NOTE: Updated information about most recent and upcoming changes in the post-16 education can be found here.

The new year might only be a few weeks old, but there have already been plenty of new developments in the education sector, which will keep us all on our toes.

A few weeks ago, Education Secretary Michael Gove confirmed big changes are coming for A-Levels from 2015 onwards, with the end of modular units and the return of exams at the end of the two-year course. The AS-Level will no longer be part of the wider A-Level, but will also remain as stand-alone examinations, taken over one or two years. This now means – with the odd exception of an AS-Level that there will be no public examinations in the lower sixth year.

With all these changes coming into effect, along with the raising of the participation age, first to 17 and then to 18 by 2015, we are entering a critical time in the provision of post-16 education in this country. Last week, Learning Plus UK and the Institute of Education held a roundtable discussion, which looked at the importance of data on raising the participation event.

The discussion looked at a variety of areas, including how the A-Level reforms will affect young people and education establishments, where will young people go for their Post-16 education and how we will deal with the issue of those who are not in education, employment or training (NEET). We also looked the role data can play in helping young people get the grades they need, and specifically when data is useful and when it is not!

The subject of ‘where to next?’ for the 16-19 sector will also form the basis of our annual summit, which takes place this month (15 February) at the headquarters of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations in London. The event will give you the opportunity to engage with leading policy makers, direct from Whitehall and national education organisations. Among the confirmed speakers are Linda Rose, from the Department for Education’s 16-19 accountability team and Alan Parnum, from the Education Funding Agency. There will also be a series of workshops and a chance to find out more about our new online Post-16 Datadashboard.

The new Datadashboard will be available through a secure web portal and will include value-added scores at Qualification Type level by a range of characteristic and performance measures, retention information and benchmarking information, including summary, academic performance and value added data, as well as grade breakdowns, by a range of characteristics. A demo version of our new Post 16 Datadashboard is now available on our website to try out. To find out more, click here:

http://www.learningplusuk.org/products/lpuk-datadashboard

And there’s still time to book your place at our annual summit, so email membershipservices@learningplusuk.org for more details.

We will post a full review of the event on the blog next month, so stay tuned and we look forward to seeing you all there!