Controversial industry placements of at least 315 hours are the most “important element” in preparing T Level students for their next steps.
That is the conclusion of new government-commissioned research that tracked the progress of 477 of the 1,300 students involved in wave one of the flagship qualification rollout.
The learners began their courses in 2020 and completed in 2022. The first T Levels available were in education and childcare, construction and digital.
Researchers interviewed the students 10 months after they finished their courses to find out where they progressed to.
Here are the highlights:
Destinations vary by route
Overall, nine in 10 of the first cohort of T Level students moved into paid work or higher education:
44 per cent were studying for a university degree
40 per cent were in paid work
13 per cent were on an apprenticeship
But researchers found destinations “varied substantially” by T Level route.
For example, almost all education and childcare students ended up in paid work (52 per cent) or studying for a degree (46 per cent) with only 1 per cent taking an apprenticeship.
Students who took construction T Levels were most likely to be in paid work (37 per cent) but an almost even split went on to an apprenticeship (32 per cent) or a degree (30 per cent).
Most students who took T Levels in digital progressed to a degree course (51 per cent). Nearly a quarter went on to paid work (23 per cent) and 19 per cent started an apprenticeship.
Former T Level students that made up the 7 per cent not in education, employment or training said they were looking for an apprenticeship or were taking a gap year.
Placements made the most difference
One of the most controversial elements of T Levels is the requirement of every student to complete a 315-hour industry placement. Sector leaders question how the government is going to find enough employers to host the placements each year when the courses are offered at scale.
However, students who completed the first T Levels valued the placements over any other part of the course, according to the research.
Learners who went on to further study were more likely to agree that the T Level helped them progress (89 per cent), compared to those who went on to work (73 per cent).
The industry placement was the highest-ranked element of the T Level programme that best prepared students for their next steps by those in work and still in education. Construction students found the industry placement the most beneficial, followed by education and childcare and then digital.
After the industry placement, the next most important element was reported be technical knowledge, followed by practical skills.
Education and childcare students were less likely to say the employer-set project element was “an important element” on their T Level. Just 23 per cent of those students said it prepared them for work or study, compared to 35 per cent of construction students and 43 per cent of digital students.
Only a third of former T Level students who are now in work said their employers were ‘very’ (10 per cent) or ‘quite’ (25 per cent) knowledgeable about T Levels. Nearly a quarter (23 per cent) said their employer ‘had not heard’ of T Levels.
Jobs from placements
Students with construction T Levels were the most likely to land a job or an apprenticeship with the organisation they took their industry placement with.
Researchers found that 14 per cent of digital T Level students who progressed to work or an apprenticeship went to their industry placement organisation. That figure was 34 per cent for education and childcare and 39 per cent for construction.
More broadly, 75 per cent of T Level completers reported they were working or studying within a field related to their course. But just under a fifth (18 per cent) said they went on to a different sector, with most of them saying they had no plans to return to their subject.
University bosses who shortened a degree apprenticeship to help the NHS tackle skills gaps have been criticised by Ofsted.
The education watchdog raised concerns following its inspection of University of Liverpool’s level-7 advanced clinical practitioner (ACP) apprenticeships, which resulted in an overall ‘requires improvement’ grade.
Inspectors found the two-year course failed to meet apprentices’ expectations and employers’ operational needs. The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education’s (IfATE) guidance on the ACP standard says courses typically last three years.
Ofsted reported a “few” employers and apprentices “feel that the curriculum has become too generic for their needs and interests”.
The university reduced the length of the apprenticeship to “enable NHS employers to recruit employees more quickly to meet skills shortages,” inspectors said.
Inspectors added: “A few apprentices who are nurses are disappointed with the narrow range of subject-specific optional modules, particularly in relation to specialisms in clinical assessments, such as the interpretation of blood results.”
However, Ofsted accepted that specific areas of interest could be focused on through a “negotiated” optional model.
Inspectors also noted that while two-thirds of apprentices achieved high grades, “too many” left early, despite the shortened length of the course.
This was the watchdog’s first full inspection of the university’s programme for 111 ACP apprentices since its launch in 2019.
Do other unis have shorter ACP apprenticeships?
An FE Week spot check of the 46 universities listed as offering ACP degree apprenticeships suggests only three others run shortened two-year programmes.
When approached for comment, a spokesperson for the University of Liverpool said the length of the apprenticeship was “comparable” with competitor programmes at the University of Salford, University of Central Lancashire and University of Bolton.
They did not respond when asked whether Liverpool shortened the length of the apprenticeship of its own accord or at the request of local NHS trusts or Health Education England (HEE).
HEE’s spokesperson declined to comment when asked whether it was aware of or involved in the shortening of ACP degree apprenticeships.
The University of Liverpool’s spokesperson told FE Week: “We accept the areas that Ofsted has listed as requiring improvement and these are being addressed by the dedicated team who already have robust, clear action plans in place to address the identified areas for development.
“We note that there are many positive aspects highlighted in the Ofsted report such as how, through teaching, apprentices are given the opportunity to engage with varied clinical practitioner roles and can apply these skills to their everyday jobs.
“We look forward to continuing to work alongside our local NHS Trusts to ensure that the course continues to be a valuable offering for healthcare practitioners looking to take their next steps on the career ladder.”
What is an ACP?
To become an ACP, apprentices must already be a nurse or a regulated healthcare professional such as a paramedic or occupational therapist. Apprentices gain a master’s degree in advanced clinical practice through the apprenticeship.
The role was created in its current form in 2017 and is central to the NHS’s long-term workforce plan.
This plan aims to address chronic workforce shortages of doctors and other medical staff by training up to 39,000 existing professionals to an advanced practice level by 2036/37.
They are expected to work outside traditional boundaries in both health and care settings with a “high level of autonomy and freedom” – including undertaking health assessments, formulating diagnoses and independent prescribing.
A champion of oracy in schools and colleges, Careers & Enterprise Company chief Oli de Botton tells of his battle to improve work experience for young people
As well as leading national careers education as chief executive of the Careers & Enterprise Company, Oli de Botton’s work championing oracy skills appears to be paying dividends. The Labour Party last year talked about oracy as one of its education priorities.
Oracy, a term coined in the 1960s, fell out of favour after a renaissance in the 1980s, with the spotlight shifting to reading and phonics. As curriculum lead and later head of School 21, a free school launched in 2012, de Botton helped revive it by putting speaking skills at the heart of its curriculum.
Three years later, its founders (all accomplished orators themselves) – De Botton, Peter Hyman (Tony Blair’s former speechwriter and now senior aide to Sir Keir Starmer) and ex-theatrical producer Ed Fidoe, formed the charity Voice 21 to boost oral skills among disadvantaged young people.
It’s now hosting the new Commission on the Future of Oracy Education, chaired by former Association of School and College Leaders general secretary Geoff Barton.
Oli de Botton at The Careers & Enterprise Company’s offices in London
Diverse roots
De Botton’s public speaking abilities were moulded through independent schooling and life at Cambridge University. This gives him an air of privilege which is somewhat deceiving. His parents, who separated when he was two, were both Jewish and from very different backgrounds.
His maternal grandfather, who hailed from the East End, was an orchestral cellist and working-class communist.
His father’s family came to London as refugees from Egypt – his dad “never recovered” from the ordeal of fleeing their homeland in the 1950s and the racism he suffered here.
As a child, de Botton’s paternal grandfather, a former Egyptian cricket team captain, would “open a map of the world” and “go on a journey” with him, exploring exotic lands.
Oli with his paternal, Egyptian grandfather
The leftish streak
His grandfathers both gave de Botton a “vibrant sense of world history” and appreciation for musical education.
In a recent paper for Labour Together he called for making “music as important as geography”, and incorporating local history into broader school curriculums.
De Botton’s mother was a “social justice warrior” who raised him and his sister as a single mum. He attended the primary school where she taught.
She instilled in her son a “leftish streak”, and a love of drama.
De Botton’s political leanings surfaced when, in Year 5, he was incensed by the unfairness of new satellite TV companies being allowed to buy up footballing rights, restricting some matches to those who could afford subscriptions. He wrote to his local Finchley MP, Hartley Booth, and his campaign featured in the local rag.
Oli as a boy
Hiding in an ancient world
While some of de Botton’s work for the Careers & Enterprise Company (CEC) involves matching young people with the skills the economy needs, the subjects he picked for A-level (history, Latin and Greek) and his degree (classics) were not high on the nation’s skills priority list.
De Botton doesn’t recall what careers advice he was given but believes that “you work out later in life why you’ve ended up taking that route”.
His school encouraged him to apply to King’s College, Cambridge – a “pretty left wing” institution. “They had worked me out”.
He “found his feet” socially there. He led the students’ union and campaigned on university access for under-represented groups.
It was a proud moment for de Botton’s paternal grandfather, who at the same age had been forbidden by his father from accepting an Oxford scholarship, instead having to work in the family business.
Trainee shockers
He joined the inaugural cohort of Teach First, the education charity that recruits top graduates to teach in deprived communities, in 2003.
De Botton taught at Albany School in Enfield (which during his time there became Oasis Academy Hadley), at a time when “education was on the move”, with the launch of the London Challenge school improvement programme and the National Literacy Strategy.
But he found teaching English 25 hours a week “sapping and all-consuming” and made “all sorts of shockers” as a trainee.
De Botton taught A-level politics during the 2004 US election. His class preferred speeches by George W Bush to John Kerry’s, and de Botton “understood why”. “He wasn’t speaking jargon. I learnt from that.”
De Botton was appointed head of sixth form but felt “pretty burnt out”.
He left and spent 18 months as a consultant for PwC, then embarked on a series of international projects for the education charity now known as the Education Development Trust (then CfBT).
De Botton was seconded as an adviser to David Miliband during his failed Labour leadership campaign in 2010. De Botton “always thought really highly” of David but added he was “challenging to work for, because he was smart”.
Oli de Botton
School ‘1921’
That same year, de Botton was elected as a Labour councillor for Hackney, and the coalition government introduced free schools. De Botton, Hyman and Fidoe “managed to navigate some of the politics” around the movement to clinch an existing school site in Stratford.
De Botton brought a “passion for alleviating disadvantage”, Fidoe (who as a child starred in kids TV series Woof) an “innovation mindset” and Hyman “a bit of both”.
The trio had “really good debates about how radical to be”.
De Botton now questions whether the name School 21 – which they used with the strapline, ‘preparing children for the 21st century’ – fitted with their objectives. He can appreciate why a DfE official commented during a visit that they “should’ve called it School 1921”.
Its innovative curriculum, which de Botton led on, incorporated oracy and drama. “We were trying to be the best of the new, and the best of the old.”
In 2014, School 21 was rated outstanding by Ofsted. De Botton became head the following year, and he, Fidoe and Hyman founded Voice 21 to promote oracy further.
Oli de Botton
Reinventing work experience
De Botton made School 21 more future focused by “reinventing work experience” from a typically “two-week hit of making the tea” to half a day a week out in industry for Year 10s.
De Botton’s work caught the eye of the Careers & Enterprise Company, the quango formed in 2014 to improve careers education, which recruited him to lead it in 2021.
The government ditched compulsory school-age work experience in 2012, and a report this month by Speakers for Schools found only half of state school students get any. This is partly because industry placements are a key component of new T Level courses, which means employers are facing huge demand to facilitate them.
But de Botton points out that schools and colleges are reporting progress across the eight Gatsby benchmarks that are used as a framework for career education.
FE Week profile interviewees often recount having had terrible careers advice when they were at school. But de Botton claims that’s no longer the experience for most young people, and the “national discourse” has changed around careers guidance. Around 96 per cent of students received at least one employer encounter last year. Some of the strongest performance is in disadvantaged areas.
He says the Gatsby benchmarks, which were drawn up in 2013, are now “quite well embedded” in schools and colleges.
Oli de Botton
Careers reforms
CEC was initially intended to become self-sustaining, but in 2023 received £29.3 million in government funding, up from £23.8 million in 2022. That’s on top of £2.5 million last year from JP Morgan and further funding from the Salesforce Foundation for boosting disadvantaged young people’s take-up of digital apprenticeships.
While schools and colleges are responsible for providing advice and guidance, overseen by CEC, responsibility also sits with the National Careers Service and the Department for Work and Pensions and its agencies.
Both the government and the Labour party are eyeing reform of the system, which an education committee report last year criticised as “confusing, fragmented and unclear”.
Devolution is making matters more complex.
Together with partners, CEC runs 44 regional career hubs, covering 92 per cent of schools and colleges and bringing them together with employers and apprenticeship providers. They’re often co-funded by combined authorities in devolved areas.
New county deals are putting more power over the skills agenda in the hands of local government partners.
CEC “tries to match” its priorities from DfE with local skills priorities. This is “important because young people need to know what the local jobs are. Digital is fastest growing in Manchester City region for example, so it’s important those young people have access to those skills.”
Oli de Botton
Siloed sectors
De Botton’s own experience going from school to university to a schools-related career, meant that he “didn’t always understand” the purpose of apprenticeships. But he has learnt at CEC that degree apprenticeships and higher technical qualifications are “incredible”, and that colleges are “extraordinary institutions”.
He praises Walsall College, which he recently visited, for its integrated local careers hub which includes support for adults, in an office which acts as a “beacon in the town”.
He believes, however, that schools, colleges and training providers are “siloed” and “sometimes talk past each other”.
To break down barriers, CEC held an event with Leora Cruddas, the chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts (which represents academies nationally), David Hughes from the Association of Colleges, and representatives from the Association of Employment and Learning Providers.
“That sort of thing doesn’t often happen” de Botton said.
Today’s politics
De Botton claims to be “not very political these days”.
However, his wife, Amber de Botton, was the Prime Minister’s director of communications for ten months until August 2023. De Botton laughs nervously when I suggest they must have had some interesting dinner conversations.
They met when Amber, formerly a journalist (she later rose to head of UK news at ITV News) interviewed him for a magazine (Total Politics) for an article about “up-and-coming politicians”. She wrote “very nicely” about him and they stayed in touch.
Meanwhile, de Botton’s own political legacy might just end up being oracy.
He believes it has a big role to play in colleges, as “high quality classroom discussion helps [students] grapple with big ideas”.
Our recent investigation found a perception among college support staff that young people are becoming increasingly disengaged in education. De Botton believes “hearing from young people” could be “crucial to making things better”.
“The AI revolution will require young people to be able to critically engage with the technology properly, so the discursive element of education seems to be central.”
De Botton’s proudest career moment was during a recent primary school parent’s evening, when he was told his son’s class would study oracy this term.
De Botton said he “welled up”. “Gosh, this is actually happening,” he thought. “I feel in a small way, I’ve contributed to that.”
Newham Sixth Form College (NewVIc) yesterday became the only sixth form college in the country to hold the watchdog’s lowest possible judgment and was put into formal intervention by the government. It is now in talks to dissolve and transfer its staff, assets and liabilities to Newham College.
The proposal follows a tumultuous period which disrupted students’ experience and led to many leaving without a qualification last year.
Staff previously told FE Week they planned to strike for 30 days in 2023 during the busy exam period amid a toxic battle with leaders over staff cuts and high workloads.
Ofsted reported that NewVIc’s 2,400 learners were “keen to study, but for too many, their time at the college does not match their expectations”.
Students “experience disruption to their education due to staffing issues, ineffective teaching and administrative errors regarding their examinations”, inspectors said. In the previous academic year, this “led to a significant proportion of learners not achieving their qualifications and making poor progress relative to their prior knowledge and attainment”.
Learners’ attendance and punctuality are also “not good enough”, too few participate in good work experience or work-related learning activities, and “until recently, leaders and managers have not been considerate enough of staff workload and well-being”.
The college was also criticised for making a “limited” contribution to skills needs, with governors singled out for lacking a “good enough understanding of the skills agenda”.
NewVIc has been run by interim principal Susanne Davies since October after former boss Mandeep Gill went on sick leave. His employment officially ended earlier this month. The sixth form also has an interim chair after the leader of the governing body, Martin Rosner, stepped down in March.
Various other senior leaders also currently hold interim posts.
The college told FE Week it is now exploring a merger with neighbouring Newham College, rated ‘good’ by Ofsted, as it has “demonstrable strengths in the areas Ofsted identified as areas for development at NewVIc”.
If it gets the go ahead, the merger would be a “type B”, meaning NewVIc would be dissolved and its staff, assets and liabilities transferred to Newham College. Leaders are aiming for a merger by the end of the calendar year.
Jayne Dickinson, interim chair of NewVIc, said: “Over the past two months I’ve witnessed the enormous potential of NewVIc and the real progress the college is already making in the areas for improvement highlighted in the Ofsted report.
“A merger between the two organisations [Newham College] will accelerate this progress and expand opportunities for local young people, ensuring a skills pipeline for our employers. This is an exciting prospect that plays to the strengths of both colleges.”
Ofsted said until recently, governors and senior leaders at NewVIc have “not done enough to tackle the poor quality of education that learners experience”.
They presided over a “decline in standards resulting in the proportion of learners who achieve their qualifications being low on too many courses”.
Inspectors said leaders had “poor oversight” of key functions, such as the administration of examinations, for which they “failed to put in place effective or rapid enough improvements”.
Leaders have also “not made sure that there are adequate learning resources, such as computers, to meet the needs of learners”.
Inspectors found that a “characteristic” of the quality of learners’ experiences is the “wide variability across different subjects, depending on the skill and expertise of teachers and the level of disruption due to staff shortages or changes”.
However, Ofsted said the current senior leaders have “accurately identified the urgent areas for improvement” and have an “extensive range of suitable plans to improve the quality of education for learners”.
The watchdog also recognised that learners at NewVIc are respectful of each other and the wider college community. The “strong visibility” of staff around the campus, particularly the security and youth workers, creates a “calm and positive environment where learners feel safe and supported”.
Learners are also “very aware about how to manage their mental health and where to get support”.
Furthermore, inspectors found good delivery of provision for NewVIc’s 90 learners with special educational needs and disabilities.
Interim principal Davies said: “I am pleased that Ofsted acknowledge the progress made in the current academic year to get the college back on track. We fully recognise the challenges we face and have a clear plan for the road ahead.”
Paul Jackson, chair of Newham College, added that he was “pleased to be working with” NewVIc towards creating an “exciting option for post-16 education in Newham”.
Kaplan has become the highest-earning training provider in the apprenticeship levy market despite recording less than half the number of starts of its closest competitor.
The finance giant knocked Lifetime Training off the top spot after raking in over £45 million from big levy-paying businesses in 2021/22, according to FE Week analysis of government data published this week.
Kaplan Financial Ltd, which delivers high numbers of expensive apprenticeships, such as the £21,000 level-7 accountancy or taxation professional course to employers including Microsoft, Cisco and HSBC, saw its overall starts numbers soar by more than third from 4,620 in 2020/21 to 6,240.
This fuelled a growth in income from levy-payers by almost a quarter from £36.5 million to £45 million.
Lifetime Training, which had earned the most levy income each year since the policy launched in 2017, increased its starts by 30 per cent from 12,910 in 2020/21 to 16,720 in 2021/22 but levy-payer income remained at just over £43 million over the period.
Unlike Kaplan, Lifetime’s delivery is mostly in sectors that attract lower apprenticeship funding bands, including hospitality, retail and adult care. Its customer base includes the NHS, McDonald’s and B&Q.
Both providers are judged ‘requires improvement’ by Ofsted. Kaplan’s current overall apprenticeship achievement rate is 55.9 per cent while Lifetime’s is 35 per cent.
Apprenticeships are just one arm of Kaplan Financial Ltd’s business, but its accounts state that “revenue has remained strong since the introduction of the apprenticeship levy”. The firm recorded profit after tax of £9.4 million in the year ending December 2022, up from £8.7 million the year before.
Lifetime Training’s accounts for the year ending January 2022 show a loss of £9.2 million, compared to a profit of £6.8 million in 2020.
Stacey Fitzsimmons, chief operating officer of Kaplan Financial, said: “Our apprenticeships are in high-growth sectors – professional and financial services and data and tech – and our clients recruit apprentices, often in their very first job, in high numbers.
“We work with forward-thinking clients who understand the power of apprenticeships and the benefits they can bring to addressing skills and recruitment gaps. Many of our large employers increased the number of new roles in accounting and finance for learners coming out of education and into apprenticeships during this period.”
Multiverse joins the top 10
FE Week identified the shift by analysing the final funding allocations for training providers in 2021/22, published this week by the Education and Skills Funding Agency, which included values for how much each provider was paid by apprenticeship levy-paying employers.
The agency first published levy allocations four years ago for the 2018/19 education year. At the time, Lifetime Training topped the list after it was paid £51.5 million – almost double the next closest provider, QA Limited, on £26 million.
Other notable changes in the latest figures include Multiverse Group’s rise into the top 10 highest earners from the levy market (full table below). It placed sixth overall, up from 13th the year before, after more than doubling its income from £12.3 million to £27.5 million over the period.
Multiverse, owned by former prime minister Tony Blair’s son Euan Blair, recorded a 62 per cent rise in starts between those years, growing from 3,045 to 4,940. It mostly delivers high-priced standards such as the £15,000 level-4 data analyst and the £12,000 level-3 data technician.
BPP Professional Ltd, which, like Kaplan, also mostly delivers the £21,000 level-7 accountancy or taxation professional standard, remained the fourth-biggest levy provider, while IT provider QA Ltd stayed at fifth.
Corndel Ltd, which mostly delivers leadership and management apprenticeships, remained the seventh biggest levy earner, while Babcock Training, which has since offloaded most of its apprenticeships arm, dropped to eighth.
The British Army dropped to the third biggest apprenticeship levy training provider, while the Royal Navy remained in ninth place and the Royal Air Force fell to 10th.
Staffordshire University in 13th place replaced Manchester Metropolitan University (14th) as the highest-ranking university in terms of levy-payer income, earning £14.2 million in 2021/22 compared to £9.9 million the year before.
Bridgwater & Taunton College remained the highest earning college with £6.3 million in 2021/22, up from £5.5 million the previous year, but dropped down to 46th place overall.
The total amount of levy funding handed out in 2020/21 was £1.3 billion, shared between 1,355 apprenticeship providers.
This increased to £1.5 billion in 2021/22, but the overall provider base shrunk slightly to 1,315.
Weston College has appointed a new principal who will assume office 21 months after the post was first advertised.
Pat Jones, currently deputy chief executive for finance at Bedford College Group, will lead the college from July following multiple failed attempts by Weston’s governors to appoint a permanent successor to Paul Phillips.
“I am delighted to be joining Weston College as their new principal and CEO at this exciting time,” Jones said.
“Weston has achieved so much, and I look forward to leading the dedicated and talented team, building upon the many successes.”
Weston College, in Weston-super-Mare, North Somerset, has been led by acting principal Jacqui Ford since the retirement of England’s then-highest-paid college chief executive Paul Phillips in the summer of 2023.
Ford’s instalment as interim followed multiple failed attempts by the college’s governors to appoint a permanent successor. Weston had offered the role to Cornwall College Group deputy principal Kate Wills but then mysteriously withdrew the offer.
Phillips’ retirement wasn’t clear-cut to begin with.
Weston’s board had told college staff that Phillips would be kept on in an “absolutely key” role as “president” last year, but this was later scrapped after sector criticism. Phillips’ son, Joe Phillips, was Ford’s de-facto deputy as the college’s chief operating officer, but was one of two other college senior managers to have left their roles since September.
New boss Jones is credited with “playing a critical role” in the merger of Tresham College and Bedford College in 2017, and securing over £43 million in successful bids for funding according to Bedford College Group’s website.
She is working towards a doctorate in further education financial leadership from the University of Oxford with a thesis titled, ‘Sustainable financial health: Is it possible for colleges to maintain good financial health, free of intervention?’ The work was one of the first 11 funded research projects run by the joint Association of Colleges and NCFE ‘research further’ programme.
FE Commissioner Shelagh Legrave appointed Jones as one of two national leaders of further education financial specialists in 2022.
Andrew Leighton-Price, Weston College chair of governors, said: “Pat has held a distinguished career in education of over 20 years and is an innovative national leader of further education.
“More importantly she has the inclusive learning ethos that we champion so strongly here at Weston, with experience of working across all our learner groups.
“Combining this with her impressive financial acumen as a global management accountant, and strong background in community and employer partnerships, made Pat a very obvious choice, in what was already a strong field of candidates, from a diverse range of backgrounds.”
Applications to become Weston College’s £120,000-a-year deputy principal closed on Monday.
The issue of a poor research base in further education is one FE Week has returned to many times since Nigel Ecclesfield wrote about it in 2013. At East Coast College, we have taken that issue to heart.
It started with change. Change of qualification. Change of staff. Change of approach.
Three years ago, the Initial Teacher Education programme at East Coast College was rebuilt. We formed a partnership with Suffolk New College and now deliver our teaching qualifications through the University of Suffolk.
At a similar time, we transformed our approach to quality assurance. From management observation of teachers, we moved towards experimenting with delivery and resources in teams of three or four colleagues.
We are now working in an exciting educational environment in which teachers collaborate and celebrate their successes and discoveries. There is a fever about practitioner research that is gaining momentum and, with three years behind us, we have the opportunity to reflect and consider how this phenomenon has grown.
The first key factor was the removal of performance management from lesson observations. Teachers were bound by fear of failure, being reduced to a number or grade that carried a potential threat to their employment. These were the wrong conditions for creativity and innovation.
So we adopted the RED system designed by Tony Davis of CCQI which liberated teachers to work together, empowered them to identify a problem relevant to their contexts, and gave them the opportunity to research and plan before inviting their colleagues to visit.
No managers are involved in this process; it’s a safe place to experiment and fail. The consequence is that teachers have grown in confidence, feeling valued and respected. At the end of each year, we hold a conference in which the teams share their experiences. This has created an interest in research, led to bonds forming among colleagues, fostered pride in our achievements and in turn led to a natural engagement in professional discussion.
No managers are involved; it’s a safe place to experiment and fail
Combining our approach to research and reflective practice with our initiative to re-invent teacher education, we have created the perfect conditions for teacher growth. We offer a level 5 certificate in education alongside a level 6 professional graduate qualification. All new East Coast College teachers are required to undertake this two-year programme.
And beyond serving our teachers (and learners) this model is feeding back into the research itself. The second year of the programme is predominantly focused on practitioner research, and what has become increasingly clear to us is that the canon of learning theories is often directed at primary and secondary education and written by educational psychologists working in universities.
Our ever-increasing band of researchers have become more aware of how barren the landscape is for FE practitioner researchers. We don’t see enough research into FE practice done by FE practitioners. Nor do we think that theorists really understand our context on the east coast of England.
Our sector is unique and our practitioner research should reflect this. At East Coast College, our home-grown practitioners become the experts because of their insight and their dual professionalism.
But it is crucial to ask why research is still so invisible in further education. Surely we aren’t the only college connecting teacher development and research development.
If your college isn’t, then we can highly recommend our two-pronged approach: the RED quality process for all teaching staff, and teacher training qualifications that nurture new members of staff in the habit of evidence-based research and collaboration.
Last July, we held a conference about research in local colleges titled ‘Voices from the East’, where we shared all the papers our staff had produced. We’re planning to build on its success by holding a second event later this year, so if you’re curious about the impact of our approach, you can come and see for yourself the enthusiasm and impact of our researcher practitioners.
If we can spread this fever, we know there’s a platform in FE Week to share the results so that, in another ten years, we won’t still be revisiting this issue.
As more people think about their health following the pandemic, a recent UK Fitness Report conducted by PureGym highlighted upward trends of the fitness and physical activity industry. However, a lack of workforce training is holding the sector back from delivering the economic and social benefits the government clearly desires.
Despite barriers such as the cost-of-living crisis, almost a quarter (24 per cent) of the population increased their spending on exercise in the past year. As a result, gym membership has also grown by 2 per cent in the past 12 months so that 16 per cent of the population are now gym members. One in four of us also choose to work out from home.
As with any sector, an increase in demand requires the workforce to meet it. But despite its growth, the number of certifications is decreasing and organisations within the sport and physical activity sector are finding it difficult to source the skilled staff they need. For example, 42 per cent of gyms and leisure centres are struggling to fill fitness instructor roles.
In The Road to the 2024 Election Manifesto by The Sports Think Tank, I wrote that perceptions of careers within the physical activity sector as unstructured or lacking clear pathways for development don’t match reality. Government and industry alike must re-align their narratives accordingly, ensuring the sector is seen as an attractive choice.
As the Prime Minister calls out what he calls the nation’s ‘sick note culture’, it’s important to note that filling current gaps with skilled and motivated employees can help drive the UK towards the goals set out in the recent Get Active Strategy, providing considerable economic and social benefits.
According to the government’s latest figures, 63.8 per cent of adults are overweight or living with obesity and over one-quarter are classed as inactive (averaging less than five minutes of activity a day).
Meanwhile, the government estimates that every £1 spent on sport and physical activity generates almost £4 in return across health and wellbeing, strengthening communities and the economy. Each year, active lifestyles prevent 900,000 cases of diabetes and 93,000 cases of dementia, a combined saving of £7 billion to the UK economy.
Every £1 spent on physical activity generates almost £4 in returns
As well as easing the strain on the NHS, physical activity helps tackle a range of social challenges, from loneliness and community division to unemployment and crime.
In summary, if the government wants to reduce sickness absence in the wider workforce, it’s never been more important for the fitness sector to be taken seriously.
Government could, for example, expand current employability programmes to include the sport and physical activity sector. Take the National Skills Fund, which help adults to train and improve their job prospects. It focuses entirely on meeting ‘current and emerging skills needs’, but sport and physical activity are excluded from it.
Additionally, the rules set by regulators mean there are strict guidelines for how qualifications are designed. A funding moratorium in place for the past three years has prevented the redevelopment of many qualifications. The new reforms, which do give significant weight to the employer voice, are restricted by pre-defined standards and additional skills set by IfATE.
Coupled with this, the approval process for new qualifications is lengthy, which means they could potentially be out of date before learners can complete them. This current system doesn’t allow for flexibility, innovation or the ability to react to demand.
Government should allow greater flexibility for sector qualifications to be designed in a way that meets the needs of employers and shorten the approvals process to ensure they are relevant and up-to-date.
This would allow all sectors to address workforce skills gaps in a more responsive way. And for the sport and fitness sector specifically, this could have a significant impact on its ability to deliver the economic and social benefits the nation needs and we can deliver.
Reforming eligibility criteria for time off work may or may not be part of the solution, but tackling the current skills gap is essential to meeting the goals set out in the government’s Get Active strategy, and that’s a sure way to make the nation healthier in the long run.
My passion for skills and apprenticeships comes from my own working life. Before politics, I was in retail. At 16 I joined Asda, and then Lidl at 18. I worked my way up from the shop floor to manage Lidl in my constituency, before running a group of stores there and then running Farmfoods stores across the southwest.
I know, like so many colleagues in retail, that good training and opportunities reap great rewards. I passionately want more of these career routes available to young people across the country.
The government has backed skills training for over a decade, raising the quality of technical qualifications so that learners and employers can build businesses and careers on them. This includes £3.8 billion of investment to strengthen higher and further education over the course of this parliament.
Like my predecessor Robert Halfon and the education secretary Gillian Keegan, I am a huge advocate of apprenticeships. I have been part of running apprenticeship schemes in retail and know the benefit they can offer school-leavers – earning a wage while getting industry-approved training.
It’s pleasing that many in my former sector are making the most of apprenticeships, with the big retail chains now using them to train staff across their business. Lidl, for example, now offers apprenticeships in retail, HR, project management, warehouse operations and property maintenance.
The apprenticeship levy has empowered big businesses to invest in training and enrich their employees’ skills. It means that in 2024-25, we are increasing investment in high-quality apprenticeships to over £2.7 billion.
Like my predecessor, I am a huge advocate of apprenticeships
Our Institutes of Technology have also had a huge impact on the skills landscape, and I saw this myself at Yorkshire and Humber Institute of Technology. These regional trailblazers bring colleges, universities and businesses together to boost skills for key sectors like healthcare, digital technology and manufacturing.
Seventy-seven FE colleges are now linked to an IoT, alongside businesses like Rolls Royce, Siemens, Nissan, Microsoft and Babcock. We’re supporting 21 of these pioneering institutions across England.
IoTs are helping colleges to deliver Higher Technical Qualifications, which were rolled-out in 2022. These qualifications are developed with employers and can lead to prestigious, sustainable jobs in software development, quantity surveying and healthcare – jobs employers are crying out to be filled.
Introducing T Levels for 16-19 year-olds was also about filling a clear gap. This qualification prepares young people to start a job in the real world, as well as providing a firm foundation for further study or training. Launching the qualification in 2020 was considered a gamble, but T Level students have already proved their worth.
The first two cohorts achieved an impressive overall pass rate of over 90 per cent. And our Technical Education Learner Survey for 2023 tells a really positive story about the longer-term outcomes of the first T Levels cohort (2020-2022).
Almost all T Level completers were in education or employment 9-10 months after their course, with 75 per cent progressing to education or employment in their general T Level field. Almost a third of those who progressed to employment and apprenticeships did so with their industry placement host, showing the value of T Level placements to employers and young people.
I know there’s plenty more to do to ensure that opportunities to thrive in technical education reach every part of the country. We want more providers to offer T Levels, and we need to work with apprentices, employers, assessment organisations and training providers to drive-up apprenticeship achievements.
I will be taking my passion for improving skills from the shop floor in retail, to the floor of the House of Commons as skills minister. Whatever career path people want to take, we will back them with high quality courses. I can’t wait to work with FE providers and employers across the country to deliver the skills Britain needs.
