Subject Advisors update for Early Years and the Childhood development , December 2025
Welcome to the last update for this year. I hope you are able to have a break over the holidays.
There is information on the White paper and what it means for vocational education. There is information on the Tech Award moderation window and when to upload your sample.
On 20 October, the government published its Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper, setting out significant reforms to vocational education in England.
We know you'll have questions about what this means for you and your students, and we want to provide you with clear information and reassurance.
You should continue to register students and deliver your programmes as planned in 2025/26. There are no immediate changes to your current provision, and BTECs continue to provide excellent outcomes for the thousands of students who choose vocational pathways each year.
Defunding of certain BTEC Level 3 qualifications will still continue as planned, but our new BTEC Level 3 Nationals (AAQs) are fully approved and ready for registration. These new qualifications will remain in place until the introduction of V Levels, ensuring continuity for you and your students.
As soon as we have full details about the funding arrangements for 2026/27, we’ll share them with you straight away, so you can plan with confidence.
The government has announced plans to introduce "V Levels" as a new vocational qualification pathway at level 3, sitting alongside A levels and T Levels. These qualifications aim to simplify the current vocational landscape and will be designed to be similar in size to A levels, allowing students to combine vocational and academic study more flexibly.
The government has opened the consultation to test the key design principles of V Levels, and new qualifications at level 2 that sit alongside GCSEs. It invites views on size and subject areas, information advice and guidance, new T Levels, level 2 qualifications and pathways, non qualification activities, the transition plan, the co-design approach to setting content, and qualification branding.
The deadline for responses in 12 January 202
Here's your invitation to the @Pearson briefing sessions for schools and colleges.
School educators: 10 December : 4-5pm
College educators: 11 December : 4-5pm
Learner Work Transfer is now open for you to upload your sampled students’ work by 15 December. You don’t need to wait until the deadline; if you’ve got work ready, you can start uploading now.
Read the Guide to the Learner Work Transfer
Once you’ve submitted your students’ work, you can expect to receive your initial moderator feedback reports from 16 January 2026. We’ll email quality nominees and exams staff to let you know when they’re ready to download from Edexcel Online.
Pearson is proud to partner with 64 Million Artists for the last-ever January Challenge – a free programme of daily creative prompts throughout January. Perfect for classrooms, staff rooms, and whole-school activities.
This year the theme is ‘Courageous Change’ with each of the prompts designed to help us get a new perspective, build our courage and helpus collaborate so that we can be more prepared for this ever changing world.
At Pearson, we've helped create the schools resource pack again this year and two prompts were written by your Subject Advisors!
To get involved, you can:
Last year 360,000 people took part and we’re hoping to make the last one the biggest and best. There’s no better time to make change than now, so sign up and take part, and we’ll see you there!
