum design and partly an exercise in assessment design. It requires paying careful attention to the potential impact of specification and assessment decisions on the ways teachers teach their students.

To help this process, we have developed what our report calls “purpose analysis”: the rigorous process of working out what a qualification needs to achieve before we start asking how it should be taught and assessed.

Three perspectives on qualification design

Qualification design requires three distinct but interconnected perspectives to be held in view at once: the expertise perspective, the engagement perspective and the information perspective. What do these mean in practice?

The information perspective concerns the accuracy and the usefulness of what a qualification result tells the world (such as universities, employers and colleges) about what a student knows and can do.

The expertise perspective concerns the body of learning that students need to acquire: the knowledge, skills and understanding that the qualification is designed to build and the value of this capability to learners, the economy and society.

The engagement perspective concerns the features of the qualification that actively support its uptake, learning and completion. It recognises that a qualification that fails to engage its target students will not succeed, however well-designed it might be.

All three perspectives matter for every qualification, but they are often at odds. The central challenge is not whether to make trade-offs, but how.

For example, a qualification that is being designed for a group of largely disengaged learners might build in a lot of optionality, to help personalise its content to the interests and motivations of individual learners.

However, a qualification designed in this way might have limited use for employers, who would not be clear on what students had specifically learned underneath the qualification name.

Our framework sets out how to consider those trade-offs so they can be made deliberately and transparently, with a clear understanding of their likely consequences.

Applying the framework to V levels

Thinking through these three perspectives in relation to V levels demonstrates why the framework has practical value.

From the information perspective, a common grading scale across V levels will provide a clear picture of what students know and can do in a subject, comparable across exams boards and from year to year.

This can be used in decisions about the selection of learners, whether that’s for higher study, training or apprenticeships.

From the expertise perspective, V levels are designed to equip students with a broad vocational grounding in a sector, based on nationally set content, which actively prepares them for progression to university, training or apprenticeships.

This is distinct from T levels, which lead students towards occupational readiness in a specific area, and A levels, which follow an academic discipline towards higher education.

From the engagement perspective, V levels need to offer an opportunity to their target cohort: young people who want to explore a vocational field before committing to a particular direction. A modular design and practical and applied assessments will provide this.

A third pathway

V levels are a response to a clearly identified need.

Research shows that nearly half of parents of teenagers would prefer a mix of academic and work-based learning for their child after GCSEs, yet around a quarter say they are not confident their child understands the options available.

At present, young people who want to explore a vocational area face a complex landscape of qualifications, with different approaches that are not underpinned by national expectations about content, assessment and grading.

V levels address this directly, creating a distinct but complementary third pathway alongside A levels and T levels. They bring both clarity and parity for students seeking vocational options.

Each V level is equivalent in size to one A level and can be combined with A levels to give students flexibility to mix and match academic and vocational learning in ways that reflect their interests and ambitions.

The first V levels will be available to students from September 2027, beginning with digital; education and early years; and accounting and finance. The work of designing these qualifications is already underway and reflects many of the insights from this important research.

Sir Ian Bauckham is chief regulator at Ofqual