A school handed £1.2 million for a new six-classroom, purpose-built block to teach the government’s flagship T Levels has recruited just one student, FE Week can reveal.

Salesian School, in Surrey, began delivering the education and childcare route this September after a one-year deferral that was blamed on Covid-19. It planned to recruit 15 learners.

But the school struggled to sell the technical course to students who opted to stick with “qualifications that they know”, such as A-levels, because universities and employers “better understand” them.

The school, which completed its new T Level block last summer, is now delivering one-to-one tuition to just one learner as a result.

The government has committed £183 million in T Level capital funding for providers for buildings and equipment to help deliver the new qualifications.

Painsley Catholic College, in Staffordshire, has built a £1 million hub intended for exclusive digital T Level use, including “state-of-the-art learning pods”.

It aimed to recruit eight students this year – but only two signed up. Both providers said some rooms were now temporarily being used for other courses.

Rules on the grant funding require providers to deliver T Levels for two decades. The DfE can reclaim funding if courses cease, or if funding is used for other purposes.

Salesian executive headteacher James Kibble said: “We believe that T Levels offer a real opportunity, so decided that the best way for us to overcome the perceived barriers was to start to deliver them.”

While he said it was a “positive addition” to student options, he admitted students “feel they know very little” about them.

On the sole pupil being recruited, he added: “This is not viable for any more than a short period of time, but the potential longer-term benefits of offering this qualification make this is a strategic investment.”

Adam Reynolds, computer science head and T Levels lead at Painsley, said it was doing “everything we can” to promote courses. But he added: “There needs to be a massive drive from government to raise awareness.”

Government has already run an initial £3 million marketing campaign. Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi has more recently vowed to make T Levels “as famous as A-levels” by the next election.

But Reynolds warned many pupils do not want to put “all their eggs in one basket”. T Levels are the equivalent of three A-levels, in one subject.

Not being able to study science or maths alongside digital courses was a “nightmare” as students “instantly get switched off”, Reynolds added. Leaving one-third of each course for other subjects would make them “more appealing”.

Kibble agreed most students wanted to study T Levels alongside other qualifications. “It’s a pity it has to be all or nothing.”

Ofqual chief regulator Jo Saxton also said last month she would prefer T Levels to be slimmed down so students can study another qualification alongside it.

Tom Richmond, a former Department for Education special adviser turned director of think-tank EDSK, said tiny cohort sizes in some institutions were “almost an inevitability”.

“It was perfectly sensible for the DfE to push capital investment towards T Level providers, given the focus on meeting employer needs, but it was always going to be difficult to convince learners and parents to take a chance on an untried and untested qualification,” he told FE Week.

A DfE spokesperson promised to work with providers that have not hit their student target numbers to “ensure successful long-term success” of T Levels.

Nine in ten T Level providers missed their recruitment targets this year, with digital and the new health and science routes proving most difficult to sell to students.

An FE Week investigation has also found colleges deferring their delivery due to a complete lack of student appetite and employers refusing to offer 315-hour industry placements.

In some cases, students opted for alternative BTECs during their T Level enrolment due to the placements shortage and because the applied general qualifications provide a “broader based experience”.

In one school, just one T Level student was enrolled (click here for full story).

The findings come as ministers continue to water down T Level policy. In recent months they have ruled that a chunk of the mandatory industry placement can be carried out remotely for the first two waves, offered employers £1,000 cash incentives to take on students, and removed the English and maths exit requirement for the qualifications.

It also comes in the midst of the government’s level 3 reforms, which controversially involve defunding many of the alternative BTECs that overlap with T Levels.

Experts say FE Week’s new findings were “entirely predictable” but warn that any further relaxing of policy to combat recruitment problems would risk weakening the government’s own justification for T Level reform.

The Department for Education insisted that T Levels are “off to a great start” in the face of the challenges presented by Covid-19 and continued to blame the pandemic for the placements shortage.

‘Compulsory placements could end up causing significant issues’

The first ever T Levels – described by ministers as the “gold standard” in technical education, to sit alongside their academic equivalent A-levels – launched in 2020 in three sectors: construction, digital and education and childcare. Around 1,300 students enrolled on them last year.

Health and science was added as an option in 2021.

In the first analysis of wave two recruitment, FE Week asked each of the 105 colleges, providers and schools listed to teach the qualifications in 2021/22 how many learners they managed to recruit against their targets.

Sixty-six were able to provide breakdowns. Between them, they set an overall target of recruiting 5,360 students but enrolled 3,783 (70 per cent).

The government claws back funding from providers if they fail to hit 40 per cent of their total target numbers.

Of the 66 that provided figures to FE Week, nine providers were below the 40 per cent threshold.

Just seven hit or exceeded their enrolment target. A total of 59 failed to hit their recruitment goals.

Colleges, providers and schools found construction the easiest subject to hit their targets – 862 enrolled against an aim of 1,031 (84 per cent). Education and childcare attracted 1,049 learners against a target of 1,289 (81 per cent).

Digital again proved tough to sell to students – 875 students were recruited compared to the 1,343 planned (65 per cent).

But it was health and science where providers struggled most, as 1,058 students were taken on against a target on 1,817 (58 per cent).

Three colleges that planned to deliver this new route had no students sign up to them.

One of them, Harlow College, said the biggest barrier was the mandatory industry placement. Science laboratories, for example, are “very difficult” to secure due to the age of the learners and the skill level required to be “safe and effective” within this environment, according to assistant principal Becky Jones.

NCFE, the awarding body that designed the health and science route, said the new qualification “needs to be given time to properly embed into post-16 education”.

But Tom Richmond, a former DfE special adviser and now director of think-tank EDSK, pointed out that the DfE’s own research in 2018 showed that securing T Level work placements for unqualified students would be “inappropriate or legally impossible in some safety-critical sectors”.

The same research also found that many employers had already reached “saturation point” in terms of having enough time for supervising and overseeing young learners.

FE Week’s new findings “demonstrate why the laudable ambition of compulsory placements could end up causing significant issues for the T Level programme,” Richmond said.

Multiple colleges told FE Week that student confidence in taking T Levels was significantly reduced where universities are not listing them on their websites as valid entry qualifications.

Leaders also said the specialist nature of the T Levels means that it is “progression limiting” for students.

There will be 11 T Level routes when they are fully rolled out in 2023, of which there are 23 technical qualifications to choose from.

Priestley College, in Warrington, which is delivering the education and childcare, digital and health and science T Levels, missed its overall enrolment target by 69 per cent. A spokesperson said the occupational specialisms in T Levels are “too narrow for students who want to keep their options open about their future career”.

Heart of Worcestershire College had planned to deliver the education and childcare and digital routes this year but deferred until 2022 due to a lack of demand. A “small number” of late applicants did come in but they decided to move to an alternative BTEC pathway instead.

A spokesperson for the college said, given the pandemic, it was “understandable as to why so many students were reticent on choosing such specific pathways, as those covered by T Levels, and therefore chose to progress via other vocational and advanced level options”.  

Jones added that other existing vocational and technical qualifications offer a “broader-based experience that allows students to decide over two years the more specialist direction they wish to take either through employment, university or an apprenticeship”.

Numerous colleges told FE Week that the pandemic limited access to school-leavers who are “still some way off having a good understanding” of the qualifications despite a £3 million national marketing campaign launched by the government in 2019.

A spokesperson from City College Norwich, which managed to hit 62 per cent of its planned enrolments across the four available routes, agreed that more needed to be done to raise the understanding of T Levels.

“We believe there is still more work to do with schools, young people, and their parents and carers, to help them understand T Levels, in particular that the occupational specialisms do not ‘limit’ future progression opportunities for apprenticeships, work or higher level study.”

‘A world-class technical education approach requires sticking rather than chopping and changing’

An FE Week investigation last year found that digital was the most difficult T Level route to sell to students. 

Our analysis of the second wave shows there were six colleges that planned to deliver digital in 2021 but failed to recruit any students.

Leaders said there was an issue with young people’s understanding of the careers available through a digital T Level, as well as a shortage of employers stepping up to offer industry placements.

The DfE claimed the majority of wave one and two students have secured their industry placements, but admitted there have been “some challenges” in securing them “as a result of Covid-19”.

“That is why we have introduced further temporary policy flexibilities,” a spokesperson said.

But Richmond warned the more the DfE relaxes the rules around the nature and form of work placements, the more they “weaken the justification for their own T Level reforms”.

Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi told FE Week last month he had seen evidence that there would be sufficient numbers of employers and placements available when T Levels are at full scale. The DfE has so far refused to share the evidence.

Jon Yates, who was a special adviser to then-education secretary Damian Hinds when he was developing T Level policy, said it was “surprising and very welcome” that ministers and colleges had stuck to the T Levels rollout in the face of the pandemic.

“Our young people deserve a world-class technical education approach and that requires sticking rather than chopping and changing,” he added.

The DfE said it will publish “high-level numbers” of T Level enrolments for all providers in their T Level action plan “very shortly”.

The government’s flagship skills bootcamps failed to deliver improved employment outcomes to nearly half if its first cohort of learners, new figures reveal.

Outcome measures for the first wave of bootcamps released by the Department for Education today also show that at least one in five participants dropped out during the 16 week programme.

Of those that did complete, 54 per cent achieved a new or better job.

Outcomes have been reported by providers and cover the period September 2020 to March 2021.

As with a previous evaluation of the bootcamp programme, these new figures are also problematic. The Department admits that some providers “only submitted data for participants that completed a bootcamp”.

It’s therefore likely that the total number of participants on skills bootcamps is higher than the 2,800 reported, while the reported number of those that completed, 2,210 appears to be more reliable.

Skills bootcamps were announced in September 2020 and are a key pillar of the government’s national skills fund. They are also set to benefit from the Chancellor’s spending review boost to skills spending.

Today’s figures cover wave one of the bootcamps which were delivered by 48 providers, made of independent training providers, further education colleges, local enterprise partnerships, combined authorities and universities. 

Of the 2,210 participants that completed their bootcamp, 520 progressed to a new job, 410 gained increased responsibility in their current job, 170 gained new self-employment opportunities and 100 gained a new role with their existing employer.

Today’s figures did not break down bootcamp participation and outcomes by sector or provider. The programmes run for up to 16 weeks in priority sectors; construction, digital, green skills, rail and engineering and manufacturing. 

Simon Ashworth, director of policy at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said bootcamps “have fantastic potential” and attributed low employment outcomes to the way the data has been recorded.

“It’s important to recognise that this is still a new programme”, Ashworth told FE Week adding that “at this early stage there are positives, with just under 80 per cent of participants completing the programme”.

“Although job outcomes are lower than expected, it is likely that some positive outcomes have been missed due to the way data has been recorded. More accurate performance measures must be put in place before we cast judgement on the scheme’s overall merit.”

The DfE told FE Week they are working with providers on improving data returns, including linking payments to bootcamp providers more closely with outcomes.

Skills bootcamps are not subject to Ofsted inspections, however it was announced in September that inspectors will conduct a “thematic survey” on the quality of education and curriculum of skills bootcamps. 

The DfE said at the time that they could fall within scope for full inspections “if and when” they become a regular programme with regular funding.

The DfE has been approached for comment.

A party held for “two dozen” staff at the Department for Education during lockdown last December is to be investigated by the cabinet secretary.

Boris Johnson announced at prime minister’s questions today that Simon Case would investigate whether lockdown rules were broken at a separate event in Downing Street on December 18.

And this afternoon Susan Acland-Hood, permanent secretary of the DfE, told MPs on the Public Accounts Committee the earlier gathering at her department on December 10 would be considered during the investigation.

She also told MPs she had attended the party, which was held in the DfE’s canteen.

Williamson said a “few words” at the event, attended by around “two dozen” staff “principally” from ministers’ private offices.

“I’ve spoken to the cabinet secretary and the gathering that was held will be part of his consideration as part of the investigation that was announced at PMQs,” she said.

She confirmed that if any staff were found to have broken rules, they would face disciplinary action. This would include Acland-Hood herself, she said.

Details of the DfE party were first revealed today by the Daily Mirror.

Acland-Hood repeated a statement issued by the DfE, which confirmed that a “gathering of colleagues who were already present at the office – and who had worked together throughout the pandemic” had taken place.

The gathering “was used to thank those staff for their efforts during the pandemic”, the DfE said.

Drinks and snacks were “brought by those attending and no outside guests or supporting staff were invited or present”.

“While this was work-related, looking back we accept it would have been better not to have gathered in this way at that particular time.”

Acland-Hood also revealed today that the event had been instigated by former education secretary Gavin Williamson, who had “wanted to thank staff together for the work that they had done”.