In our Deep Dive Analysis, we examine the two main perspectives in this discussion: those advocating for the accelerated defunding of BTECs and Level 3 AGQs to prioritize T-Levels, and those urging caution, proposing a halt on these decisions until T-Levels are more established and arguing for the continuation of the three main post-16 educational pathways.
In an opinion piece, Ruth Coyle Director of Admissions, Careers and Technical Education at La Retraite Roman Catholic Girls' School, shares her insights into how T Levels are implemented in practice, explains why they have proven valuable at La Retraite Roman Catholic Girls' School, and offers her top tips for maximising their potential.
As ever, if you have any thoughts on topics you'd like us to cover, or if you want to hear more about our services or write for The Mark, email me at:
wwalter@bridgeheadcommunications.com
In The News
Much has changed since our last newsletter was published, in which we broke down - alongside sector experts - the general election commitments of the Labour and Conservative parties when it came to Further Education and Skills.
Now, of course, it is the former who holds the power of governance, and it is their FE and Skills policies that are expected to come under much scrutiny.
In the King’s Speech, the new government confirmed their intention to establish Skills England, and committed to reforming the apprenticeship levy. On July 22nd the government formally announced the launch of the former, chaired on an interim basis by the former Co-op Chief Exec Richard Pennycook CBE. The new body will, the government say, “bring together central and local government, businesses, training providers and unions to meet the skills needs of the next decade across all regions, providing strategic oversight of the post-16 skills system aligned to the government’s Industrial Strategy.”
Another of the new government’s policy pledges that has been the source of much sector attention this month is their promise to “pause and review” the Conservatives' controversial defunding of hundreds of BTEC courses.
The former government’s plan - which drew much controversy - had been to defund from this August more than 130 qualifications due to “overlap” with the first T-Level programmes introduced in 2020 and 2021.
The now-education secretary confirmed back in 2023 that a Labour government would “review” the plans, and speaking on the 24th of July this year, Phillipson announced that the DfE would indeed “undertake a short pause and review of post 16 qualification reform at level 3 and below, concluding before the end of the year”. The review will, at present time, only apply to courses scheduled for defunding this August.
The decision has, however, failed to satisfy the appetites of either side of the debate.
Below, we break down the key points that both sides use to justify their arguments.
Deep Dive: The T-Levels vs AGQs Debate
How do both sides of the debate justify their arguments?
Addressing the Arguments
The debate around T Levels and BTECs is far from new. When the Conservative government announced their intention to withdraw funding from an increased number of qualifications that they deemed to be overlapping with T Level programmes last year, they justified the decision by arguing that current qualifications “do not consistently progress young people to related employment.”
The “unmatched” breadth and depth of the T Level programmes, they argued, provide students with a “thorough understanding of the sector and the skills needed to work in specific occupations.” These sentiments provided justification for the cull of many popular qualifications including, for example, the Pearson BTEC Level 3 Extended Diploma in IT, which had nearly 5,000 enrolments in 2020/21, and the NCFE’s Level 3 Certificate in Health and Social Care, which drew nearly 2,000.
Since the original announcements, which have been extended to incorporate more courses planned for defunding in the coming years, significant issues with T Levels have cropped up, including the news that one-third of 2021/22 T Level entrants had dropped out of the programme before completion. This fuelled criticism that the DfE was “rushing through” changes to post-16 education before the T Levels had established themselves as viable alternatives to BTECs and other advanced qualifications.
Ahead of this month’s general election, the Protect Student Choice campaign - a coalition of 28 organisations that represent and support staff and students in schools, colleges - was vocal in demanding that a new government applied the breaks to the hasty defunding of BTECs. They called for a pause and review of changes, and for confirmation of a single defunding date (1st August 2027) to ensure that students could enrol on all 134 existing applied general qualifications (AGQs) up to and including the 2026/27 academic year. It also called for a commitment to maintaining the three main post-16 educational pathways: A-Levels, T-Levels, and Advanced General Qualifications, which include BTECs.
While the election meant debate around the future of BTECs and T-Levels simmered near the surface, a larger flare up came in the middle of the month following the publication of a report, ‘Delivering Skills for Growth’, written by @wpi stra and supported by Lord Sainsbury, which included a foreword from the former prime minister Gordon Brown.
In this introduction, Brown called on the government to “ignore” the “calamitous and costly” sector calls to pause and review the defunding of BTEC programmes, which he argued would “set the economy back” during a period of heightened need for skills. “It would hamper our growth prospects by bequeathing us an inadequately trained workforce for a decade to come”, Brown continued.
The report itself made several recommendations to policymakers. It’s headline one, of course, was a call to continue with existing reforms and accelerate the roll-out of T-levels. Others included to improve access to T-Levels, to strengthen awareness of them, and to complete the roll out of national standards to all post-16 qualifications.
While the report emphasised the need for simplicity of choice, national standards, and stability, it also centred much of its argument on the need for more “high-quality” technical qualifications designed with employers to meet industry needs given skills shortages. In fact, it lay some of the blame for skills shortages on the shoulders of “failures in post-16 technical education”.
It is particularly critical of what it labels “low-quality” technical qualifications currently on offer for young people, which it suggests that the introduction of T-Levels would “weed out”. It criticised the “overwhelming” scale of choice on offer for young people, with currently almost 12,000 vocational qualifications, which often overlap, offered by 150 awarding bodies - including 3,000 at Level 3. The report cites higher teaching hours, industrial placements, rigorous national standards and career-specific skills development as perks of the latter which justify its expansion.
“As with the UK’s economic challenge, the UK needs to solve its post-16 skills problem and make up for lost time”, the report concluded.
The Argument Against Defunding BTECs
The WPI Strategy report and Gordon Brown’s commentary drew fierce opposition from campaigners in favour of maintaining breadth of student choice and supporting an extended pause and review of defunding plans.
Bill Watkin CBE, Chief Executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association that co-ordinates the Protect Student Choice campaign, criticised the report for “recycling many of the tropes used by the last Conservative government to describe BTEC qualifications while overstating the performance and potential uptake of T levels”. It would be “reckless” to continue with the defunding of BTECs when there is “no evidence to suggest that T levels are close to being a genuine replacement or can be offered at scale”, he continued.
Lord David Blunkett, another heavyweight of the education scene, called for the use of “common sense”, avoiding a “scorched earth” policy while T-Levels remained in their “infancy”.
The same arguments were stressed by other members of the Protect Student Choice campaign, including Freya Thomas Monk, Managing Director of Vocational Qualifications & Training at Pearson, who argued that there remains “a place for both T levels and BTECs/other Applied Generals in the modern skills landscape – not a stark choice between the two.”
Alice Barnard, CEO of the Edge Foundation, revealed that their focus groups with T Level students had found that many feel “apprehensive” about future prospects. Others described having been “mis-sold” the qualification, which diverged significantly from expectations. “T-Levels have potential”, Barnard argued, “but potential is where they currently stand.” It would be “remiss” to toy with credible alternatives to T-Levels in the meantime, she continued.
Many of these would have been optimistic ahead of the Education Minister’s announcement related to this pause and review, which came on July 24th. It appears, however, that any optimism rapidly dissipated after Phillipson pledged only to conduct a “focused review of post-16 qualification reforms at level 3 and below” that had been scheduled for defunding from August 1st, 2024. The review would, the Department said, be completed by the end of this calendar year.
The Protect Student Choice campaign were “surprised and deeply concerned” following the announcement, urging Phillipson to “reconsider” its plan and confirm that students will be able AGQ’s up to and including the 2026/7 academic year, and commit also to ensuring that a three-pronged post-16 system exists well into the future.
The SFCA’s Deputy Chief Executive, James Kewin, was especially critical of the decision, suggesting that it was “hard to avoid the conclusion that this wildly unrealistic timescale is designed… to encourage institutions to drop AGQs and pick up T Levels.” Bill Watkin labelled the decision a "betrayal of the commitment made in opposition", and a "betrayal of the young people that rely on applied general qualifications to progress to higher education or skilled employment."
Broader sector reaction was an interesting fusion of a sense of encouragement that the move had been made, but also hesitation that the pause and review would simply not offer the certainty that colleges, providers and students need - leaving many in the precarious position of not knowing which courses will be permissible come September 2025, until this December.
The decision making process over the next few months will be fascinating to follow, particularly as broader reforms that tend to attract more media attention, like Skills England and Levy reform, trudge onward. 16-19 education will provide an extremely valuable source of skilled workers in years to come - precisely when the country needs them. It is essential for the new government to get this right.
Opinion: Ruth Coyle, Director of Admissions, Careers and Technical Education, La Retraite Roman Catholic Girls' School
What do T-Levels look like in practice?
As an Economics teacher I always say to my students: “Investment in human and physical capital fuels economic growth”. This, in my view, is what we are seeing T Levels do in practice.
With the continuing advancement of artificial intelligence, we know that the digital sector is a huge growth area. That’s why, in 2020, we decided to introduce the Digital T-Level.
When I saw the specification back in 2019 I knew this was very different from any course we had delivered before, as it was written by industry experts. I reached out to the businesses we worked with on our careers program, including ISG, EDF, and Comensura, and asked them to help. We also invited other schools and colleges to join us. Collectively, and with the support of the Education Training Foundation, we developed the curriculum.
We launched our first T Level offer in the Spring of 2019, accompanies by guest speakers from the Livery Companies, who have always been great champions for skills development in the City.
Then lockdown hit, and we had to get creative.
Our digital students worked on social media for Trinity Hospice, created an app for the Railway Delivery Group and worked remotely with small tech companies such as Vector. Finally, once restrictions were lifted, we were able to place our students with Lloyds Banking Group - and many of them work there now.
Our T Level alumni are our greatest ambassadors. In fact, one of our first Digital T Level graduates now supports the T Level placement program at Amazon.
Once we were able to see the social mobility that T Levels offered to our students, we expanded our programme to eight T Levels, and added a T Level Foundation Year.
We have found that employers are most willing to engage once you explain to them what a T Level is - and how it can help them with their skills shortage.
We worked very closely with ISG to prepare our T Level Construction students for industry placement, and the Construction Youth Trust is a fantastic organisation that offers employability workshops. These collaborations have enabled our students to progress onto apprenticeships at Berkeley and Overbury.
Our Health students have been working with Guys and St Thomas Hospital and they all have offers for Nursing and Midwifery at University or can progress to apprenticeships at the Hospital. Local primary schools have provided us with many placements for the T Level Childcare students. Many of the students have gone straight into childcare employment or have progressed to university to train as teachers.
Our T Level Legal students are now working with companies such as Fenwick Elliott and 3 Bolt Court. 5 We are really excited to be starting T Level Media and Craft and Design in September.
In my view, the most valuable piece of advice would be to prioritise collaboration with businesses and other providers when launching the T Levels.
My top tips for success:
Register to deliver T Levels, after which you will be allocated an AOC T-Level advisor.
Sign up for the ETF's Free T Level Professional Development (TLPD) offer
Use the Gatsby website to explain to pupils and parents what T Levels, and the Strategic Development Network to help employers understand T Levels.
Visit experienced T Level providers in your area.
When you host career events, speak to employers about T Levels, and invite employers to give sector-specific talks to your T-Level students.
Talk to your Alumni about T Levels
Appoint a Business Engagement Officer
What we've been reading
'Delivering a 'skills, skills, skills' agenda for growth' - WPI Strategy
'There is still time for Labour to protect student choice' - FE Week
''Pause and review' implementation programme' - Protect Student Choice Campaign