UVAC were disappointed to hear the news that the Secretary of State will not be pausing the defunding of AGQs,

We are supporting the Protect Student Choice campaign, and are one of the signatories to this letter, and would ask you to do the same by helping to enlist as many school and college leaders as possible to be signatories to a pre-drafted letter that asks for a one-year pause to defunding.

The letter is being co-ordinated by the #ProtectStudentChoice campaign on behalf of school and college leaders in England and will be sent to the Secretary of State later this month.

Click HERE to open the letter.

Could we ask that you consider signing the letter and share the letter with relevant stakeholders in your network including school, academy trust and college leaders and urge them to sign too. It takes less than a minute to do so.

The deadline for signing the letter is 5pm on Monday 26th August and it is planned to send it to the Secretary of State the following day.

Without a one-year pause, schools and colleges will not know until December what AGQs (or indeed any vocational qualifications) they can offer from September 2025. This will obviously make it very difficult to provide effective IAG, hold meaningful Open Days or ensure that the right staff are in place and it is a scenario to be avoided at all costs. It also means that universities will not be able to give fair consideration of the impact of defunded qualifications, for entry to higher education programmes in the near future.

The hope is that a letter from leaders, with this slightly adapted ask (a one year pause rather than two), will receive a positive response. The letter can only be signed via the link above and is very straightforward to complete.

If you have any issues in signing the letter, please contact [email protected]

Thank you for your continued support.