Starmer scraps target to get 50% of school leavers into university
The target was set by Sir Tony Blair in a September 1999 conference speech and was met for the first time in 2019.
Sir Keir Starmer has announced a new target to get two-thirds of children either into university or to take on a gold standard apprenticeship.
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Speaking at the Labour Party conference, the Prime Minister scrapped the party’s previous ambition to get 50 per cent of children into higher education, saying it’s “not right for our times”.
The target was initially set by former Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair in 1999, but was met for the first time in 2019.
Sir Keir asked the conference hall in Liverpool: ”If you are a kid or a parent of a kid who chooses an apprenticeship, what does it say to you? Do we genuinely, as a country - afford them the same respect?”
He added: “Today I can announce, we will scrap that target and we will replace it with a new ambition that two-thirds of our children should go either to university or take on a gold standard apprenticeship.”
"That's young people-backed," Sir Keir claimed.
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He also pledged to raise the standards of colleges, boost the quality of teaching and increase the number of apprenticeships available.
He vowed to deliver higher quality teaching in colleges and 14 new Technical Excellence Colleges, arguing this will equip young people with the technical qualifications or apprenticeships that the economy needs.
The government will also invest £800million extra into funding for 16–19-year-olds next year (2026-7), which it says will support an additional 20,000 students and make our Further Education system ‘world-class”.
On Monday, Chancellor Rachel Reeves vowed to abolish long-term youth unemployment and protect a generation of young people who were "frozen out of employment, education, or training".
She pledged "record investment in skills to support our young people" at the Spending Review in June, as she confirmed the rollout of a "Youth Guarantee".
"Every young person will be guaranteed either a place in a college, for those who want to continue their studies, or an apprenticeship, to help them learn a trade vital to our plans to rebuild the country, or one-to-one support to help them find a job," she said.
She also confirmed negotiations with the EU on a Youth Mobility Scheme, as she called for “rejecting the politics of isolation and division, for which our young people pay the gravest price".
"It means defying those voices which claim to speak in the national interest, but which demand that our people, our communities, and our businesses suffer the consequences of a Britain cut off from the rest of Europe,” she said.
Meanwhile, the Education Secretary has vowed to means-test maintenance grants for university students “who need them most” in a bid to upskill Britain.
Bridget Phillipson pledged to introduce the measure by the end of this Parliament in her speech at the Labour Party conference.
The new measure is aimed at supporting students from the lowest-income households so they can excel in higher education.
The party claims the policy will help to support tens of thousands of students studying priority courses and bolster the government’s wider mission to “renew” Britain.