Is the Battle for Level 3 Lost?

In the News 

The education sector was enraged last month when the Protect Student Choice campaign found 75 applied general qualifications (AGQs) including BTECs would be rendered ineligible for public funding from 2025, as part of the government’s level 3 reforms. 

This, many sector leaders argued, ran contrary to an assurance given in April 2022 by then-education secretary Nadhim Zahawi that only a “small proportion” of AGQs would have their funding cut. 

The assurance was made to win over members of the Lords who wanted to amend the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill to include protections for the level 3 AGQs.  

Now that assurance appears to have been ripped up. This has led several peers, including former education secretary Lord Blunkett who we have interviewed for this edition of The Mark, to write to education secretary Gillian Keegan expressing their “disappointment” that Zahawi’s commitment has not been honoured. 

The Department for Education told FE Week when Protect Student Choice’s analysis was published that: “The changes we are making through our review will make sure only qualifications that are necessary, lead to good outcomes for students and meet the skills needs of businesses are approved for public funding.” 

Perhaps the writing was always on the wall. The government’s official response to the level 3 qualifications review in July 2021 stated that applied general qualifications will be “rare” in their new qualification landscape. 

In November 2021, Zahawi announced T Levels would drop their English and maths exit requirement – helping open the courses to students who would otherwise take up an AGQ. 

The government also created the T Level Transition Programme, a one-year post-GCSE study course which would prepare students to enrol on T Levels. However, the programme has flopped, with just one in seven of the programme’s students progressing onto a T Level in the first year. 

These reforms have been edging forward for years now. Before rolling out in 2020 as the government’s new flagship technical qualification, T Levels originated from the 2016 Sainsbury report which recommended “a coherent technical education option” at level 3.  

The Department for Education later that year published its Post-16 Skills Plan which accepted the recommendation, adding: “If we don’t provide an excellent technical education option, we will be failing a very significant number of young people.” 

Jon Yates, who worked as special advisor for Damian Hinds MP when the latter was education secretary, wrote for FE Week this month that BTECs do not “prepare young people to get a skilled job. 

“They do not even include a mandatory on-the-job element. Instead, they have become a general-purpose qualification that gives children some job knowledge, but also doubles as a source of UCAS points to getting into university,” Yates continued. 

Yet Bill Watkin, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association which leads the Protect Student Choice campaign, responded to Yates in another piece, writing that BTECs: “Currently provide a meaningful pathway for hundreds of thousands of young people who are ready to access level 3 education; 44 per cent of white working class 18 year-olds and 34 per cent of learners from a BAME background who go to university, do so with BTECs.” 

Parallel to introducing T Levels, the DfE has begun to defund existing technical qualifications. The first phase of this process, which was completed last August, removed public funding from 5,500 qualifications with low or no publicly funded enrolments. The second phase involves removing funding from qualifications which overlap with T Levels. For the third phase, the DfE will introduce a new approvals process for qualifications.  

Yet The Mark understands multiple education providers are now planning to deliver just T Levels at post-16. Employers are increasingly engaging with T Levels, with more and more reports by representative bodies proposing possible improvements. 

Interview 

This month, we spoke with former education secretary Lord Blunkett about his work with the Protect Student Choice campaign and fellow former ministers to force the government to look again at their level 3 plans.

How would you rate the government's handling of the reforms to level three qualifications? 

It’s been very poor on a number of levels. The consultation has been limited. The input from employers has been negligible.  

The commitment made at the dispatch box and in the letter by the then-education secretary Nadhim Zahawi was very clear that they wouldn't use the argument about overlap in these early stages. That they would take account of quality and the numbers on the courses.  

In terms of the 75 qualifications that they intend to defund, we are talking about tens of thousands of students. If the argument's about quality, well, let’s have an argument about quality. If it's about trying to make T Levels work, well think again, because T Levels must work in on their own terms. They can't be forced on students out of the blue. 

What would be your ideal outcome for these reforms? 

That would be to delay the final defunding arrangements until 2026. Unless it is absolutely shown, out of these 75 courses, that there are literally negligible numbers of students. 

The first reason for this is we do need proper consultation. You can't just pull courses from potential students without really taking seriously the consequences.  

The second reason is that both providers and employers are deeply disquieted, and if you don't take notice of both of those, then you really are on an ideological mission rather than delivering to students. Of course, that applies to the impact on our economy.  

But the third is this the general election is going to be held over the next 18 months at some point. When you take steps of this kind knowing that you just might lose that election, you have a responsibility as the governing party and for the sake of the nation to take a step back. In 1997, Gillian Shephard, my predecessor as education and employment secretary took steps on university student funding and on the curriculum to consult with me and to agree a way forward, which would allow some continuity.  

Now, if an incoming government agree that many of these courses should go, that's fine. But to do this in the lead up to an election that the Conservatives, given the polling evidence, are likely to lose, is irresponsible. 

What do you think is the most likely outcome of the reforms? 

I think the most likely outcome is that, given the pressure relating to some of these advanced qualifications, they will give a bit, but not very much. There is a stubbornness within the DNA of the DfE which I find very disturbing. 

Although I have quite a lot of faith in Gillian Keegan's and Robert Halfon’s understanding of the importance of this area, I feel as though the department's got a life of its own. This is very bad news.  

Ministers should be in charge of policy, particularly something as controversial as this, at a time when we desperately need qualified young people coming into the labour market. We've got 1.1 million vacancies. We're not, because of government policy, able to draw people in from the European Union as we did in the past. Employers are crying out for young people with a commitment to vocational and technical education.  

We need both T Levels and the remaining advanced qualifications, which offer quite different routes but to the same end, where young people can take up employment or further study. We've got to open routes rather than close them down.  

Why do you think there has been such a swell of opposition to the reforms? Do you think it something to do with the rollouts and structure of T levels? 

I think it's the lack of consensus about the journey. In one breath they say, we will be moving to defund. On the next breath they say, we won't do that based on overlap. We'll only do it where qualifications are literally not being taken up by students or whether there's considerable doubt about the quality.  

The failure to get a consensus about what that outcome might mean has led to this opposition plus the fact that we know that while many of these T Levels are going to deliver for particular groups of students and employers, they're not by 2025 going to be sufficiently embedded or ingrained across further education in England as a whole, other than in those colleges which pioneered T Levels.

That’s led people in the post-16 sector to say, what is this all about? What is the outcome you are intending to achieve? What is the route to doing it? And do these two things add up? They don't currently. 

What do you think is going to be the next step in the campaign to protect funding for applied general qualifications? 

I'd like all those who have skin in the game to be prepared to come together and be quite robust at this moment in time. 

It is not a big ask to indicate that there should be a proper relook, not just an appeal, but a proper relook at the 75 qualifications we're now talking about.  

To do that properly, we need to push the final decisions on to 2026 and to have a cross-party consensus on how to do that, how best to approach the next 16 months, because they're proposing to make the announcement in July next year.  

It's incredibly tight timetable to achieve substantial change, including recruiting staff, installing the equipment, materials and infrastructure. There is also the impact on employers, particularly at local level and specifically in the most disadvantaged parts of England, where these qualifications are taken up by youngsters who would otherwise not be able to get through the threshold of A level or T Level.  

In fact, they're more likely to go for A-level than T Level. And that is completely contrary to what the government stated policy is intended to achieve.

Opinion 

Make UK's director of policy Verity Davidge discusses how T Levels can benefit the manufacturing sector and what is holding employers back from fully engaging with them. 

We have often heard about the chronic skills shortage facing the manufacturing sector. But as a result of a combination of factors, from Brexit to the pandemic, the sector now faces an immediate labour shortage. ONS data shows there are currently 77,000 vacancies in the sector.  

With policymakers contending with complex issues around economic inactivity and reluctant to use immigration as a way to address people and skills shortages, one of the solutions that government and industry are turning to are the new T Levels. 

The appeal of vocational and technical education for the manufacturing sector does not come from the ability to ‘train quickly’, rather the need to bring through a pipeline of talent, with the right combination of technical skills and in-work experience, over time. Industry placements offer the first steps into the workplace for a young person with an interest in the sector who can develop and refine their technical skills, as well as in some cases providing an extra pair of hands for particular tasks to help ease immediate workforce pressures. 

Yet despite the clear advantages, take up of T Levels has been slow - in particular, the number of employers offering an industry placement for students. In fact, Make UK research in partnership with EngineeringUK found that currently, only one in ten (nine per cent) of engineering and manufacturing employers are hosting a T level placement, and just 12 per cent plan to in the coming year. 

We stand little chance of reducing the labour shortage unless we can encourage more manufacturers to take on a T Level student and offer an industry placement.   

Employer awareness and understanding of the new qualification is key, and Make UK is proud to be working together with other sector bodies to ensure that businesses are able to access the information and support they need to provide industry placements and make T Levels a success. 

At this early stage of the sector’s journey in incorporating T Levels into their skills and workforce planning, consistent and clear messaging for employers is critical. 

Clarity over progression onwards from T Levels is also vital for employer buy-in. For manufacturers to develop that pipeline of new talent, giving learners the opportunity to move from a T Level onto a high-quality apprenticeship where they can continue their learning with greater exposure to the workplace is highly attractive. 

There is more to do to demonstrate that this route is possible, and that T Levels can complement, rather than detract from, existing apprenticeship programmes at the same level. 

The pipeline to engineering and manufacturing careers is lacking, in more than just numbers. So we need to make these pathways as accessible as possible to young people of all backgrounds, to ensure that we are meeting the future skills needs of UK businesses.  

If we are serious about kickstarting economic growth, it begins with connecting people with these very opportunities.