1. Jenkyns was first elected as an MP in May 2015 for the Morley and Outwood seat in West Yorkshire. She defeated Labour’s former children, schools and families minister and shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, at that election by 422 votes.
2. Her promotion to the DfE is her first paid ministerial post, but has served as an assistant whip in the whips office since September last year and was a parliamentary private secretary in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government before quitting in 2018 to campaign for Brexit.
3. Prior to her life in politics, Jenkyns’ jobs have included working for Greggs, as a music tutor, and as a manager in a retail store.
4. Jenkyns is understood to be an operatic soprano singer, and released an album, Ilyis, in 2006 under the name Andrea.
5. She studied for two degrees – one in international relations from Lincoln University, and another in economics from the Open University. In an April 2018 debate on higher education she told the house she was the first person in her family to go to university.
6. Media reports suggest that her father sent her photo in to the Miss UK competition when she was 18, where she reached the finals.
7. Jenkyns has some HE experience beyond being a learner – she served as a director of the National Centre for Higher Education Policy at the University of Bolton from July 2019 until September last year, according to her Parliament register of interests. That saw her earn £25,000 a year for eight hours work per week.
8. Elsewhere on her register of interests, Jenkyns was an unpaid member of pro-Brexit group Foundation for Independence’s political advisory board from March 2021, and from May until September 2021 an unpaid member for the Foundation for Education Development National Ambassadors Group.
9. Among education issues she has spoken on in parliament have been the Kickstart scheme, mental health support for children in schools, minimising exam stress for SATs students, supporting sports provision in schools, clarity on the GCSE 1-9 grading system, and increasing college funding for 16 to 19s.
10. In March 2016 in a debate on apprenticeships, Jenkyns announced an ambition to create 50 new apprenticeships in 50 days alongside local businesses in her constituency.
11. In July 2019 she issued a tweet in which she reported to have suffered whiplash and concussion after an accident swinging around on her seat at a constituency meeting.
12. Jenkyns courted controversy last week after raising her middle finger to a group of protestors outside Downing Street on the day of the prime minister’s resignation. She later issued a statement that said she had been a regular victim of abuse and was standing up for herself.
Andrea Jenkyns has been named as the new skills, further and higher education minister in the Department for Education.
Jenkyns, Conservative MP for Morley and Outwood in the north of England, joined Brendan Clarke-Smith as new junior ministers in the DfE last week, but the exact nature of their roles were not made clear.
She announced this evening that she will take on the skills portfolio previously held by Alex Burghart as well as the joint FE and HE brief previously held by Michelle Donelan.
Jenkyns tweeted: “Thrilled to be appointed as skills, further and higher education minister @EducationGovUK.
“We’ll be powering ahead with ambitious plans to boost skills and opportunities for everyone, regardless of where they are in life, delivering for individuals, employers and the economy.”
Thrilled to be appointed as Skills, Further and Higher Education Minister @EducationGovUK.
We'll be powering ahead with ambitious plans to boost skills and opportunities for everyone, regardless of where they are in life, delivering for individuals, employers and the economy. pic.twitter.com/CRmphFBqvy
— Dame Andrea Jenkyns 🇬🇧 (@andreajenkyns) July 12, 2022
Jenkyns – a Boris Johnson loyalist – was first elected in May 2015, and had been an assistant whip in the Whips Office since September last year.
Prior to that she had served on a number of committees.
The new minister has already attracted some controversy after footage emerged that showed her raising a middle finger to protestors in Downing Street.
Jenkyns has since issued a statement in which she explained that there was a “baying mob” outside the gates who were shouting abuse to MPs. She said she had “reached the end of my tether” following “huge amounts of abuse” over the years, adding: “I should have shown more composure but am only human.”
L-R: Will Quince, schools minister; Baroness Barran, minister for the school system; James Cleverly, secretary of state for education; Brendan Clarke-Smith; minister for children and families, Andrea Jenkyns, minister for skills, further and higher education
The new appointment follows a whirlwind week in British politics in which Prime Minister Boris Johnson was forced to resign after an exodus of junior ministers and the resignation of two of his top cabinet members – Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid.
Bassetlaw MP Brendan Clarke-Smith was appointed as a junior minister alongside Jenkyns. He has confirmed he will take the children and families brief, previously held by Quince before he resigned last week.
Half of school and college staff felt pressured from either senior leaders or parents and students to change teacher assessed grades (TAGs) last year, an Ofqual survey has found.
The exams regulator quizzed schools, colleges and students on how they found the TAGs process, after summer exams were cancelled in 2021 due to the pandemic.
Half of 1,500 staff said they felt “undue pressure” on their professional judgment, an increase from 31 per cent in 2020 when centre assessed grades were awarded.
Thirty-one per cent of respondents felt pressure from their senior leadership team (SLT), which was often “centred around reducing student grades to meet previous year’s grade profiles”.
Nearly half of those involved in internal quality assurance – where the school or college signed off results – said grades were changed. A third (119) said this was because of the prior attainment profile, where grades were not inline with past distributions. Generally grades went down.
Cath Jadhav, Ofqual’s director of standards and comparability, said last year that schools and colleges did not need to award grades to closely match previous years, or be “used to suppress results”.
Schools and colleges just had to explain why there were “substantial variances” when exam boards quality assured grades.
The survey also found a “slightly smaller, but still substantial” number of respondents said there was SLT pressure to increase grades.
“Both pressures conflicted with their professional judgement and the need to be fair to their students,” the Ofqual report said.
“They also mentioned having individual grading decisions checked and scrutinised by management and the burden in having to justify decisions and the additional work this sometimes required.”
‘Stressful, time-consuming and exhausting’
One in five (21 per cent) reported pressure from students and their parents, despite a warning this could amount to malpractice.
The most frequent words used to describe judging TAGs by schools and colleges were “stressful, time-consuming and exhausting”.
The median time taken to decide grades was 15 days – over twice as long as for CAGs, likely because last year schools and colleges had to assess students on what they knew last year, rather than predict what they would have achieved should exams have gone ahead in 2020.
Nearly half (43 per cent) of respondents found the process of agreeing TAGs with other staff members easy or very easy, while a quarter (24 per cent) found it difficult or very difficult.
Most staff – 85 per cent – rated their confidence in grades at over 75 out of 100.
Last year, schools and colleges were handed masses of new guidance and resources for TAGs.
But 18 per cent said this was “unclear, vague and inconsistent or even contradictory”, with 41 per cent saying there was “inadequate support” from exam boards.
‘Too much time’ on TAGs assessment
Nearly two-thirds (57 per cent) of surveyed students felt that too much, or far too much, time had been spent on assessment.
The survey took place after TAGs were submitted, but before students got their results in August.
Ofqual’s chief regulator Dr Jo Saxton said teachers “worked incredibly hard to award grades in the exceptional circumstances” but it had an “additional burden” on schools, colleges and students.
“It’s great that exams and formal assessments have taken place this year, and again, I would like to thank teachers and pay tribute to the resilience of students.”
Warnings have been issued by public spending watchdogs that the government’s skills reform plans may be no more successful than previous attempts to provide the country with the skills it needs.
The National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee have said that education chiefs need to step up their efforts amid fears current policies for an employer-led system may not work.
The ‘developing workforce skills for a strong economy’ paper published today by the NAO has called on the Department for Education to put together an implementation plan outlining incentives for employers and learners, how central and local government will work together and metrics the government will use to measure progress.
It has also requested further thought on how barriers to skills training can be addressed and issues around reskilling or upskilling older workers who form a growing part of the UK workforce.
The NAO’s report said that the government “has a reasonably good understanding of current skills needs,” and recognised that “spending on adult education, apprenticeships and other skills programmes has been rising and totalled £3.9 billion in 2021-22”.
But it warned that the “DfE considers that the skills system will be most effective if it is led by employers, but there is limited assurance that the conditions are in place for this approach to be implemented successfully”.
It explained that the model will rely on employers having the capacity and willingness to become more involved in developing local plans, and evidence to date meant it was unclear what assurance is in place for that.
Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: “To help people achieve their potential in the workplace and drive economic growth, it is essential that government and employers support opportunities for learning and development.
“The government has taken sensible steps to address skills shortages in recent years, but the challenges it faces have increased.
“There is a risk that, despite government’s greater activity and good intent, its approach may be no more successful than previous attempts to provide the country with the skills it needs.”
Data in the NAO’s analysis indicated that nearly one in four vacancies were because of skills shortages, rising to more than one in three for the manufacturing and construction sectors.
It reported an 11 per cent fall in employers’ spending on training from 2011 to 2019, while the number of adults in government-funded education or skills training had fallen by nearly half between 2010/11 and 2020/21 – down from 3.2 million to 1.6 million.
The report said the decline was seen particularly in disadvantaged areas, with a drop of 39 per cent from 2015/16 to 2020/21, 280,100 people.
The Further Education Skills Index – the government’s proxy measure of the value of further education on productivity – has fallen by 46 per cent since 2012/13, the report said, largely as a result of a drop in learner numbers.
The NAO reported that employers and providers were struggling to navigate the growing and disjointed skills programmes – which can range from apprenticeships and skills bootcamps funded by the DfE, to the train and progress initiative for universal credit claimants and the new multiple numeracy programme led by the Department for Work and Pensions.
Meg Hillier, chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, said: “A properly skilled workforce is vital for the economy, yet training over recent years has fallen off a cliff. Once again, it is people in the most disadvantaged areas who are missing out on opportunities to upskill.
“The NAO highlights some recent positive steps by government, yet the workforce challenges of Brexit, an ageing population and the march to Net Zero are truly immense.
“In the face of this gathering storm, DfE must step up and provide better support to people and their employers on developing skills. It’s vital that they get this right to ensure the country’s workforce remains competitive.”
The DfE’s reforms come as part of the skills and post-16 education act 2022, which includes a commitment for lifelong loan entitlement, and ambitions for strengthened links between employers and further education providers to create courses designed to meet the needs of businesses and allow them input in designing courses.
It includes proposals to recruit more teaching staff, create LSIPs (local skills improvement plans) to respond to local labour market needs in key skills, and reform levels 4 and 5 technical education.
A flagship proposal is the lifetime skills guarantee which allows adults without a level 3 qualification to take a free course. But early data on this scheme found that it was struggling to boost enrolments.
A DfE spokesperson said: “We are investing in high quality training to deliver the skilled workforce employers need to grow and plugging skills gaps in our economy, helping more people into jobs.
“This includes rolling out new T Levels in fields like construction and manufacturing, while investing £2.7 billion by 2025 to support businesses to create more apprenticeships.
“We’ve also launched the Unit for Skills to focus future support and are investing £1.6 billion over the next three years, including on expanding our popular skills bootcamps and free courses for jobs offers.
“The NAO recognises the progress made but we know there is more to do.”
With billions of tax cuts promised, who will put their head above the parapet and demand some proper spend on FE? asks Tom Bewick
When the government is in full meltdown, Monty Python style moments of British humour are never very far away.
The new junior education minister, Andrea Jenkyns MP, it appears, gave the middle finger to a ‘baying mob’ outside Downing Street last week. She later apologised.
Of course, this rather predictably led to the ‘be kind’ brigade on social media calling for her resignation – in a manner not too dissimilar from the famous stoning scene in Life of Brian.
Shortly after, we saw pictures circulating of the uber Johnson loyalist, now at DfE and tipped to be skills minister, Brendan Clarke-Smith MP, wearing a face mask covering his private parts.
It all feeds into a rather chaotic narrative.
One akin to drift, dither and decay, of what is now the outgoing Johnsonian administration.
Sector insiders will tell you, that ideologically-speaking, DfE officials have been offside with Conservative ministers in the post-Brexit mould for quite some time.
Leadership hopeful for next PM, Suella Braverman MP, perhaps neatly characterised the mood of large swathes of the card-carrying membership, writing in the Telegraph:
‘Napoleon derided Britain as a nation of shopkeepers. We’re in danger of becoming a nation of regulators.’
It will make uncomfortable reading for the new secretary of state, James Cleverly and his relatively inexperienced team of junior ministers.
Because the contours of the coming battles in the leadership contest are already marching over the hill.
For years, the Department and its phalanx of quangos have been gold plating policies and regulations with very little regard for the consequences.
The list of Stalinist-inspired manoeuvres began during the New Labour era; placed on steroids after the general election in 2017.
They include not only the growing intervention in the day-to-day running of the nation’s 24,000 schools (e.g. usurping the role of local authorities via academisation); but the curious takeover of England’s further education colleges as well.
Ian Pryce, principal and chief executive of Bedford College Group, warned his colleagues in a recent opinion piece that they were displaying a kind of Stockholm syndrome:
‘There is a real danger we might sleepwalk into a reversal that might look superficially attractive. Government can be a charming seducer when it comes to presenting captivity as the solution to our current woes’, he said.
And we all know the captivity he is referring to.
Not since the 1870 Balfour Act has government, in effect, set up a national state backed awarding body in FE, as it has done with the roll-out of T Levels.
Whatever the real merits of a qualification that at least tries to address the underlying weakness of our technical education system; it is this very un-conservative ideology that these and other recent policy interventions represent that could increasingly become a battleground.
Nadhim Zahawi, former education secretary and now chancellor, with former universities minister Michelle Donelan
Because the real problem when the government starts taking ownership of things (qualifications, FE colleges etc.) is that it then has to sustain these newly acquired ‘assets’ it owns in the public sector borrowing requirement.
In practice, that means more civil servants to manage things; higher taxes to pay for them; additional statutory and regulatory instruments; particularly as politicians look to assert control over what they see as part of their domains.
The proposed new regulatory scheme planned to approve funding of level 3 qualifications in future (in England), as outlined in the Skills Act, is just one tiny example of where ministers have unwittingly written a blank cheque out to “the machine” in future.
You don’t have to be a political genius to see that the next prime minister is probably going to call time on this ever-expanding model of the corporatist state.
Particularly when the wages bill in Whitehall is currently running at over £100 billion per annum.
Even the former education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi – now the chancellor – has backed a Conservative pressure group’s charter calling for more than £46 billion worth of tax cuts.
Of course, all this is red meat to Tory party members – the only people at present who can decide our next prime minister.
But this may also lead to some real ideological battles over the summer affecting the whole future of post-16 education.
We know that by the end of this spending review period (and accounting for higher inflation) FE will receive around a billion pounds less than it did in the period ending in 2010.
It makes you wonder: which candidate is going to put their head over the parapet and demand some restorative spending on FE?
And when the exam results are published in August, showing how ‘grade inflation’ is perhaps inevitably entrenched in the post-pandemic awarding system; you can bet the frothing-at-the-mouth education traditionalists will cry out (again): “Oh no, academic standards are falling!”
When you add all the other skirmishing going on at the moment in the so-called ‘culture wars’, you really start to see why the whole conduct of education and skills policy in this country maybe about to get a real serious kicking.
A large London college group has today announced another “landmark” pay deal for staff – its second in the past four years.
Capital City College Group has agreed to an inflation-busting 9 per cent pay rise for staff on £30,000 and under from August 2022, while staff paid between £30,001 and £45,000 per year will get a 5 per cent rise, with a further 1 per cent in January 2023.
The college group has since improved its financial position and recorded a £167,000 operating surplus in 2020/21. CCCG was unable to say how much its new pay deal will cost the group in total annually at the time of going to press.
The Association of Colleges is currently recommending its members give staff a 2.5 per cent pay rise this year.
Roy O’Shaughnessy, chief executive of CCCG said: “Given the national cost-of-living crisis affecting all our staff, the financial constraints we are working under and the need for any pay award to be sustainable over the long-term, we had to find a difficult balance between what we can afford and what is fair for as many of our staff as possible. Having secured this pay deal, we feel that we can look to the future with some confidence.”
O’Shaughnessy added that recruitment is a significant challenge for the college sector and matching the salaries from many different sectors to “meet the needs and expectations of industry has been tough”.
“This award helps enable this and ensures we can deliver high quality and industry standard education,” he said.
The deal includes an increase in hourly paid lecturer (HPL) rates for the 2022/23 academic year and these rates will increase further in line with the pay award, a spokesperson said. This is worth up to a 15 per cent increase on the hourly rate for HPLs, worth up to an extra £4 per hour. The hourly paid support staff will see their hourly rates increase by 9 per cent.
The University and College Union said it has also secured an increase in holiday entitlement by three days, accompanied by a harmonisation of holiday entitlement across CCCG.
UCU regional official Adam Lincoln said: “This deal is the result of determined organising and industrial action from our members at CCCG.
“Crucially, it demonstrates that college employers have the resources to offer decent pay rises, which go some way towards protecting low-paid staff from the cost-of-living crisis.”
The UCU also today announced a pay agreement with Waltham Forest College which will see an average pay award of 6.1 per cent for all staff and the extension of the “lecturer pay scale by two spinal points”.
Ofsted has reviewed and updated its inspection framework and handbooks for September 2022, as it prepares to introduce a new “sub-judgement” for colleges on how well they are contributing to local skills needs.
The education watchdog will also end a curriculum grace period for schools and FE providers in place since 2019.
Here’s what FE providers need to know.
1. Only colleges to be judged on meeting skills needs
Ofsted’s five-year strategy, published in May, said that over the next four years all colleges will be subject to “enhanced inspections”. This will involve an assessment on how well they are meeting the skills needs of the economy. The watchdog has been given extra funding for additional inspectors to make this happen.
Ofsted confirmed today that its evaluation will include a “sub-judgement on the college’s contribution to meeting skills needs”, which is “linked to and dependent on the quality of education and leadership and management key judgements”.
“This evaluation will take into account not just skills needed immediately for employment, including for those already in employment, but also skills which are necessary to ensure students’ progress towards employment, in necessary stages by means of further and higher education, training, work experience and increased personal independence at all levels,” Ofsted said.
Inspectors will arrive at one of the following judgements about the college’s contribution to skills needs: limited; reasonable; or strong.
The sub-judgement will only relate to provision which is within Ofsted’s inspection scope – meaning that skills bootcamps provision will be excluded.
Independent training providers are excluded from this new sub-judgement.
2. Ofsted curriculum grace period ends …
When it introduced its new inspection framework in September 2019, Ofsted put in place “transition arrangements”, which gave schools and FE providers a grace period in which to bring their curriculum in line.
This meant that any education provider still in the process of updating its curriculum could still receive a ‘good’ grade, provided other aspects of the provision were good.
This was originally due to last until September 2020, but this was delayed due to Covid restrictions. The end to the grace period was then pushed back again from September 2021 to this spring, and then again to September 2022.
Today, Ofsted confirmed the grace period would end in September, and has removed the arrangements from its inspection handbooks.
3. … But new grade descriptor to prevent ‘cliff edge’
However, the watchdog said it was “not introducing a ‘cliff edge’ for a judgement of good”, and recognised “that you are likely to always be revising elements of your curriculum”.
The change “does not mean that schools and FE providers will now be expected to meet every single handbook criterion to remain good”.
A new grade descriptor has been added to the quality of education judgement, “acknowledging that settings are no longer facing emergency measures and are taking longer-term approaches to return pupils and learners to the curriculum they always intended”.
In a blog post published today, Ofsted national director of education Chris Russell wrote that “we do not expect curriculum to be perfect or a ‘finished article’”.
“Indeed, the best curriculum thinking is always evolving to meet changing circumstances. Inspection supports this approach to continuous improvement.”
4. ‘Time to move on from temporary Covid measures’
Ofsted acknowledged that Covid “continues to have an impact on early years settings, schools, and further education providers, and is likely to affect how they make decisions for some time”.
But it also said that education providers were “moving on from an emergency response to the pandemic and returning to more usual ways of working”.
“We believe that now is the right time to move beyond the temporary measures that we placed in our handbooks as a response to the national disruption,” Russell added.
To reflect this, paragraphs about temporary Covid measures have now been incorporated into the main sections of each handbook, making it “clear that inspectors will continue to take account of issues that providers may be facing”.
An example given is a “clear expectation that conversations between leaders and the lead inspector will continue to include a discussion on the impact of COVID-19.
“This ensures that our inspections continue to be informed by the different contexts in which you work and the range of challenges that you may still face.”
Teething problems and tweaks notwithstanding, FE providers are unexpectedly positive about the biggest new technical and vocational qualifications in generations. How can DfE get them right in the long term? Jess Staufenberg finds out
“What’s been really good about the T Level is it’s not just learning from a textbook. It’s been about learning through skills and knowledge. It really has helped us to be more confident.”
Pushra Mohamed, an education and childcare T Level student at Newham Sixth Form College in east London, is explaining her experience as part of the first student cohort in the country to complete their two-year T Level.
According to the government, 1,300 students enrolled on the first three T Levels, which were rolled out in September 2020: design, surveying and planning for construction; digital production, design and development; and education and childcare.
“It was the work placement that attracted me to the T Level,” continues Mohamed, smiling. “Personally, I found it pretty hard at the beginning, but I learnt that as much as you put yourself out there, you get the support you need.”
It now means that she and other T Level students are setting out into the world for the first time this summer.
So, after all the fanfare and criticism, are they working for students?
First off, it’s unusual for any news report to begin with an overwhelming positive answer to this kind of question. But it accurately reflects the overwhelmingly positive response from the sector when we asked the list of FE providers whose students finished T Levels this year for their feedback.
In fact, it’s the considerable excitement from staff and students at the end of the two years that probably makes tweaks to the programme all the more important. People are clearly deeply invested.
It means a recurring question around T Levels may become even more urgent, rather than less: can and should they become the mainstream technical qualification? And if so, when?
Teething problems
First off, FE providers who chose to run a T Level over the past two years have made it clear that setting up the new programmes was hard work.
Andrew Stubbs, construction T Level lead at Walsall College in the West Midlands, said providers thinking of running T Levels in future must “go into it with your eyes open. You need to be prepared for a lot of hard work, especially setting up the project-based learning”.
The biggest piece of work was setting up the T Level’s industry placement with employers, to meet the 315-hour placement requirement for the construction and digital T Levels – and the absolutely enormous 750-hour industry requirement for the education and childcare T Level, say providers.
Chrystel St Ledger, T Level lead at Newham Sixth Form College, echoes wide sector feedback to FE Week when she says her staff were “literally banging on doors” to get employers involved.
“We were saying, ‘this is what T Levels are, we need your support, this is your corporate social responsibility’. It’s too much for one or two members of staff,” she shakes her head.
This issue is raised again and again by providers. As Sunny Bamra, director of construction at Suffolk New College, puts it: “Let’s be honest: the [now former] education secretary Nadhim Zahawi might have a T Level badge on his suit but no one really knows what it is.”
Another issue has been that many digital industry placements involve remote working teams but the T Level guidance requires students to be supervised in-person, providers tell me.
Diana Martin, vice principal at Dudley College of Technology, says the government needs to re-think the traditional “9 to 5 in the office” model of digital T Level placements, as this does not reflect many modern workplaces post-Covid.
The government also currently limits industry placement to “up to two employers”, but extending this cap to three or four would help with finding those placements, Martin adds.
Other teething problems include making sure “apprehensive” parents got enough information and reassurance, continues Martin Lake, a tutor on the construction T Level at Walsall College. He also recommends staff being well-prepared with emergency contact numbers and clear safeguarding processes, given how long students spend off-site with employers.
Likewise, staff had to give students “a lot of additional support around transport methods” to placements, explains Lake. Getting a clear expenses system set up will also ensure both accessibility to placements but also prevent unnecessarily high spend on taxis, he adds.
The workload on staff was also not helped by an initial lack of resources available for some T Levels, explains one college lecturer, who did not wish to be named.
“One of the course textbooks was late coming out from our awarding organisation,” they tell me. “There’s definitely a need for more specialist expert curriculum support from them, too. We were invited to an event on the education and childcare T Level a few weeks ago, but that would have been really useful earlier.”
This view is corroborated by Kev Heys, digital T Level lead at Walsall College, who adds: “At the start, there were no real resources available. It’s better now.”
Unexpected staff benefits
But all the hard work and sweat has also presented staff with invigorating opportunities, say numerous providers.
Ashley Grute, assistant principal and T Level lead at Havant and South Downs College in Hampshire, says “there’s been so much opportunity for staff CPD, it’s been such a positive experience. They’re going properly back into industry to upskill and find out what the latest trends are.”
For instance, Nicolette Dryden, digital T Level lead at the college, upskilled around coding language Python – in particular, for facial-recognition technology – to be able to support student project work. Her colleague Will Sparrow, construction T Level lead, spent time with the University of Portsmouth and companies in the public and private sectors to talk with them about T Level programme content.
The need to upskill plus the search for industry placements means staff-employer relationships have also strengthened, adds Grute. “We’ve set up an employer partner board for each T Level, to understand skills gaps and ask for those opportunities around upskilling.”
The feeling seems to be that staff have been boosted by a sense of inward investment into FE and themselves as professionals, he adds.
“For staff, they feel the qualifications have been really invested in, and that they are teaching world-class qualifications with industry-standard equipment,” says Grute.
This has been underpinned by significant sums of money: Havant and South Downs College won half a million pounds from the T Level capital fund for estate refurbishment, including £500,000 for new construction, early years and digital facilities; £750,000 for a new hospital ward, community nursing facility and science laboratories and about £2 million for electronics labs and computer-aided design rooms.
Perhaps most importantly of all, numerous staff have told FE Week with apparently genuine enthusiasm how much they have enjoyed teaching the T Level compared to BTECs.
“It’s given staff their freedom back,” says Bernadette Turner, head of learning for apprenticeships at Dudley College of Technology. “With the diploma, it becomes very target- and deadline-driven. The students have to complete a set amount of tasks on a set amount of units within a set amount of time.”
By contrast, the T Level is built up over two years, allowing staff to spend longer on an area if needed, and also encouraging more creativity among students, she says.
Her words are echoed by Naz Hamilton, education and childcare lead at Newham Sixth Form College. “It gives us more autonomy about how to assess students. With the BTEC, you have to follow the unit, but this has encouraged a greater amount of working with other teachers.”
Programme design tweaks
The area that FE providers have struggled most with – industry placements – has also been the area they have praised the most.
Victoria Moyse is work experience and placement lead at Education Partnership North East, which includes Sunderland College, Northumberland College and Hartlepool Sixth Form.
She puts it this way: “We’ve always offered work experience at level 3 and level 2, but it’s been very much part of enrichment, really. It would be more like shadowing, light-touch work experience.” A BTEC student does about four weeks of work experience, she says.
By contrast, students on T Level placements are “like trainee employees,” says St Ledger at Newham Sixth Form College. As a result, many providers run proper interviews and selection processes alongside employers to ensure the placements are a success.
“We went through a proper matching service and every student had three interviews,” adds Moyse. “But it meant when placements started, the students and employers really benefited.”
Paul Phillips, principal at Weston College, echoes this. “They’re not given a bit of insight into the company, they’re given a direct role. One of our students was given the role of junior developer and created a website for the company. It’s real value to the learner in terms of industry exposure.”
Until more placements are found, however, not all students who applied for T Levels have been accepted.
For instance, Walsall College got 70 applications for 20 construction T Level places, which were whittled down through interview. It raises the question: do ministers want the T Level to be so selective?
Students are similarly largely very positive about their placements – but are clear it can also be a mixed bag.
Joe Harper, who completed his digital T Level this year, has been told by national gas supplier SGN that he can approach them for work following a successful 17-day placement with them. “It was challenging, but that’s what it’s supposed to be. I’m really glad I did it.”
But another placement had “little relevance” to his course, following a mix-up, he says.
Meanwhile, on the assessment side, students (including Harper) and staff have mainly raised queries about the employer-set project, which is one of the assessed components. “The employer-set project wasn’t employer set, it’s set by the awarding organisation,” says Harper. “I think they should rename that or replace that with a genuinely employer-set project where you work properly with the employer on it.”
Joe Harper, T Level student
He is echoed by Stubbs, Heys and Lake, T Level leads at Wallsall College, who all say that the employer-set project “duplicates” the occupational specialism pathway on the T Level. The T Level is already huge, and doesn’t need to be made any bigger than necessary, they explain.
But no staff FE Week spoke to thinks the qualification should be reduced to the size of one A level. Their strength is the industry placement and project work, which would be too demanding to complete alongside other programmes, I’m told. As Phillips at Weston College tells me: “If they were smaller, I’m worried they’d basically be an A level with just a bit of work experience.”
What next?
The main thing holding providers back around T Levels is clearly the lack of awareness among employers, parents and schools about the qualification.
For baby qualifications, this is perhaps to be expected. But David Gallagher, chief executive at T Level awarding body NCFE, urges the DfE to run a “huge awareness campaign” among employers as soon as possible.
The employer-set project may also need a serious rethink, according to some providers.
But the real question is around expansion of T Levels over the coming years. Should they be selective, to ensure the ‘right’ students are on them? Or should they be more modular and iterative, to boost inclusion, including for adult learners?
If the latter, the debate over BTECs is far from done. Some staff still tell me “T Levels are not the answer to all the needs of the sector” while others say the BTECs feel “tired and old” and “out-of-date now”.
Interestingly, three providers tell me their employers are more impressed with, and would “prefer”, T Level students over BTEC students on placement. So – how will the DfE prevent a two-tier vocational qualifications system?
For now, students seem genuinely chuffed.
Abigail Tighe, who did the assisted teaching pathway in the education and childcare T Level at Dudley College, concludes: “I didn’t expect how much I would grow as a person.
“It was real responsibility, not just standing around. I’ve really gained a lot of skills.”
Professional discussion can play a valuable role in student assessment but only if used carefully, explains Paul Kelly
Essentially a two-way conversation between an assessor and a candidate, professional discussion is often used as part of end-point assessment (EPA) for apprenticeships.
Taking the style of an interview, the assessor asks an apprentice a series of set questions as a means of building a clearer picture of the depth of an apprentice’s understanding.
The assessment takes place in timed conditions, with specific criteria to meet and, in some cases, the apprentice’s portfolio is referred to.
Often, the apprentice isn’t familiar with the assessor, which can prove daunting in an interview scenario.
There’s no invigilator present, and the independent assessor is responsible for managing the process, including the timings and making sure the apprentice knows how much time is left.
Time restrictions are strict to ensure fair assessment for all apprentices, so it’s important the candidate provides sufficient detail in the timeframe they have. While the timescale will vary according to an apprentice’s level, interviews are usually between 30 and 90 minutes in length.
Professional discussion assessments are often used alongside other methods, such as observations or a written portfolio, and are becoming an increasingly popular way to help grade technical and vocational qualifications.
But the very nature of a conversation-based assessment leaves it open to questions of validity, particularly when compared to more formal methods. So how can we protect validity in a two-way discussion?
Firstly, as the flow of a conversation can vary greatly between different people, assessors must be self-aware and mitigate potential for bias, unconscious or otherwise. It’s vital to take a consistent approach, sticking to the same set of questions and resisting any urge to prompt or support students with their answers.
Similarly, when it comes to grading, there are frameworks in place that can guide an assessor on levels of achievement.
For instance, apprentices who offer examples of their knowledge and skills in a factual manner would receive a lower level, while those with a higher level would have demonstrated a broad range of theoretical and technical knowledge through their skills in practice.
These frameworks help guide assessors in awarding a level that best reflects the understanding demonstrated through the interview.
As well as any potential bias on an assessor’s part, various factors can influence an apprentice’s performance in an interview scenario. One of the most common is nerves.
Feeling nervous can easily prevent a student from fully engaging in the process and therefore holding back from showing just how much they understand.
This is why it’s crucial to give apprentices plenty of opportunities to practise so those who feel nervous aren’t at a disadvantage compared to their more confident peers. This includes the opportunity to listen back to review their performance.
Teachers can also help by sharing straightforward information about the nature and purpose of the assessment, including resources and guides on professional discussion. They can also remind apprentices that it’s not an interrogation, but an opportunity to show how much they know.
One of the most common issues is nerves
For their part, assessors must take steps to help put nervous apprentices at ease, such as listening carefully and responding thoughtfully to what’s being said.
Factors such as attention, memory and use of language can also greatly impact a student’s performance. For some, not having to express their thoughts in writing might be beneficial. But for others, missing the chance to revisit their answers as they would in a written assessment could hamper their performance.
So, while it’s important to protect validity through a consistent approach, the varying needs of individual apprentices means some will require a different kind of interaction.
As professional discussion assessments come to play a bigger part in apprenticeship assessment, supporting everyone to involved is key to safeguarding validity. That means sticking to clear guidance for assessors and for students to have the support they need to prepare.
While interview-style assessment may seem daunting for students, it can provide a useful means of demonstrating their skills and understanding in a different way. But it must be used correctly.
