Young people keen to pursue technical education routes have been failed for decades by poor courses with weak business links, the education secretary has said.

Justine Greening said the poor state of vocational training was “not acceptable” and vowed to create a new “gold standard” to improve provision.

She argued that the new Technical and Further Education Bill would build on the recent expansion in apprenticeships to improve training for young people.

Introducing the Bill for its second reading in the Commons, Ms Greening said: “For most young people, they will not necessarily go down an academic route and they will choose to go down an education route that is more technical in nature.

“And despite that fact, for decades that technical education route open to those young people has often lacked sufficient quality, and it’s also failed to offer a proper high-quality pathway into the world of work. And that’s not acceptable.

“And if we are going to create a country that works for everyone, then we believe it is time we gave technical education the same focus that it deserves, alongside our schools and academic education reforms.”

‘A new era of technical training’

The minister said the Bill would help to usher in a new era of technical training which will tackle weak courses, shrink and streamline the number of qualifications and strengthen engagement with businesses. This would help to place technical training on a par with academic education, she said.

“The government now wants to build on what exists in the further education and technical education sector and create a gold standard, steadily, of technical education for the first time,” she said.

The Bill will rename the Institute for Apprenticeships as the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education and extend its role. It will also create an insolvency framework for further education corporations and sixth-form colleges to better protect students, and will ensure that after devolution of FE functions, colleges will continue to submit information to the national database.