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Principals’ dismay over £50m pay deal ‘own goal’

Ministers’ decision to stump up £50 million to help fund teacher pay in colleges this year has divided leaders – with some describing the deal as an “own goal” that benefits the Treasury.

A lack of new funding for adult education, rising costs and growing industrial unrest have dampened what on the surface is good news for principals.

The Department for Education told the sector last Friday that a chunk of the £300 million announced for FE at the autumn Budget would be released this April as a “one-off grant”.

The remaining £250 million will be made available through 16 to 19 funding rates for the 2025-26 academic year.

Ministers have been under pressure to get additional funding into FE to help fund teacher pay rises since last summer’s snub which saw £1.2 billion injected into schools and academised sixth form colleges to pay for a 5.5 per cent boost.

Standalone sixth form colleges and general FE colleges were given no such subsidy until last week’s deal, which put an end to a judicial review claim that the Sixth Form Colleges Association (SFCA) brought against the government.

Colleges have mostly welcomed the £50 million grant while they wait for their individual allocations as any additional money is good news after 14 years of austerity.

While recognising that colleges are still unlikely to match the school pay award, the SFCA said the move was a “significant step in the right direction” as it increased its pay recommendation from 2 per cent to 4.3 per cent.

But multiple general FE college principals told FE Week they would rather have the full £300 million be put into the 16 to 19 base rate in the next academic year as this would result in a higher consolidated uplift.

A saving for Treasury

One college CEO, who did not wish to be named, said: “We’re far better off getting the £300 million in our rates because it is then embedded in forever, so every year the DfE has got to fund that over and over and over again. A one-off grant is a saving for the Treasury because they only fund it once rather than on a recurrent basis.

“That’s a huge own goal for us.”

They added that the deal had not achieved its desired outcome because sixth form college unions are continuing with strike action.

Another principal agreed, saying that any colleges calling for one-off cash payments to fund pay are on “dodgy ground”.

“From my point of view as an accounting officer, I would not take any confidence in consolidating a pay rise on unconsolidated budgets, because the future affordability of that is so uncertain,” they said.

Association of Colleges chief executive David Hughes said it does look like the £50 million will be a one-off payment that doesn’t then get consolidated into the permanent 16 to 19 rate.

“I think that causes potential problems for colleges, where, if they use their share of the £50 million to improve the pay of staff in this academic year, it’s difficult to know how they pay for that next academic year because it’s not consolidated into the baseline,” he told FE Week.

But Hughes added that any money coming to colleges “is a good thing”, and this year’s grant will be “really helpful” for colleges that have gone to the wire to try and exceed the AoC recommended 2.5 per cent pay award.

Funding cliff edge?

The SFCA countered the argument that the full £300 million would be better off going into the base rate next year as this would also be shared between schools and academies that deliver to sixth formers and not just colleges.

Bill Watkin, the association’s chief executive, said: “One of the great benefits of the £50 million we have secured for 2024-25 is that it is targeted exclusively at 16 to 19 education in colleges.

“Those making the argument that the £50 million should have remained in 2025-26 are effectively making the case to give half of this money to schools and academies. That would be the impact of using it to increase the funding rate next year.”

He added: “In our view, it is far better to share the funding exclusively between 200 colleges than to share it between 2,800 school sixth forms and other institutions.

“It is important that colleges do not face a funding cliff edge next year, and we have been assured that this will be avoided. Next year, the additional funding will be sufficient, we believe, to address the growth in student numbers and to raise the funding rate further.”

The DfE said it will provide a further update on individual allocations by February 13.

Angela Joyce, chief executive of Capital City College, said the issue of pay in colleges is “becoming increasingly complex” in part because the representative bodies are “making different pay award recommendations alongside different associated actions” and because colleges were reclassified to the public sector in 2022.

“FE colleges have been independent corporations for decades meaning that pay decisions have been made locally; reclassification is taking us as corporations closer to central government but seemingly without a desire to challenge the big issues that we face,” she told FE Week.

Mike Hopkins, principal of South and City College Birmingham, pointed out that colleges are currently in a worse position than last year and not only because they were excluded from the schools £1.2 billion pay deal.

“We are also faced with an additional annual cost of £320,000 for the increase in the living wage” he said, adding that funding for £900,000 of national insurance cost rises for his college have still not been confirmed.

“In addition, as almost half our funding is provided through the West Midlands combined authority, any increase in funding made through the 16 to 19 DfE funding is in effect only 50 per cent for this college.”

Hello Future: How we in FE can shape our own AI revolution

AI is here, reshaping how we work, teach, lead, and learn. The real question isn’t whether AI belongs in FE, but whether we have the courage to shape it in a way that serves our sector, our students, our employers and our communities.

This week, the government laid out its blueprint to accelerate AI transformation of our economy. I’ve always been a digital optimist. Technology, when used well, has transformed the human condition—we live longer, healthier, better-connected lives because of it. But every industrial revolution has brought both progress and disruption. AI is no different. It will change how we work, how we teach, and how we prepare students for the future. That change is already happening—not next year, not in five years, but now.

And change, especially on this scale, scares people. We’ve seen it in every technological shift. The printing press, the steam engine, the internet—all of them triggered huge social and labour market shifts. But what separates success from failure in these moments is leadership. Those who lean in and shape the change can thrive, those who stand back, waiting for permission, could be left behind.

That’s why we wrote Hello Future – a book with 12 colleges contributing 22 chapters of AI expertise written by the sector, for the sector, and free to the sector.

AI is already reshaping Further Education, and if there’s one thing our sector does well, it’s coming together to tackle challenges head-on. We don’t sit back and wait for change to happen to us—we collaborate, we share, and we build on each other’s successes. That’s the spirit behind Hello Future.

The colleges contributed because they recognised that AI heralds a fundamental shift in how we teach, lead, and operate. Across the country, FE leaders and practitioners are already testing and embedding AI in lesson planning, assessment, governance, student support, and administration. Through this collective effort, we’re showing that AI isn’t about replacing the human elements of education—it’s about strengthening them.

AI is already making life easier for the FE leaders, teachers, and support staff who use it. The real challenge isn’t whether we should use it, it’s how we use it well. Across our sector, AI has the potential to save teachers hours each week by streamlining lesson planning, generating teaching and assessment materials, and reducing admin burdens. It can help leaders make smarter decisions with real-time data insights and can support students with more personalised learning than ever before.

But with opportunity comes responsibility. AI is not a magic fix, it’s a tool, and like any tool, it’s only as good as the hands that guide it. We must be clear-eyed about the risks: bias in AI models, ethical concerns around data privacy, and the very real danger of widening, rather than closing, the digital divide. If we get this wrong, we risk creating a system where AI benefits some but leaves others behind.

That’s why Hello Future is about the practicalities. How do we adopt AI in a way that’s ethical, responsible, and genuinely improves education? How do we make sure AI supports teachers, rather than becoming another layer of complexity? And crucially, how do we ensure that no student, no college, and no educator is left out of the AI conversation?

The best way to understand the power of AI in FE is to see it in action. Just today, I used AI to pull together a clear, concise summary of the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025—something that would have taken hours manually. I worked with our HR team to develop a talent attraction brochure showcasing the Humber region, using AI to refine messaging and highlight the strengths that make it such a great place to work. And later, I was in a discussion with our digital innovation team, using AI-generated concepts to shape the design of a digital avatar that will become the face of our online learning offer.

‘Hello Future’ is full of examples like these, shared by colleges across the country who are already experimenting, adapting, and learning together, because the future won’t wait. It isn’t something to prepare for; it’s something to create.

In true Hullraiser style – Let’s get on with it!

Hello Future can be downloaded from https://www.hull-college.ac.uk/publications from 20th January.

Devolve apprenticeship funding to local leaders, says Wolf

Whitehall should devolve apprenticeship funding powers and ditch an “entirely inappropriate” Amazon-style online market to better attract small and medium-sized employers, an influential peer has said.

Baroness Alison Wolf also wants Labour to divide its proposed growth and skills levy into an apprenticeship levy and a separate workforce training levy, which all businesses, not just those with a £3 million or more payroll, pay into at different rates.

She proposed a series of reforms in a policy paper for the Social Market Foundation which labels the current apprenticeship system a “failure.”

The crossbench peer, who advised Number 10 on skills from 2020 to 2023, highlighted how the apprenticeship levy had diverted money to the training of older workers already in jobs.

Wolf also evidenced how the levy “strongly incentivises a move towards expensive high-level apprenticeships in non-skill-shortage areas, including many which are ‘apprenticeships’ in name only, delivering what is effectively professional development”.

Trends include how only 23 per cent of apprenticeships now go to people under 19, compared to 41 per cent in 2008, while the proportion of over-25s has ballooned from 24 per cent to 49 per cent.

Only 20 per cent of apprentices are in skill shortage areas, and small and medium enterprises now account for only 29 per cent of apprenticeship spending as they are “squeezed out by bureaucratic and funding barriers”.

Apprenticeships are currently organised as a national, centrally-run, web-based system – the digital apprenticeship service – with no direct involvement of local or mayoral authorities, or employer organisations, a model which Wolf describes as “that of a market, and not just any sort of market either: it is, rather, that of a country-wide online retailer like Amazon”.

She added this “rigid and often impenetrable national system” without local infrastructure is “completely inappropriate, especially for SMEs”.

Apprenticeship funds are also limited for the SME sector, dependent on predicted levy underspends and Treasury controls, and handed out on a short-term basis.

Root of the problem

At the root of apprenticeship “failure” is confusion about what apprenticeships should be, according to Wolf, who argued an apprenticeship “is about learning a new occupation” and not ongoing workplace training, but the UK system “conflates the two”.

There is a “real danger” the government will “simply continue the policy confusion” by relabelling the apprenticeship levy as a growth and skills levy if it continues with a single catch-all pot, she said.

Wolf also fears if the minimum 12-month duration rule is relaxed and shorter foundation apprenticeships are introduced it “could easily reinforce the temptation for employers to distort effective workplace training by squeezing it into an apprenticeship straitjacket”.

The fix: Devolution and two levies

The peer said rather than just renaming the overall levy and periodically changing how the money can be used, the government should split the levy into one for apprenticeships and one for workforce training.

This division would “greatly simplify future policymaking and the introduction of improvements specific to one or the other”.

To encourage businesses to hire young apprentices, ministers should impose a freeze on all level 7 apprenticeships, ring-fence a portion of the levy for 16 to 21 year olds, and reduce the proportion of training costs which the government covers for apprentices aged 25 or older to around 50 per cent.

She also supported calls to restrict apprenticeship funding to university graduates and to automatically entitle all 16 to 18 year old apprentices to training paid for in the same demand-driven way as classroom-based learners.

Wolf said apprenticeships should be locally administered to respond to skill needs and draw on local employer and educational networks – similar to successful systems in France, Switzerland and Germany.

She proposed funds for apprenticeship training should be distributed to mayoral combined authorities.

Labour appeared interested in devolving apprenticeships while in opposition but has shown no sign of implementing this idea since entering government.

Wolf said allocations could initially follow current expenditure but areas with buoyant demand would then be eligible for additional funding in future years, and those that fail to spend their allocation would face cuts.

An “alternative local authority grouping” would take on this funding role in non-MCA areas.

Levy reform is a ‘moral imperative’

Wolf also said apprenticeship training providers should be organised at devolved local level, so there is a “list of providers, and employers can access this locally”.

Meanwhile, there should be a national, government-led programme for occupations where numbers are small.

Wolf said this should lead into a single, integrated system, which brings all employers into the same payment system, rather than running separate ones for large businesses and SMEs.

The levy rate should, over time, be cut for big companies. All employers would then pay, bringing in many thousands of additional contributors, but on a sliding scale.

At the same time, the “complex business” of offsetting individual levy dues via apprentice training costs should be abolished.

“The levy should be just that – a general levy which underpins and pays for general access to free training for all apprentices,” Wolf said. “Fixing the levy is not just an economic imperative – it’s a moral one.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “Ensuring people have the skills they need for the future is crucial to this government’s number one mission to grow the economy.

“We’ll be asking more employers to step forward and fund level 7 apprenticeships themselves to ensure apprenticeships support those who need them most, while also meeting the needs of individuals, employers, and the economy.

“Further details will follow, informed by Skills England’s recommendations on priority skills needs.”

Ofsted system glitch wiped evidence during almost 200 inspections

A software glitch wiped Ofsted inspectors’ evidence during almost 200 inspections over a three year period, but only resulted in re-visits on four occasions, an internal investigation has revealed.

The report, shared with sister paper Schools Week by the watchdog, found that of 26,431 inspections conducted using the electronic evidence gathering (EEG) system between February 2021 and May 2024, there were 191 where inspectors reported evidence was lost.

Only four of these incidents resulted in inspectors returning to gather extra evidence, while the inspectorate said it was “confident that the judgment…is secure” in the other 187 cases. However, Ofsted has refused to name the providers affected.

The EEG system replaced pen and paper records in 2019. Ofsted said it enabled inspectors to better “review and synthesise their notes” and offered a “notable improvement” in security.

But Schools Week revealed last year that the system had been plagued with long-standing issues with evidence being wiped, prompting chief inspector Sir Martyn Oliver to commission a rapid review.

Inspectors described situations in which their screen “froze” and evidence “disappeared” in front of their eyes during visits. Others discovered evidence had been wiped upon returning to their hotel room.

In a submission to the Parliamentary education committee last year, a group of six former inspectors, including former academy trust leader Frank Norris, warned the EEG’s effectiveness had been “hindered by a lack of trialling and an unwillingness to accept its flaws and feedback”.

Evidence wiped for 191 inspections

Ofsted’s review found that “occasionally, a system or human error can result in some of an inspector’s notes not saving in EEG”.

Of the 191 instances where evidence was wiped, four resulted in inspectors returning to gather additional evidence.

Of the remaining 187, Ofsted found inspectors whose notes did not save “shared their findings verbally in the end-of-day team meetings”.

“The inspection team considered these findings, alongside the recorded notes, when making their final evaluation and reaching judgments. This is in line with standard inspection practice.”

Ofsted’s policy states that inspectors who find their evidence has been wiped should “recapture the salient points from memory as soon as possible after they detect that any notes are missing”.

In “most instances, only a small proportion of the evidence base is affected”, meaning the inspector can “recall and record their notes before the end of the inspection”.

This happens “without any disruption to the inspection process”.

“Where the amount of unsaved notes is more extensive, inspectors should record a summary of what is lost as soon as they are able. This review has found that the extent to which inspectors summarise their notes varies.”

Ofsted updates software

The review found that in 182 inspections, the inspectors affected followed Ofsted policy and summarised their missing notes.

In the five cases where this was not done, the “other notes recorded by the inspector or colleagues in the inspection team, and/or the summary drawing together the team’s findings, supported the judgment”.

“To conclude, we can confirm that in all 187 events, the full range of inspectors’ findings was considered when reaching final judgements. The written notes available in EEG are enough to support these judgments.”

Ofsted said it had reminded all inspectors of the need to summarise notes that do not save and updated guidance.

“EEG has many benefits for individual inspectors, inspection teams, providers and the wider organisation. The integrity of inspections is our priority. Policies are in place to make sure that this is not adversely affected if a technical or human error occurs with EEG.

“EEG is built on a Microsoft platform, which offers security, speed of development and future-proofing. However, there have been issues with the stability, reliability and useability of EEG over time. These have caused uncertainty and additional workload for inspectors.”

The watchdog said it was in the process of moving EEG to a new version of its Microsoft technology which “offers improved offline capability and is expected to perform well with intermittent and low connectivity”.

DfE refuses to include FE in teacher recruitment forecasts

Calls for the government to include post-16 providers in its teacher workforce planning have been rejected.

MPs on the House of Commons education select committee told the Department for Education earlier this year that further education was the “worst impacted” sector for teacher recruitment challenges.

It recommended the department’s teacher workforce model (TWM), which sets annual recruitment targets for schools based on pupil forecasts, should include post-16 training providers and FE colleges.

School pupil numbers are forecast to fall by 400,000 over the next four years while the number of 16- to 18-year-old learners is set to rise by 118,000.

The committee urged the DfE to include post-16 education in its modelling to ensure it has a more “holistic picture” of staffing needs “throughout all stages of education”.

But DfE rejected the committee’s recommendation in its response to the inquiry, published today.

While it “estimates demand for the further education workforce”, the department will not expand the TWM because of the “differing factors” that affect demand and supply of teachers in FE compared to schools.

These estimates are not published.

Among those differing factors are FE’s population of adult learners, the range of different provider types and the “part-time nature” of many teaching roles.

The school workforce, on the other hand, is more easily determined from the established school workforce census, the number of teachers qualifying through initial teacher training, and “a curriculum which is focused upon GCSE and A-level subjects.”

The TWM feeds into the department’s annual teacher training targets for school teachers, though the target has only been achieved once since 2015-16.

Low pay is widely understood to be the main cause of FE’s staffing crisis, with one in four staff leaving within their first year and almost half leaving after three years, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

DfE’s response to the committee inquiry offered no new solutions to FE’s staffing challenges.

It repeated its commitment for this year and next to the targeted retention incentives. These are payments of up to £6,000 for teachers of maths, physics, chemistry, computing, digital, construction, early years, engineering and manufacturing who are in their first five years.

However, teachers in independent training providers are not eligible for the incentive payments.

DfE also plugged its teacher mentoring programme, which comes to an end this March, and its teacher training bursaries for priority subjects, for which applications have now closed.

NEU rejects £50m pay deal with more college strikes

Sixth form college teachers will walk out for a further three days despite last week’s £50 million in-year pay deal.

Around 2,000 National Education Union (NEU) members in 32 standalone sixth form colleges will take the action on January 29, February 6 and 7.

These new strike days will add to seven strike days already taken by NEU members this academic year.

Another sixth form college teaching union – NASUWT – opened its own ballot for strike action on Monday.

DfE to release £50m in 2024/25 to help fund FE teacher pay

It comes days after ministers agreed to give sixth form colleges and general FE colleges a £50 million “one-off” grant to help fund teacher pay awards between April and July 2025.

The Sixth Form Colleges Association (SFCA), which dropped a judicial review claim against the government after this agreement was reached, increased its pay recommendation for 2024/25 from 2 per cent for the whole year to 3.5 per cent for September 2024 to March 2025, increasing to 5.5 per cent from April 2025 onwards.

But this is still short of the pay award being given to schools and academised sixth forms who are implementing a 5.5 per cent wage increase for the full 2024/25 academic year after the government gave them £1.2 billion in September.

Unions have rejected this offer for colleges on the basis that it would constitute a two-tier pay award.

Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, said: “Our sixth form teachers working in non-academised colleges started 2025 on below-freezing picket lines, as they showed their determination whatever the weather to reject a two-tier pay system.

“We should not have entered the new year with this glaringly obvious injustice still in place, and it is well past time that the government put the necessary funding in place to guarantee the same pay award for every college teacher.”

Kebede added: “We will never accept a situation in which college teachers in non-academised colleges are paid less than their academised peers for identical work. It is absurd and blatantly unfair to under-fund sixth form colleges in this way, risking lasting damage to longstanding collective bargaining arrangements.”

NEU announced in November it achieved a 97 per cent vote in favour of strike action in 32 of the 39 sixth form colleges balloted.

Bill Watkin, chief executive of the SFCA, said he was “extremely disappointed” that NEU has announced further strike action before formal pay talks have concluded.

He told FE Week: “Pay rates for sixth from college teachers (excluding annual incremental progression increases) have increased by 18 per cent since September 2022. We have made a pay offer that amounts to 4.3 per cent across the year and is well above the rate of inflation.

“We cannot make a 5.5 per cent pay offer for the whole year, because the government has not provided funding for the whole year. Students will pay the price for this through further disruption to their education.”

Watkin added: “The government could stop the strikes immediately by providing sixth form colleges with the same funding to support a pay increase that they have provided to schools and academies. We urge them to do so without delay.”

The 32 sixth form colleges taking strike action:

Aquinas College (Stockport)
Barton Peveril Sixth Form College (Eastleigh)
Bolton Sixth Form College
Brighton Hove and Sussex Sixth Form College
Cardinal Newman College (Preston)
Christ The King Sixth Form College (Lewisham)
Christ The King Sixth Form College Aquinas
Capital City College – Angel (Islington)
Greenhead College (Huddersfield)
Henley College
Hills Road Sixth Form College (Cambridge)
Holy Cross College (Bury)
Itchen College (Southampton)
Joseph Chamberlain Sixth Form College (Birmingham)
Leyton Sixth Form College
Loreto College (Manchester)
Luton Sixth Form College
Notre Dame Catholic Sixth Form College (Leeds)
Peter Symonds College (Winchester)
Richard Collyer, The College of (Horsham)
Scarborough Sixth Form College
Shrewsbury Colleges Group
Sir George Monoux College (Walthamstow)
St Brendan’s Sixth Form College (Bristol)
St Charles Catholic Sixth Form College (Kensington)
St Francis Xavier Sixth Form College (Clapham)
St John Rigby RC Sixth Form College (Wigan)
Varndean College (Brighton)
Wilberforce College (Hull)
Winstanley College (Wigan)
WQE and Regent College Group (Leicester)
Wyke Sixth Form College
Xaverian College (Manchester)

Fresh sixth form college strike ballot despite £50m pay deal

Another union has launched a ballot for strike action in sixth form colleges – claiming that principals have “no excuse and no justification” for not matching the school teacher pay award.

Around 1,800 members of NASUWT – The Teachers’ Union will vote from today until February 10 on whether to hit the picket line.

It follows seven days of strikes so far from more than 2,000 sixth form college members of the National Education Union in a row over pay.

NASUWT’s ballot comes just days after the government announced it would release £50 million in April as a “one-off grant” to help fund a wage increase in standalone sixth form colleges and general FE colleges.

The cash is being stumped up following a judicial review threat from the Sixth Form Colleges Association, which was made after the government decided to hand £1.2 billion to schools and academised sixth form colleges to fund a 5.5 per cent pay increase in 2024/25.

Standalone sixth form colleges and general FE colleges were given no such subsidy until last week’s deal.

The £50 million agreement enabled the SFCA to increase its pay recommendation for 2024/25 from 2 per cent for the whole year to 3.5 per cent for September 2024 to March 2025, increasing to 5.5 per cent from April 2025 onwards.

Patrick Roach, NASUWT general secretary, claimed that standalone sixth form college employers have spent the past months “advancing spurious arguments to justify not passing on an acceptable pay award to their teachers”.

He said: “The employers’ organisation, the Sixth Form College Association, cannot justify advancing a divisive proposal of paying teachers in non-academy colleges less than their colleagues teaching in 16 to 19 academies for doing exactly the same job.

“We will not accept such unfairness and inequity and nor will we accept a situation in which any teachers are denied the pay award they are entitled to.”

Roach said industrial action can be avoided in any college that commits to implementing a 5.5 per cent award backdated to September, adding that employers “have no excuse and no justification for putting their interests ahead of recognising and rewarding hard working and dedicated sixth form college teachers”.

SFCA chief executive Bill Watkin hit back.

“We are extremely disappointed that the NASUWT is now balloting for strike action in advance of completing the ongoing formal pay talks, and is blaming sixth form colleges and SFCA for not somehow conjuring even more money for teachers’ pay without getting any more money from the government,” he said.

“NASUWT should be working with us to secure additional funding from government, not further disrupting the education of sixth form students who have already experienced seven days of strike action this academic year.”

Watkin added that the new pay offer for standalone sixth form colleges, which is above the current rate of inflation (2.6 per cent), was made “despite funding for students in sixth form colleges being 26 per cent lower than spending for students in secondary schools”.

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To support institutions in implementing this modern, assessment-led approach, the qualification package includes full centre training, extensive support from External Quality Assurers (EQAs), and two live attempts per learner—along with two free practice assessments. These practice assessments are valuable tools, allowing learners to build familiarity and confidence with the digital platform well in advance of their formal assessment.

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T Level results to be published for individual colleges for first time

T Level results data for individual colleges will be made public this year for the first time – but an overall attainment measure for the new qualifications has been delayed.

Officials have been working on an overall results measure since before the technical courses were introduced in 2020 – with plans to roll it out in 2023/24 once the third cohort completed.

The previous government signalled that this measure would show a school or college’s “attainment in each of the technical qualification (TQ) elements of the T Level, separately; showing average point score per entry for each TQ element, also expressed as a grade”.

The Department for Education shared this data directly with schools and colleges as part of a data checking exercise in October 2024, and the measures were supposed to be published on the Compare School and College Performance (CSCP) service in early 2025.

But the department said today that “on review, and following stakeholder engagement”, it has decided to “pause the publication of the planned T Level attainment measure to allow time to develop an overall result measure”.

“This is to give a fairer representation of T Level attainment, given the changes made to how overall grades are derived since the original plans were announced,” an update to the DfE’s accountability policy for 16 to 18 education said.

The department will look to introduce a measure which captures overall T Level attainment “in future years”.

Until the new measure is available, the DfE has committed to publishing provider-level data on T Level attainment on ‘Explore Education Statistics’ “for transparency”.

This will be an extension to existing reporting on overall T Level results that show the proportion of students receiving distinction*, distinction, merit, pass, partial achievement and unclassified grades in each element of a T Level broken down by pathway.

The DfE said: “As with data published on T Level results day in August, this will show for all T Levels taken within a provider, the count, percentage and cumulative percentage of each grade, including a breakdown by pathway.

“This data will first be published in spring 2025. It will be shared securely with providers in advance, in January 2025, using View Your Education Data (VYED). The data will not include average point scores.”

It is unclear whether the provider-level data will include figures showing retention or whether providers will be held to account for particularly low results.

More than 350 schools, colleges and training providers currently deliver T Levels.