Baker Dearing Life President Lord Baker asked Skills Minister Baroness Smith in the House of Lords on 8 December about the pilot of UTC Sleeves that we would like to develop in mainstream schools.

Lord Baker thanked the minister for attending Aston University Engineering Academy last year and Mulberry UTC last month, the latter during #thinkUTC week. He continued that a UTC Sleeve would be “the only way that students in communities with an industrial heritage would be able to study a practical technical education.”

Lord Baker also highlighted the proportion of UTC leavers who progress to apprenticeships (c20%) and to STEM university course (73% of the 51% who progress to university) as the UTC programme’s contribution to tackling youth unemployment.

The minister responded that she “always enjoys my visits to UTCs,” which are doing a “very good job in providing technical education that leads onto apprenticeships.”