Education & Skills 
This morning, His Majesty King Charles III delivered the King’s Speech at the State Opening of Parliament, the formal occasion on which the government sets out its legislative programme for the coming session. Though read by the Monarch, the speech is written by the government and represents the clearest statement of its priorities for the year ahead.
Today’s speech arrives in a politically significant moment. Last week’s local elections saw Labour suffer major losses, with Reform UK and the Green Party making significant gains, and renewed calls within the Parliamentary Labour Party for changes to the leadership. The King’s Speech has consequently been framed as a moment of reset, with the government seeking to refocus its agenda. The legislative programme spans trading relations with the EU, major infrastructure investment, reform of the NHS and criminal justice system, energy independence, housing, welfare reform, and an overhaul of the special educational needs system.
So what does this mean for education, skills, and the skills pipeline?
Special Educational Needs
The government committed to raise standards in schools and introduce what it describes as generational reform of the special educational needs system. In practice, this is expected to mean fewer children will be eligible for Education, Health and Care Plans, with schools taking on greater responsibility for how pupils with SEN are taught and supported.
There are questions about what this shift means for the students most reliant on statutory support, and what it means for their longer-term participation in education and employment. These questions become more pressing given the well-documented shortage of specialist SEN educators. Increased school-level responsibility will require a parallel strategy to grow the specialist workforce, otherwise the burden falls on staff who are already stretched.
Youth Unemployment, Apprenticeships and Vocational Pathways
Ministers have committed to continuing to invest in apprenticeships and measures that tackle youth unemployment, and to responding to the Milburn and Timms Reviews. Both our Health Education and Training interim report and our Earning or Learning interim report highlighted the demand for, and value of, apprenticeships in developing workplace skills, creating sustainable talent pipelines, and overcoming some of the financial challenges associated with education and training. Both inquiries will publish final reports this summer with recommendations on how to strengthen apprenticeship provision and uptake. Challenges in this area are well established: application processes remain complex, SME engagement is low, employer backfill is limited, and greater clarity is needed on modularisation before more widespread roll-out can be expected.
The speech’s commitment to ensuring no child is held back by a lack of respect for vocational education reflects a growing consensus around parity of esteem. Across all-party parliamentary group for skills, careers and employment (APGSCE) reports and events, issues of recognition and perception have been consistently raised as barriers to the social mobility that technical pathways can enable. Parity of esteem will need to be reflected in funding decisions, careers guidance provision, and employer engagement if it is to move beyond aspiration.
Welfare Reform and Cost of Living Support
Our Earning or Learning interim report highlighted how the cost of living crisis and housing instability directly affect young people’s ability to engage with formal education and training, so it is encouraging to see both referenced in the speech as areas of government action. The government also reiterated its commitment to continuing to reform the welfare system to support young and disabled people to flourish in work. The detail of what this will mean in practice is yet to be set out. Our Earning or Learning inquiry highlighted how participation in training pathways can interact with systems like Universal Credit in ways that reduce financial stability for learners, creating inadvertent disincentives to engage with education. Any reform of the welfare system should ensure that entering a learning pathway does not leave individuals financially worse off, as this risks undermining the skills goals the government has set itself.
Where Skills Pipelines Will Be Needed
Beyond where education and skills were directly referenced, there are broader implications for skills systems across many of the other announcements in the speech. Several of the government’s commitments will place significant demand on pipelines that are already under pressure.
Defence has been placed at the centre of the government’s agenda, with a sustained increase in defence spending committed to alongside new legislation on state threats, cybersecurity, and national security. The February announcement of £80 million in student skills investment linked to the Defence Industrial Strategy is a relevant example of the kind of targeted investment this requires. The cybersecurity skills gap flagged in the speech will similarly require sustained investment across further and higher education.
The Energy Independence Bill will seek to scale up homegrown renewable energy, with a Nuclear Regulation Bill signalling a new era of British nuclear generation. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s Office for Clean Energy Jobs has been established to help coordinate the skilled workforce needed to deliver the Clean Energy Mission, working alongside the Department for Education, Skills England, and the devolved administrations. This cross-departmental approach is encouraging, and its effectiveness will depend on the degree to which it translates into funded provision at the local and regional level.
The government’s infrastructure agenda, including airport expansion, roads, Northern Powerhouse Rail, and social housing, will create substantial demand for construction, engineering, and technical skills. Investment in these areas needs to be accompanied by investment in the further education colleges and training providers that produce these workers.
Across all of these areas, there is a common challenge: universities and colleges are operating under considerable financial pressure and facing educator shortages that limit their capacity to meet growing demand. The government’s skills ambitions will require a financially sustainable further and higher education sector to deliver them.
The common thread across defence, energy, and infrastructure is the need for education and training providers to be able to respond quickly to shifting skills demands. This makes the government’s commitment to reducing regulatory burden directly relevant to the sector.
The Regulating for Growth Bill commits to reducing unnecessary regulatory burden through innovation. Our interim report for the Health Education and Training inquiry highlighted how regulatory burden can limit the ability of providers to be responsive and innovative in delivering best practice. There is potential here for positive change in the education sector. However, any changes to regulatory frameworks should be developed in collaboration with educators and education providers, and assessed against their impact on public safety. The prominence of the Clean Water Bill in today’s speech is a reminder that poorly managed deregulation can carry significant public costs.
Conclusion
Today’s King’s Speech contains a number of commitments that are relevant to education and skills, from SEN reform and youth unemployment to vocational pathways and the skills demands of the government’s energy and defence agendas. The key test will be in the policy detail and funding decisions that follow. Realising these ambitions will require sustained investment in the educators, colleges, and universities that underpin skills pipelines, alongside welfare and SEN reforms that are designed with learners’ outcomes at their centre.
For more information, please contact Rhiannon Tuckett-Jones
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