Awarding organisations are being sought to develop T Levels in areas such as media, animal care, and hair and beauty for the fourth year of the flagship qualification’s rollout.
The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) has today published an invitation to tender for suppliers to help design the eight pathways set to start teaching from September 2023.
The awarding organisations, IfATE says, will be responsible for “designing the content of the qualification; upskilling providers (further education schools and colleges); providing learning and teaching materials; updating content; and delivering qualification assessment services”.
They will form the final wave of T Level qualifications.
The most popular of the qualifications (see full list below) is expected to be the media, broadcast and production, which the IfATE tender predicts could have 4,800 learners in its first cohort, and have had 51,200 by 2027/28.
Second most popular is expected to be the animal care and management T Level, with 27,500 learners by 2027/28, followed by hair, beauty and aesthetics with 25,200.
Overall, the eight T Levels are predicted to have been delivered to 149,000 learners by that year. The tender has been valued at a combined £44.7 million.
There is a tight deadline for applications to be considered for the contracts, as potential suppliers will need to have completed the selection questionnaire for the first stage of their application by two weeks from now (17 November).
Those that pass from there will proceed to the second and final stage, where suppliers will have to submit tenders by 23 February next year.
The successful applicants will be notified the following August. The contract’s end date is September 2030.
Suppliers must be recognised by Ofqual to deliver the qualifications at the point the contracts are awarded.
It was announced last month the six T Levels being rolled out in 2022 will be awarded by Pearson and City & Guilds.
Pearson is currently delivering, alongside NCFE, on the first three T Levels, which started in September. City & Guilds and NCFE are set to award seven T Levels being delivered from next year.
The steady escalation in the number of T Levels being delivered each year was mandated by the 2019 T Level Action Plan, which outlined an objective to “expand the number of providers delivering T Levels so the momentum behind the programme continues to build”.
Here is the full list of wave 4 T Levels included in today’s invitation to tender:
- Lot 1 Hair and Beauty: Hair, Beauty & Aesthetics
- Lot 2 Creative & Design: Craft & Design
- Lot 3 Creative & Design: Media, Broadcast & Production
- Lot 4 Catering & Hospitality: Catering
- Lot 5 Agriculture, Environment & Animal Care: Animal Care & Management
- Lot 6 Agriculture, Environment & Animal Care: Agriculture, Land Management & Production
- Lot 7 Legal, Finance & Accounting: Legal Services
- Lot 8 Business & Administration: Human Resources
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