Nearly four years after their introduction, T-levels are up for review. The last Conservative government may have championed their potential impact back in September 2020 as the gold-standard vocational qualification for post-16 students in England, but ahead of the recent general election Rishi Sunak pledged to replace them along with A-levels with a baccalaureate-style qualification, if re-elected.
He wasn’t of course. Yet, he was reacting to various concerns from the educational sector around the mass defunding of other vocational qualifications, including BTecs, as well as low uptake and high drop-out rates.
Riding to the T-levels’ defence though, is another former (Labour) Prime Minister Gordon Brown who has called on the new Labour government, not to ditch them.
New report
In a new report by WPI Strategy, Delivering Skills for Growth, Mr Brown argues that a skilled workforce to propel a surge in productivity is “essential if we are to turn world-beating innovation into internationally competitive products and services.” He believes that T-levels are “one of the few genuinely successful new ideas and initiatives of the last decade” and that scrapping them would be “calamitous and costly”. Before taking office the new government said that they would be under review, should they win power.
They did of course, so what does that mean for their future? In arguing for their retention, former PM Brown wrote:
“Such is the potential of the T-levels that when the first 1,000 students recently completed this qualification, the results were outstanding. 40% have gone on to work in full-time jobs, 13% have decided to pursue apprenticeships, and 44% have decided to continue their studies at university.”
Wild west
In fact Mr Brown and Lord Sainsbury, one of the original architects of T-levels and who funded the new report, want an end to what they call the “wild west” provision of vocational qualifications.
They are urging the government to speed up T-level rollout by cutting public funding for “lower-quality and overlapping courses” – including BTecs.
He wants the calls for ‘pause and review’ to be ignored: “It would be calamitous and costly to slow the rollout of T-levels or pause the changeover of funding from lower quality to higher-quality qualifications”, wrote Mr Brown.
Common sense
No surprise though that not everyone agrees – it’s about education policy and provision after all.
One of Mr Brown’s former colleagues, Lord (David) Blunkett, himself a former education secretary and who has criticised the scrapping of BTecs, said: “Either we pull the plug on courses that are already working with the consequent collapse of the pipeline of trainees into social care, childcare and much else; or we use common sense.
“T-levels have a really important part to play, but they are in their infancy and the statistics demonstrate that an urgent review of both timescale and what is working should be an imperative.”
He’s not the only one either. The CEO of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, Bill Watkin, argues that while T-levels are a “welcome addition” to the qualifications landscape, it would be “reckless to scrap BTecs when there is no evidence to suggest that T-levels are close to being a genuine replacement or can be offered at scale”.
It’s one that might be rumble on for some time, so watch this space, but as we have written before on these pages, the T-Level system just needs tweaking to be running optimally. The writing though might be on the wall for BTecs.
So what’s a T-level?
T-levels are described as high-quality technical alternatives to A-levels and offer students a mixture of classroom learning and ‘on-the-job’ experience during an industry placement of at least 315 hours (approximately 45 days). They provide the knowledge and experience needed to open the door into skilled employment, further study or a higher apprenticeship. Aimed at students aged 16 – 19 and who are able to take a T-level in more than 20 subject areas including six with relevancy to TTE – in engineering and construction.