What the Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper Means for the East of England

The Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper outlines how the Government will prepare the UK workforce for the challenges of the next decade. For the East of England — a region defined by world class universities and scientific excellence, but also stark disparities in skills attainment — the implications are clear. The reforms aim to close skills gaps, raise productivity, and ensure that education at every level directly supports local economic growth.

Addressing Skills Shortages and Boosting Productivity

The White Paper identifies skills shortages as a barrier to national productivity, with over a quarter of vacancies (27%) unfilled due to a lack of skilled candidates. In the East of England, the position is relatively more positive with fewer skill shortage vacancies (19%) a marked improvement on the pre-pandemic figures, although still high compared with reported shortages of 14% in 2011.

	2019	2019	2024	2024
	EoE	England	EoE	England
Vacancy density (vacancies as a proportion of employment)	3.4%	3.2%	3.4%	3.0%
Hard-to-fill vacancies (as a share of vacancies)	41%	36%	30%	35%
Skill-shortage vacancy density (as a share of vacancies)	27%	25%	19%	27%

Source: Employer Skills Survey 2024

However, pressures vary between industries, and skill shortages are particularly acute in advanced manufacturing, health and care, construction, logistics, and green industries.

The creation of Skills England — a new coordinating body — and the introduction of sector Job Plans will link national priorities, identified in the Industrial Strategy, to local needs. This will give the East a stronger mechanism to align training provision with the demands of major employers such as BT (Adastral Park) and the region’s growing offshore energy and agri-tech sectors.

Shorter modular courses, funded through a new loan entitlement, is a policy which the Government has retained from the existing post-16 legislation and this will be rolled out from 2026. The Lifelong Learning Entitlement is intended to enable working adults to upskill or retrain mid-career. It will provide up to 4 years of student finance potentially leading to higher technical qualifications and full degrees.

Ensuring take up of this loan entitlement will require higher education institutions to think differently about providing courses that can meet the demands of industry and employees looking to advance their careers, while offering flexible pathways for part-time learners to acquire higher level skills.

Targeted investment in growth industries - £625 million for construction skills and £187 million for digital and AI learning packages - are designed to reduce reliance on migrant labour and foster a domestic skills base attuned to regional strengths.

Significance for Employers

For employers, the White Paper strengthens the expectation of co-investment in training. The new Growth and Skills Levy will require businesses to fund training that directly raises workforce productivity, while the government supports national priorities such as green skills or areas of market failure.

The proportion of employers across the East experiencing at least one skill gap in their workforce is in line with the national average at 12%. This is down on the pre-pandemic figure. However, the proportion of all employees judged not fully proficient (2.7%) is below the national average and has fallen since 2019. This bodes well for the competitiveness of the region.

	2019	2019	2024	2024
	EoE	England	EoE	England
Percentage of sites with at least one skill gap	15%	13%	12%	12%
Skill gap density (% of employees judged not fully proficient)	4.7%	4.6%	2.7%	4.1%

Source: Employer Skills Survey 2024

The proposed partnership model is intended to reward proactive firms - those engaging with colleges and universities to co-design curricula - with clearer access to public funding and new skills pipelines. In the East, where employer investment in training has fallen by 20% since 2011, this is a vital cultural and financial shift.

		2011	2024	Difference
England	Total employer investment in training	£55,360m	£44,831m	-19.02%
England	Investment in training per employee	£2,440	£1,690	-30.74%
East of England	Total employer investment in training	£5,798m	£4,637m	-20.02%
East of England	Investment in training per employee	£2,420	£1,680	-30.58%

Source: Employer Skills Survey 2024

Implications for the Unemployed

Youth unemployment has risen disproportionately since the pandemic. The unemployment rate for young people aged between 16 to 24 in England is currently 15.3%. This rate has increased from 14.8% in the previous year and is over three times the overall unemployment rate for all working-age individuals. The rate is at its highest since the peak levels seen in the early 2010s. 

The youth unemployment rate for the East of England is 16.9%, higher than the national average. The East of England currently ranks 7^th amongst all regions and nations in the UK, the North East is the highest at 23.6%.

The White Paper therefore commits to reducing the number of young people who are NEET (not in education, employment or training), with a Youth Guarantee providing college places for school leavers and a ‘guaranteed job’ – a subsidised work placements for those on Universal Credit for over 18 months.

For the East’s rural and coastal communities — such as Fenland, Great Yarmouth, and Tendring — these measures could help reverse cycles of intergenerational unemployment and low attainment.

The Government has set a target for achieving full employment (80%). Bringing down youth unemployment and enabling access to sustainable employment is therefore critical to meting this aim and raising productivity levels, while reducing the welfare bill. However, there is a relative policy gap in the white paper for employment and skills provision among unemployed adults over the age of 25.

The Future of Further and Higher Education

The government has set a target for two thirds of young people to participate in higher-level learning – academic, technical or apprenticeships – by the age 25.

The reforms envisage a more integrated system between Further and Higher Education (FE and HE). Colleges will be able to offer higher technical qualifications (Levels 4 and 5) through modular pathways, making HE more accessible to local learners and employers.

For the East of England, this aligns with the growth of regional hubs, such as ARU Peterborough and the Norfolk and Suffolk Institute of Technology, bridging vocational and academic study. Universities will be expected to specialise and collaborate regionally — a model well suited to the East’s ecosystem of research-intensive (Cambridge, UEA) and applied universities (ARU, Essex, Suffolk).

The paper offers a much-needed shoring up of the FE sector with investment in infrastructure and staff. For universities the picture is more uncertain. Higher education will continue to face funding challenges, but the incentives for the sector are to pivot towards the opportunities which a new integrated tertiary system brings.

Universities are encouraged to be more collaborative and specialised in building regional research strengths. Providers are also encouraged to renew their civic mission—aligning education, research, and engagement with local growth and social needs.

The role of Devolution in Education and Skills

The White Paper sets out a modest but important strengthening of local influence within a national framework. While Skills England will coordinate strategy nationally, the paper emphasises that delivering effective post-16 education requires decisions rooted in local labour-market realities. Local authorities are given clearer responsibilities for supporting young people at risk of becoming NEET, including coordinating multi-agency support and ensuring every 16–18-year-old has access to an education or training place.

Mayoral Combined Authorities (MCAs) hold greater responsibility for shaping adult skills provision, aligning training with regional economic priorities, and coordinating employers, colleges, universities, and Jobcentre Plus. The East of England, which currently includes the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority (CPCA) bit, is likely to add two further devolved authorities in Essex and Norfolk/Suffolk - this opens the door to a far more place-sensitive skills strategy.

The region’s economy is highly diverse. Devolution enables these different sub-regional economies to pursue bespoke skills missions that meet their specific needs, rather than compete for generic national programmes. Although the paper does not introduce full devolution of budgets or powers, it frames local delivery as central to achieving the government’s productivity and inclusion goals: empowering local leaders to identify priority sectors, address gaps in provision, and integrate services around learners and employers.

Conclusion

The Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper offers the East of England a framework to translate its intellectual and industrial assets into broad-based prosperity. Its success will depend on how effectively regional institutions, local authorities, and employers align behind a shared skills mission.

If delivered well, these reforms could create a genuinely lifelong, place-responsive education system — one that equips both young people and adults to drive innovation, close productivity gaps, and ensure that opportunity is not confined to the region’s most prosperous postcodes.

At a Glance: Highlights of the Post 16 Education and Skills White Paper

• Get Britain Working Plans (LSIPs / Growth Plans)

• Get Britain working trailblazers

• Youth guarantee – employment or training

• A Guaranteed Job for those u/e 18mths+

• Foundation apprenticeships

• Modular apprenticeships

• New Jobs and Career Service

• Data-led information about the outcomes of each education and training course

• 6,500 new expert teachers in FE and schools

• £1.2 bn additional funding per year in skills (FE)

• Strengthening the profession of teaching (FE)

• Strengthening EdTech

• introduce V levels (alongside T and A levels) as the single vocational qualification route (e.g. finance and accounting V level).

  • 1 T level = 3 A levels

  • 1 V level = 1 A level

• Introduce Technical Excellence Colleges in priority sectors

• Integration of HE/FE level 4+ through OfS

• Single registration for the Lifelong Learning Entitlement

• Financial barriers—such as living costs—will be addressed through improved maintenance support.

• Specialisation & Collaboration: Providers should form regional clusters, share services, and co-develop research and teaching offers that meet local and national needs.

• HE Tuition fees will rise with inflation, linked to quality standards.

• Growth & Innovation: The higher education sector will drive innovation through commercialisation, spin-outs, and regional innovation clusters, supported by reforms to the Strategic Priorities Grant and £500 million for Local Innovation Partnerships.

• Research Excellence: A reformed Research Excellence Framework will reward impact, collaboration and alignment with national priorities while reducing bureaucracy.

• The UK will remain a global education leader, welcoming international students and researchers through initiatives such as the Global Talent Fund (£54 million).

• Providers are also encouraged to renew their civic mission—aligning education, research, and engagement with local growth and social needs.

• Artificial intelligence is recognised as transformative for both teaching and research. The government will publish an AI for Science Plan and invest in national supercomputing infrastructure to keep the UK at the forefront of global innovation.

Targets:

• 80% employment rate

• 2/3 of young people to participate in higher-level learning – academic, technical or apprenticeships – by age 25.

• 30,000 into foundation apprenticeships

• Close attainment gaps and expand participation among disadvantaged, mature, and under-represented learners.