NFRC welcomes earlier technical education pathways intention

These new pathways help address the common issue felt across the trades — that finding skilled people is one of their biggest challenges.

NFRC (National Federation of Roofing Contractors) welcomes the Prime Minister's announcement of the intention to establish new technical education pathways for 14-year-olds in England, while calling for further detail on how the plans will be delivered on the ground.

Allowing students in Year 10 to combine core academic subjects with technical education, work experience and employer contact from September 2028, responds directly to NFRC Member concerns that students are not given equal opportunity to explore a career in the trades.

NFRC's own research underlines the scale of the challenge. The latest State of the UK Roofing Industry report (Winter 2026) found that 47% of roofing contractors said recruiting skilled labour was harder than a year earlier, and 58% said skilled labour shortages were limiting the amount of work their business could take on. Just 2% of contractors thought it was currently easy to attract new workers to the industry.

Ruth Scarrott, NFRC head of careers, said:

Anything that gets roofing and construction in front of young people earlier, and treats technical education as equal to the academic route, is a step in the right direction. Our Members continually tell us that finding skilled people is one of their biggest challenges.

We do need to see more detail on how this will work in practice. There's a real opportunity here to build on established programmes, like Local Skills Improvement Plans, rather than creating something parallel that competes for the same employers' time and attention. 

It's also vital that schools are supported to work with smaller, local construction firms, not just the large national employers who tend to have dedicated resource for this kind of engagement. Most of our members are SMEs, and they're often the ones best placed to offer a young person a genuine route into the trade in their own community. But a small contractor with a handful of staff can't always give the same time to school visits and work placements that a large employer can, so any new system needs to make it straightforward and low-burden for them to get involved.