It’s disappointing to hear Andrea Jenkyns trot out the same old lines on BTECs

Are ministers clear on the difference between technical and applied general qualifications? asks James Kewin

It was fantastic to see so many MPs at last night’s parliamentary debate on the future of BTEC qualifications.

The debate was triggered after the #ProtectStudentChoice petition secured 108,349 signatures earlier this year.

Despite the intense heat and political drama elsewhere in Westminster, MPs from all parties made a compelling case for the government to rethink its plan to scrap the majority of applied general qualifications such as BTECs.

This cross-party support for the campaign from politicians (which we’ve previously seen reflected in the letter from 118 parliamentarians to former education secretary Nadhim Zahawi) has been matched by cross-sector support from the education world and beyond.

Organisations representing staff, students and leaders from schools, colleges, and universities are among the 30 partners backing the campaign, alongside employer groups, and of course, FE Week.  

One reason that #ProtectStudentChoice has secured such widespread support, is that it has adopted an evidence-based and reasonable position on the government’s plan to reform Level 3 qualifications.

Fundamentally, we believe that many young people will be better served studying an applied general qualification rather than an A level or T level-only study programme.

T levels are a welcome development and will strengthen the current suite of technical qualifications, but they should sit alongside, rather than replace, BTECs.

Sadly, the new minister’s response to the excellent points put forward by MPs last night was neither evidence-based, nor reasonable.

Although Andrea Jenkyns has only been in the job for a week, she does have the advantage of being a former BTEC student and has talked in the past about the transformative effect this qualification has had on her career.

So it was particularly disappointing to hear her trot out the usual tired and discredited ‘lines to take’ last night.

MPs are often bemused to find that when they ask questions about applied general qualifications, ministers invariably provide answers about technical qualifications.

MPs are often bemused to find that when they ask questions about applied general qualifications, ministers invariably provide answers about technical qualifications

It is hard to say whether ministers do not know the difference, or are simply wishing away BTECs because they are not one of the two qualifications of choice that the government wants to see dominate the future qualification landscape.

Last night’s debate was triggered by concerns about the government plans to scrap the majority of BTECs.

Responding to these concerns by simply restating the same plans and talking up T Levels is a bizarre approach, but one that has been adopted by a succession of skills ministers.  

With a new prime minister in place by 5 September, and new set of ministers to follow shortly after, the government has a chance to reset its damaging plans for level 3 qualifications. 

Former Conservative ministers used last night’s debate to urge a rethink, in part because the government’s plans are so curiously un-Conservative.

They reduce ‘consumer’ choice, scrap a successful ‘product’, and replacing it with a state-backed alternative with no track record.

You can imagine the response if this sort of plan was put forward by one of the opposition parties in any other sphere of public life.

So what needs to change?

First, a new government must get the basics right.

Three routes are better than two.

Students need genuine choice, not A levels, T levels and a small group of applied general qualifications that are approved by exception.

And understand that a T level is not simply an upgraded BTEC – in most cases, they are a different type of qualification that provide a different type of educational experience.

Acknowledging this would help to address the misplaced focus on ‘overlapping’ qualifications.

Second, end the obsession with boosting T level numbers.

The Department for Education has become so focused on this output that it has lost sight of the much more important outcome (ensuring all students are pursuing relevant, high quality qualifications that lead to further study and/or skilled employment).

Unless there are radical changes to the make-up of T levels, they will remain a minority product.

Scrapping most BTECs to make T levels a mass-market product is a desperate move and one that is unlikely to succeed – we are much more likely to see an increase in A level or NEET numbers instead.

Third, listen to, and engage with, the sector.

Last night, the minister claimed to be “consulting vigorously” on next steps.

But there is little point in consulting if you ignore what people – particularly those responsible for delivery – actually tell you.

That has certainly been the sector’s experience to date – it is hard to recall a more top-down, ‘government knows best’ approach to policymaking in the past ten years.

The 12-month delay to defunding is welcome, but delaying a bad idea does not stop it from being a bad idea.

Education policymaking should start with the student and work backwards.

A new administration has the opportunity to do that, and recalibrate the current approach to reforming qualifications at Level 3 and below.

The 30 members of the #ProtectStudentChoice coalition stand ready to help, as is the broad, cross-party group of MPs that made such a valuable contribution to last night’s debate. 

Teachers at 39 colleges will strike this autumn

Strike action has been confirmed at 29 more colleges across England, bringing the total that will be picketing this autumn to 39.

The University and College Union this week confirmed 29 of the 33 colleges balloting on strikes have agreed to industrial action, held after refusing to accept a 2.5 per cent pay offer recommended by the Association of Colleges.

The UCU wants a 10 per cent rise with a minimum uplift of £2,000.

It reported that the ballot was 89.9 per cent of members voting in favour of strike action, from an overall turnout of 57.9 per cent.

The four colleges that did not vote for strike action were Bournemouth and Poole College, Exeter College, and Sussex Downs and Hastings colleges which are both part of the East Sussex College Group. Those colleges did not meet the 50 per cent turnout threshold.

The 29 colleges will join four in the north west – Burnley College, The Manchester College, City of Liverpool College and Oldham College – which balloted separately and will walk out on September 6 and 7 during college induction week.

Hackney, Havering, Redbridge, Tower Hamlets, and Epping Forest colleges from New City College Group, as well as Barnet and Southgate College, also plan strike action after a separate ballot.

UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: “College staff have shown that they are sick and tired of falling pay and have voted overwhelmingly for strike action after employers offered an insulting 2.5 per cent uplift in pay.

“College workers have had their pay held down so long that the vast majority now face financial insecurity. Yet as the cost of living crisis bites employers want their staff to take a further hit with more below inflation pay rises. This is completely unacceptable and shows exactly why many staff are voting with their feet and choosing to leave the sector altogether.”

Inflation hit 9.1 per cent in May, while cost of living pressures from increased energy bills, food shops, fuel and council tax among others have hit people’s bank balances.

The UCU said staff pay at colleges is now 35 per cent below inflation since 2009, and referenced its report which said that seven in 10 would leave the industry unless pay and conditions improve.

Capital City College Group averted strike action after last week agreeing to a 9 per cent rise for those on £30,000 or less from August.

The AoC upped its pay offer from 2.25 per cent to 2.5 per cent in June, rejected by the UCU as being “totally unacceptable”.

David Hughes, AoC chief executive said it is “disappointing” that unions are intent on strike action in the autumn, particularly because of the impact it might have on students keen to start their studies.

“I would urge the unions and their members to avoid disruption during the important recruitment period at the start of term. This would be counterproductive as anything which decreases the number of enrolled students would impact on colleges ability to increase staff pay,” he said.

“Having said that, the cost of living crisis is biting hard for college staff, as it is for their students, the colleges themselves and many others in society. That’s why we continue to work hard to persuade the new ministerial team at the Department for Education of the urgency in winning more funding and giving flexibilities with existing budgets to boost college staff pay.

“We will continue to make the case for improving staff pay as it is vital for colleges to be able to retain and recruit their teaching talent.”

Fred Sirieix’s prisoner-run restaurants to expand to boost hospitality skills

A charity formed by First Dates star Fred Sirieix to train prisoners in the hospitality industry is set to expand its work to its third prison before the end of the year.

The Right Course was formed by the TV star back in 2017 and sees staff kitchens in prisons turned into high street style training restaurants, run by inmates to teach them industry-level skills and help secure them jobs on release.

The project launched at the category C HMP Isis at Thamesmead with the DM Thomas Foundation, with a second refurbished staff canteen launched at HMP Wormwood Scrubs in 2021.

At Monday’s Novus Moving On conference around the future of prison education, Sirieix and The Right Course chief executive Simon Sheehan told FE Week that a third kitchen is due to open at HMP Berwyn in the next two or three months.

The pair have plans to continue rolling out the project further.

Sheehan said: “It has been growing and we are just keen to get more and more sites that want to have a high street restaurant within the prison, and it’s a great training environment too.

“We are going around visiting various prisons and seeing if they have got suitable facilities. Some need much more investment than others just to get a restaurant that can produce the quality of food we want, and also to become an environment where people want to eat, otherwise it will fall apart. You need customers like any business who want to come in and spend their money.”

The team has not set annual targets for new restaurants, but confirmed it is looking at having the third restaurant up and running in the next few months at HMP Berwyn.

Sirieix added: “The Right Course is working but it will only work and make a real difference when it is rolled out at scale across the prison estate.

“Not all prisons are suitable, but maybe 50 or 60 per cent will be suitable. Everybody needs to be fed, there are restaurants in every single prison. So instead of just feeding them, feed them by creating a workshop that is training people and giving them skills.

“We are ready to roll it out, we have got the team – Simon is doing an incredible job meeting governors, meeting prisons and meeting education providers, and it is a case of people embracing and understanding there is a real need.”

The journey started when one of the teachers for Sirieix’s daughter was mugged outside of school and visiting a prison Sirieix recognised that staff messes were the perfect place to teach offenders new skills.

According to the charity, 61 prisoners commenced the programme in the first two years, with 95 per cent of them gaining at least one level 2 NVQ in areas such as front of house, catering and food production or barista.

It said that 50 per cent of its 2019 candidates eligible for release gained employment in the industry.

There are also hopes it can address the recruitment shortfalls in the hospitality industry.

Sirieix said: “When you think about the staff shortage in hospitality where there are hundreds of thousands of vacancies now, they are not going to be filled because these vacancies were filled by EU workers and now we are out of the EU. So the people who were coming for those jobs are not going to come.

“The solution for hospitality businesses is either you employ the very few people who are trained and have experience, or you get people walking in from the street. So the people we are training they have already got the experience, they have already got the skills and they have got a minimum of knowledge with what the job is about.

“People say they are ex-prisoners, can we trust them? We have to believe in redemption and forgiveness, and also we have to give people chances and opportunities.”

For prisoners, Sirieix said they love the work because it gives them a sense of satisfaction and achievement, as well as transferable skills regardless of whether they later get a job in the industry.

Sheehan added: “You see the learners through their journey on the course, that confidence really does build. Prison strips a lot of it out of them, but this is a good stepping stone back to when they are coming up to release.”

5 actions we will be pressing our 6th education secretary on

There are some big decisions which would have been made this summer if the previous DfE incumbents had stayed in post, writes David Hughes

James Cleverley’s appointment to education secretary makes him the sixth person in that post in the six years I have been at AoC.

Not a great recipe for continuity, certainty and stability, but it’s not an unprecedented turnover rate.

Between 1964 and 1970 we also had six, across three and culminating with Margaret Thatcher in the post.

And there were five between 2001 and 2007, finishing in the split of responsibilities between Ed Balls and John Denham.

Historians will no doubt give views on what it all means and what we can read into it. My job is to make sense of it for the college sector.

In some ways the new education secretary and his team of ministers are in a caretaker role, with no mandate to – or perhaps much need – to make big decisions. That it’s happening over the summer helps to reinforce that view.

But there are some big decisions which would have been made this summer if the previous incumbents had stayed in post.

That makes it vital that the new ministerial team makes positive decisions and takes action on some things because delays could be damaging.

Equally there are some areas where an overt and transparent decision to delay would be extremely helpful.

On the positive side there are five sets of actions and decisions we will be pressing for:

1. ONS reclassification

Preparing the ground over the summer for the possible reclassification of colleges as public sector institutions.

The ONS is carrying out a review this summer and a decision is due in early September.

Reclassification will mean more work for colleges, at the very least to stitch their accounts into the Department for Education’s but it could bring some upside too.

There is a very simple case to be made for a VAT exemption for colleges which would result in an investment of over £200m into colleges and could easily be a promoted as a tax cut for productivity (something the candidates for PM might want to consider?).

2. Staff pay

Our calls to the previous ministerial team on help for colleges on staff pay, recruitment and retention received an encouraging response, and we continue to work with officials on ways DfE could help.

Given that it is likely that school pay will be resolved this month, it would be remiss if ministers left those proposals hanging until the autumn.

Among the proposals were more flexibilities on the additional 40-hours of learning and on the Adult Education Budget which could be decided this month.

3. Capital project funding

This summer will see many colleges commencing capital projects, with funding support from DfE which was bid for last year. In the time between bids and project start, construction costs have rocketed, and all those increases need to be met by college reserves and borrowing, with the DfE grant being fixed.

Help with this is an easy one, with a simple inflation adjustment to grants.

4. Local skills improvement plans

We are at a crucial time for the roll-out of LSIPs, so we want to see work continued, taking on board the lessons learned in the pilots and reflecting this week’s NAO report which questioned the DfE reliance on employers driving the skills agenda.

Ministers could put these together and set new expectations of the partnership approach they want to see, between employers and colleges, identifying skills priorities and working together to help deliver on them.

LSIPs provide a good vehicle for a quick response to the NAO report and I hope that ministers pick that up quickly.

There is also one area where I hope to see a decision to delay:

5. Level 3 qualifications review

I’m on record as calling the approach to this review “reckless” and I stand by that.

Our analysis, published last week, of the proposed defunding of 160 qualifications deemed as overlapping with T Levels showed that this could result in thousands of young people without a qualification to work towards.

A decision to delay this for at least an additional three-years would be a blessing for all and would reduce risks enormously. Behind this approach is a fear that colleges will not grow their T Level delivery.

I don’t think that will happen, but a simple 10 per cent premium on the funding rates for T Levels would be the best way to solve that, using underspends in the wider 16 to 19 budget which I am sure will emerge over the coming months.

There will be pressure for ministers to do as little as possible until the new PM and Cabinet are in place, but that would be a mistake.

Urgent issues need urgent action now.

The need for a careers-led education system is staring us in the face

Last month’s Times Education Commission presented a model for education very similar to UTCs, writes Simon Connell


As we come to the end of another academic year, the UTC programme was very proud that UTC South Durham contributed to the Times Education Commission’s final report, published last month.


The 14-19 school was part of a rich cast list of witnesses for the commission: everyone from John Major to the producer of the Bond films, Barbara Broccoli.


That a UTC could feed into the commission’s work is especially gratifying as now seems the prime time to reform our education system, post-Covid and with new ministers in post.


As we celebrate ten years of the UTC programme this year, we can see how the commissioners’ proposals reflect what has worked best for UTC pupils.


This is especially so given the report’s calls to reform exams at 16 and 18, introduce new career academies, and get away from our zero-sum approach to academic and technical options.


British Baccalaureate


UTC pupils have reaped the benefits of combining academic subjects with technical courses, with 70 per cent of UTC leavers choosing STEM courses at university compared to 42 per cent nationally.


The umbrella approach proposed by the commission, where students could study a ‘British Baccalaureate’ is supported by parents as well. The report cites how parent focus groups enthused about a single qualification bringing together academic and technical learning.


As for the assessment reforms the report puts forward, the decline of GCSEs is clear to see. Even our founder and chairman Lord Baker, who introduced GCSEs while he was education secretary, has called for them to be discarded.


The government now ought to move towards replacing GCSEs in earnest, with a smaller series of exams in line with the commission’s proposals.


More interestingly and more subtly than their recommendation for GCSEs and A levels, the commission has also pushed for BTECs to run alongside T Levels, instead of the latter replacing the former.


We support T Levels but they cannot be expected to replace all technical qualifications. Without many of the existing qualifications, UTC leavers would never have been able to go onto universities or apprenticeships in the numbers they have.


The needs and wants of young people must determine what qualifications are available if they are to become active participants in education instead of passive recipients.


Academic v technical divide


The commissioners’ and witnesses have a clear antipathy for how we make young people choose to be scholars or technicians.


For too long the education system has pushed young people into choosing between the academic and technical routes, ignoring the fact we ought to be preparing them for careers where resilience and communication will be more important than fronted adverbials.


One of the commissioners, education select committee chair and parliamentary UTC group member Robert Halfon, has rightly said the “fundamental purpose” of education must be to prepare pupils for work.


UTC pupils spend significant amounts of time learning about their career options and spending time with employers. They also benefit from learning on the equipment they are likely to use in a future career, whether that be lathes, 3D printers, or science labs.


It’s not enough to teach young people about careers, they need to be prepared to start them as well. If the government wants elite sixth forms then young people ought to have the choice to enrol in technically focused career academies as well.


Schools and colleges ought to have much more support to share resources and knowledge with universities, as well as capital funding to keep up with industry settings.


Employer engagement


A career-focused approach to education need not be cynical or soulless, though. The commission’s report notes how UTC South Durham employs a full-time business

engagement manager to coordinate work experience and apprenticeship opportunities.
Similarly hard-working staff at UTCs around the country help inject fun and learning into a wealth of encounters between students and employers.


Pupils at Doncaster UTC recently spent six weeks reinventing the wing of a Vulcan bomber with a local charity.

As well as the valuable engineering experience, having to present their work at the end of the project helped teach valuable communication and organisational soft skills, which the commission notes employers are in dire need of.


Projects like this show the best employer-led engagement gives students tangible tasks and results which reinforce what their teachers are already drilling into them.

Adult funding rates set to rise in London

Funding for courses at level 2 and below will be increased for London residents from next year, the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has announced.

The adult education funding uplift, set to cost £10 million, was announced by Sadiq Khan alongside measures to widen eligibility by removing the three-year residency requirement to access funded courses. 

A wave of adult education and skills announcements this morning coincides with a visit to Ingeus in Hackney, where Khan will join an employability session for Afghan refugees taking part in the Work and Health Programme.

The mayor’s boost to AEB funding rates at level 2 and below equates to a 3.5 per cent increase. The Greater London Authority has said the extra funding will help address increasing costs faced by the FE workforce, as well as meeting the needs of lower skilled Londoners. 

“Many Londoners are struggling as the cost of living continues to rise,” Khan said. 

“This new funding and these changes to the adult education programme will help to ensure that we are building a better London for everyone – a safer, fairer and more prosperous city for all Londoners.”

The mayor’s existing AEB rules will also change to remove the requirement for learners to proove they are in receipt of state benefits. This, alongside removing the three-year residency requirement, will allow an extra 400,000 learners to access courses. 

News of increased funding rates for London’s FE and skills providers has been welcomed by the Association of Colleges. 

“The £10 million increase in funding for courses at level 2 and below will ease some of the financial pressures providers are facing due to rising inflation and help them to continue to support Londoners,” said Mary Vine-Morris, the AoC’s area director for London. 

This comes as 33 colleges are in disputes with the University and College Union over pay and workload, including five colleges in the capital. Strike ballots close today. 

There’s been further industrial unrest at London’s New City College and Richmond upon Thames College over alleged “fire and rehire” practices to push through changes to contracts. 

Londoners will also have access to funded non-prescribed vocational and technical qualifications at level 4, as well as funding to cover the costs of certain license to practice accreditations in the hospitality and construction industries. 

The mayor has announced that learners seeking the Construction Skills Certification Scheme (Labourer) and the Security Industry Authority (SIA) license, which accredits security guards, will have their training costs covered.

Unemployed learners and those in low-paid employment will also have access to fully funded British Sign Language courses. 

“These latest reforms will help more people, including some of the most disadvantaged in society, access fully funded skills provision and get the training they need to get on in life, thrive in the world of work and boost their skills,” Vine-Morris said. 

Just over £2 million will be made available for a new programme called ‘No Wrong Door’ which will fund ‘integration hubs’ across the capital to target employment and skills support at those most in need, such as refugees, women, disabled people and over 50s. 

“It was brilliant to meet some of the Afghan refugees at Ingeus today and I’m glad we can offer such a wide range of fully funded courses and training to people in various stages of their adult education journey” Khan said.

Roundtable Discussion | Learner needs should be equal to employer needs to truly level up

Yesterday afternoon leaders from the FE sector and business, came together to discuss the importance of learner and local community needs.

The latest FE Week roundtable, in partnership with NCFE, featured contributors such as the CBI and WorldSkills UK.

During the hour-long discussion, contributors outlined their perspectives on getting the balance right between learner and local community needs, and employer needs, in terms of both delivering the levelling-up agenda and creating a world-class skills system.

Topics debated included:

  • What levelling up means in practice and how world-class technical and vocational education can drive this
  • The crucial role that employers play in the development of qualifications and training programmes (apprenticeships, T Levels) and how this could be improved / where the gaps lie
  • What learner efficacy means and how we can make ‘learner need’ more central to the education ecosystem
  • The balance of transferable essential skills (such as mental fitness and resilience) in addition to sector-specific skills that meet current and future economic needs
  • What role the community plays in the system and how we can do more to maximise learners’ societal impact through the beneficiaries of their skills

The session was chaired by FE Week editor, Shane Chowen and contributors included:

  • David Gallagher, CEO, NCFE
  • Neil Bentley, CEO, WorldSkills UK
  • Robert West, Head of Education & Skills, CBI
  • Dimond Ofori, Academic Mentor for KS5 at George Green’s School
  • Jennifer Coupland, CEO, Institute for Apprenticeships & Technical Education
  • Simon Ashworth, Policy Director, AELP
  • Olly Newton, Executive Director, Edge Foundation
  • Stephan Evans, CEO, Learning and Work Institute

Watch the Roundtable discussion

Ofsted job cut inspection warning, plus 7 more annual account findings

Ofsted has published its corporate annual report and accounts, providing an update on its work after two years of disruption from Covid.

The document focuses on the inspectorate’s performance, and is not the same as the official annual report to Parliament each year, which focuses on inspection activity.

Among findings were the inspectorate’s concerns over inspector turnover and the impact cuts to the size of the civil service will have on its efforts to ramp up inspection efforts.

Here’s what we learned.

1. Covid-19 results in budget underspend

Accounts data indicated that Ofsted underspent on its core funding by just over £10 million.

It said that was “mainly because we did not return to a full programme of routine school and further education and skills inspections until September 2021,” as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

2. Providers feel the inspection will help improve provision

Further education providers were a little more upbeat than schools about Ofsted inspections helping to improve provision.

Survey data for inspections between April 2021 and the end of March 2022 reported that 77 per cent of further education and skills providers strongly agreed their inspection would help improve provision, compared to 59 per cent in state funded schools.

Just 2 per cent disagreed or strongly disagreed in skills and FE settings, compared to 8% for state-funded schools.

3. Two exit packages of £100k+ approved

Accounts reveal Ofsted paid out £473,000 in “exit costs” in 2021-22, covering things like redundancy and “other departure costs” like early retirement for non-health grounds.

This was for 11 exits, and represents an increase from the £179,000 spent on five exits in 2020-21.

Accounts do not show who received these payouts, but they do reveal that two payouts were in the £100,000 to £150,000 bracket.

4. Budget 25% lower than 2010 in real-terms

Ofsted was recently handed more money from the Treasury to accelerate inspection operations.

But the watchdog warned today that by the end of the current spending review period, its funding would be at the same level as 2010-11 in cash terms, but “at least 25 per cent lower in real terms”.

The extra funding allocated at the spending review was “specifically to fund new activities”, though Ofsted said its income would also increase “because we will be carrying out additional commissioned inspection and research activity on behalf of the DfE”.

5. Staff cuts could have ‘implications’ for new work

The government has said it wants to reduce the civil service to 2016 levels over the next three years, and Ofsted is no exception.

In its report, the watchdog revealed it had been “asked to draw up proposals for headcount reductions”. This is despite Ofsted having been asked recently by government to ramp up inspections so all schools are visited by 2025 and ambitions to visit all colleges in the next four years.

“We are working through this exercise, which could have implications for the new work agreed at the spending review.”

6. Narrow miss for FE and skills inspection targets

Ofsted sets its own internal targets for the number of inspections and visits to be carried out.

For further education and skills settings, the watchdog hit 95% of its target, inspecting 719 of the 758 in the plan.

However, Ofsted said its ability to meet these targets “was affected by Covid-19”.

“Inspector capacity has been reduced by sickness and periods of isolation,” the report said.

7. Inspector recruitment drive as turnover rises

Ofsted said it had been asked to accelerate inspections and take on new work, but warned that it was “seeing turnover in some areas of our workforce return to, or go beyond, pre-pandemic levels”.

Ofsted said staff turnover rose this year to 14 per cent, up from 9 per cent in 2020-21, adding this “may be the result of staff delaying job moves and retirement during the pandemic”.

The watchdog said it had launched “several inspector recruitment campaigns, aiming to attract higher numbers of applicants while not reducing our high standards for those we appoint”.

Recruitment webinars have been run, prompting “record numbers” to apply for inspector roles.

8. Jobbing inspectors return to work

Ofsted has around 800 Her Majesty’s Inspectors, who are directly-employed by the watchdog, and 1,650 contracted inspectors, around 1,000 of whom are serving practitioners.

Earlier in the pandemic, “many” of these jobbing inspectors did not work for Ofsted, “so that they could focus on their own provision”. The inspectorate stopped using them entirely in January 2022 “so that they could concentrate on their jobs in early years settings, schools and colleges”.

But many of these inspectors have now started working for Ofsted again, and “many more people have applied to become contracted inspectors”.

Third of first T Level students apply for university courses

More than a third of the first cohort of T Level students have applied for university, new UCAS data shows.

Around 1,300 students signed up to the first T Level courses launched in September 2020, with those learners graduating this summer and due to find out their results on August 18.

Data published by the universities admissions body today revealed that 490 T Level students have applied for higher education courses – 38 per cent.

Today’s data also reveals that record numbers of students from disadvantaged areas of the UK have applied for university courses.

UCAS said the application rate for 18-year-olds in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods is 29 per cent, compared to 27 per cent last year and 10 percentage points higher than 2013, meaning more than 38,000 students from disadvantaged areas have applied this year.

New minister for skills, further education and higher education Andrea Jenkyns said: “It is fantastic to see a record number of 18-year-olds from the most disadvantaged areas applying for university – this is real levelling up in action and a catalyst for genuine social mobility.

“This year also marks a key milestone for T Levels and it is encouraging that so many students have applied for higher education.”

T Level students will find out if they are accepted for their higher education places on or after results day.

The first T Level graduates will be across three courses launched in 2020 – education and childcare, digital, and construction.

One of the questions T Levels has raised is how many universities will accept the qualification. An FE Week investigation in January found that less than half of UK universities had committed to accepting the new qualifications just two weeks before UCAS’ deadline.

The government’s published list now indicates that 127 universities will accept at least one T Level, although that list does not make clear which courses each accepts.

Kevin Gilmartin, post-16 specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “We are watching the number of T Level students who end up in university with real interest. If T Level students are going to end up in university in large numbers, and not in further technical training, then it brings into question why BTECs are being defunded.

“After all, the government’s main argument for scrapping BTECs in order to introduce T Levels, is that too many BTEC students end up in university rather than technical training. The government can’t have it both ways.”

Earlier this month the government closed an appeals process for awarding bodies to challenge the defunding of specific BTEC and level 3 courses which are under threat because they clash with the new T Levels.

Gilmartin added that he was pleased there were record number of disadvantaged student applications to HE, which was a reflection of support by schools and colleges, and hoped it would translate into offers and acceptances.