L3 vocational qualifications in England- analysis of the 2025 DfE national dataset - March 2026

L3 vocational qualifications in England- analysis of the 2025 DfE national dataset - March 2026

2025 Level 3 vocational value-added benchmarks in England 


This article presents an overview of the findings from the Alps review of the DfE national dataset for 2025 for vocational qualifications. It will focus on trends across the headline Alps indicator, the Quality Indicator (QI) grade rather than on individual subjects. This is important as individual subject value-added trends vary across the curriculum and between datasets. In order to understand the impact on subject headlines, you will have to compare previous reports to the analysis released into Connect and Summit on 16 March. We have included a brief summary section below to support you in understanding how to go about the comparison. 

It is widely expected that the outcomes from the 2025 examinations for KS5 in England will now be the 'baseline' for future grading standards. Therefore the hope is that the 2025 DfE national value-added picture represents an opportunity to move to a new standard benchmark, moving away from the 2019 DfE national benchmark that we have been using in Connect and Summit since before the pandemic.

The article concludes with an overview of the recommendations for benchmark selection for retrospective analysis of your 2025 results for your vocational analysis and for monitoring your current Year 13 and 12 cohorts. 
Watch video summary of article:





The main qualifications covered in this article are listed below. These are the subjects which count towards your BTEC Quality Indicator grade at this time: 
  1. BTEC Extended Certificates, Diplomas, Extended Diplomas 
  2. Cam Tec Extended Certificates, Diplomas, Extended Diplomas

Additional qualifications in the vocational benchmark release for DfE 2025 dataset: 
  1. BTEC Foundation Diplomas and Certificates
  2. UAL Diplomas and Extended Diplomas
  3. WJEC Certificates and Diplomas
  4. CACHE Awards, Certificates, Diplomas and Extended Diplomas

Context: narrative leading to 2025 DfE national dataset

As described above, it is hoped that the 2025 DfE national benchmarks represent an opportunity to return to some form of standardised baseline for vocational qualifications. 
The analysis that follows highlights differences between the 2019, 2024 and 2025 DfE national datasets that Alps has been using within Connect and Summit in recent years. 

Connect and Summit Benchmarks 
The table below summarises the benchmarks we have been using in the platforms since Results 2025 for the vocational qualifications covered by Alps. 

Sept 2018-Results 2019

Sept 2019-Results 2020

Sept 2020-Results 2021

Sept 2021 – Results 2022

Sept 2022 – Results 2023

Sept 2023 – Results 2024

Sept 2024 – Results 2025

Sept 2025 – Results 2026

Toggle 1 (default)

‘National Benchmark Set’

DfE ‘19

DfE ‘19

DfE ‘19

DfE ‘24

DfE ’19

DfE ’19

Toggle 2

‘Alps Benchmark’

DfE ‘19

Alps ‘22

Alps ‘23

DfE ‘24

DfE ’24: KS5 Vocational

DfE ’24: KS5 Vocational



  1. Toggle 1: 2019 DfE national:  our default benchmark is generally based on the latest national dataset that we feel is the most representative of the value-added picture for a given academic year. In the case of the vocational benchmarks, we felt that whilst 2019 may prove an overestimate of value-added progress in 2025, it was likely to be closer to overall outcomes than any other national dataset. We did warn that when we switched benchmarks to 2025 DfE in Spring Term, you would likely see a drop in value-added/Alps QI grade.
  2. Toggle 2: 2024 DfE national: in September 2025, we wrote to customers regarding our decision to use the 2024 DfE national benchmark on the alternative benchmark toggle. Whilst we acknowledged that the value-added generated from this benchmark was likely to be a bigger overestimation (than 2019) resulting in a bigger drop in QI grade, we recognised that this benchmark contained a wider vocational subject coverage than the 2019 DfE, particularly for reformed BTECs. 

Prior attainment and cohort context

As with all KS5 qualifications, the prior attainment profile of learners has been disrupted in the years following the pandemic. For vocational courses, we will consider the prior attainment from the perspective of the proportions of students distributed within our ten Alps vocational prior attainment bands.

We can marry this against the various BTEC qualifications in the graphs below showing the percentage of students by Alps band. 
For each successive qualification, we can see that the proportion of students in the higher prior attainment bands is lower in the 2025 dataset than it was in the 2024 dataset, indicating a return to pre-pandemic standards at KS4. However you will note that it is still higher than in the 2019 dataset at the top end of the PA range. 

BTEC Extended Certificates



BTEC Diplomas



BTEC Extended Diplomas




Analysis of DfE 2025 Minimum Expected Points

When we generate benchmarks for Alps analysis, we begin by identifying the MEP or the minimum expected points required by each Alps prior attainment band. The MEP is defined as the average outcome points achieved by providers at the 75th percentile in the national dataset.   

In terms of Minimum Expected Points, the graphs below compares the target points required at the 75th percentile across the 10 BTEC Alps bands. 
Once again the MEP comparisons are separated into Ext Certs, Dips and Ext Dips and compare MEPs achieved in the 2025 DfE dataset (orange), the 2024 DfE dataset (green) and the 2019 DfE dataset (brown).

BTEC Extended Certificates




BTEC Diplomas




BTEC Extended Diplomas




When comparing the three national datasets there is some variation in most prior attainment bands. However, the three graphs do show broad trends, indicating a different value-added picture across the examination series.

The clearest trend revolves around the comparison between the 2024 DfE dataset and the 2025 DfE dataset. The green bar of the 2024 dataset is consistently lower than the orange bar of the 2025 dataset across all qualifications and all Alps prior attainment bands. This has important implications for colleagues who have used the 2024 DfE dataset on Toggle 2 for either 2025 examination analysis or for monitoring BTEC cohorts across 2025/26. This will be discussed in the next section. 

The tables below shows the comparisons in the MEPs for each dataset and for each qualification type. 



BTEC MEGs
The table below shows the final MEPs and MEGs for the 2025 DfE dataset for all BTEC/Cam Tecs




Impact of 2025 dataset on overall Quality Indicator grades

In this section we will consider the impact of the MEP changes on the QI scores and grades for BTEC/Cam Tec courses. This means that we look at the QI scores and grades for all Alps customers, and analyse the shift patterns when we switch from one benchmark to another. We will continue to compare the 2025 DfE national with 2019 DfE national and the 2024 DfE national datasets. 


From our analysis, 70% of providers who used the 2019 DfE National dataset when analysing their 2025 KS5 vocational results will see no change in their overall QI grade now that we have replaced this dataset with the 2025 DfE dataset. However, 21% will see their QI grade decrease, with 2% seeing a drop of 2 Alps grades.

In contrast, 65% of providers who used the 2024 DfE National dataset when analysing their 2025 KS5 vocational results, will now see a lower Alps QI grade when viewed against the 2025 DfE dataset. There are 3% of provider who drop by 2 Alps grades. 35% of providers will remain on the same Alps grade.

Overall Impact on QI Grade for BTEC/Cam Tec

National 19 switched to National 25

(Percentage of providers)

National 24 switched to National 25

(Percentage of providers)

Positive

9%

0%

No change

70%

35%

Negative

21%

65%


The resulting impact on QI distributions across Alps customers is as follows: 


In summary: 
  1. The distribution of 2025 DfE national is most similar to the distribution of the 2019 DfE national, with the 2019 DfE dataset a little more generous.
  2. The 2024 DfE national was more generous than the 2025 DfE national, which was as expected.



Recommendations 

In September you may recall from our webinars and Knowledge Base articles that we made colleagues aware of the options for selecting your vocational benchmark: 2019 DfE on toggle 1 and 2024 DfE on toggle 2. 

We were concerned that both options may lead to an over-estimate of your eventual value-added analysis once the 2025 DfE dataset became available, and that this would likely result in a drop in Alps grades/value-added outcomes. 

We predicted that the 2019 DfE dataset was potentially a closer match to the 2025 DfE value-added picture, and recommended toggle 1 as a more suitable option both for analysis of examination results and for tracking students across 2025/26. On toggle 2, we warned that despite better subject coverage, the 2024 DfE dataset was likely to prove to be a larger overestimate and therefore using it would risk an overall bigger value-added/ Alps grade drop when switching to 2025 DfE. 

As you have read in the section above, this has indeed proved to be the case. 

At this point, our recommendation would be: 

  1. Briefly revisit your analysis from Summer 2025 outcomes against the new benchmark, review priorities arising. 
  2. Use this new 2025 DfE dataset from which to base your interventions and priorities for the remainder of the time you have left with your current Year 13 students, and for tracking Year 12 as they progress through their vocational courses.
The default benchmark on Results Day 2026 will be the 2025 DfE national dataset.



Summary of the benchmarks in Connect and Summit

The 2025 DfE national benchmark for the L3 vocational subjects has been applied as follows: 

  1. Toggle 1: The new 2025 DfE dataset has replaced the 2019 DfE dataset. This is true for A level and vocational qualifications. IB and EPQ will be released in the week beginning 6 April. 
  2. Toggle 2: The new 2025 DfE dataset has replaced the 2024 DfE dataset for the vocational qualifications. The A level remains on the 2025 Alps customer benchmark. 

We have applied the new 2025 benchmarks to all gradepoints up to and including examinations in Summer 2025, which means your analysis from your examination results may have changed. 
We have also applied the 2025 benchmark to all gradepoints for 2025/26 and therefore it will be the default benchmark for Results 2026. Any analysis from monitoring gradepoints may also have changed. 


Comparison of value-added at subject level 

We have not carried out extensive analysis for individual vocational subjects, and therefore it is not possible to give the same impact overview at subject level. We would recommend that you use historical reports available from your admin user to compare retrospective analysis if you do not have a record of the figures from Connect. 

Summary PDF reports contain overview summaries of curriculum value-added grades. They also contain subject pages with more detailed analysis. 


UAL MEPs and MEGs

The table below shows the MEPs and MEGs for the UAL qualifications from the 2025 DfE national dataset. 



WJEC MEPs and MEGs

The table below shows the MEPs and MEGs for the WJEC L3 qualifications from the 2025 DfE national dataset. 



Cache MEPs and MEGs

The table below shows the MEPs and MEGs for the Cache qualifications from the 2025 DfE national dataset.