GSAP: FE’s secret weapon for net zero training

If the UK hits its net-zero target by 2050, it could be in part thanks to a little-known college-led network, the Green Skills Advisory Panel, set up to help solve the green skills shortage.

What began three years ago as a project led by Exeter College to bring together representatives from construction firms, colleges, training providers and government agencies for the south west, has morphed into a network extending as far as east Africa. 

GSAP’s “changemakers” join forces at conferences and online in an attempt to decipher ever-changing net-zero policies and make the most of funding pots to get much-needed retrofitters, heat pump and solar panel installers trained up.

Eighteen UK regions now have their own GSAPs planned, with more in Malawi and Nepal. Discussions are taking place about launching one in Morocco.

Risky net ventures

This is mainly thanks to the work of GSAP’s chair, Exeter College executive director of partnerships and apprenticeships Mike Blakeley. He has lofty ambitions for GSAP to become “the leading voice of green skills in the country”, and adds: “I’d be massively proud because this country desperately needs it.”

Blakeley grew up in Torbay, where an imposing sea wall acts as a constant reminder of the grim consequences of climate change.

His passion for net zero is not puritanical, however. He still eats meat and travels regularly by plane. He once held a job with a different ‘net’ – crabbing on a deep sea fishing boat – and knows “what it’s like to be out there in a force eight gale with 20 foot waves crashing over”.

This speaks volumes about Blakeley’s appetite for risk, which is perhaps partly why he is so attracted to the notoriously high-stakes green skills agenda. 

Part of the problem with ramping up green skills provision is FE is risk averse, he says.

While colleges in Sheffield, West London and South Wales have also boldly seized the mantle, some others “just don’t see it as their job to do this stuff”.

Electric dreams

But Exeter has “done the hard yards”. Blakeley says: “We know what it takes to set up a really good air-source heat pump or solar training centre, so people can learn from us.”

Exeter College’s proposed merger with Petroc College in north Devon is “exciting” for Blakeley as it would unlock opportunities to train workers for offshore wind farms being developed off the north Devon coast, part of a wider ‘Celtic flow’ scheme aimed at powering up millions of homes.

He has already written to one of the world’s largest offshore wind developers, asking for “insight” into its skills development plan. Blakeley believes the boats used to service the wind farms will be hydrogen-powered, so his team have also now begun work with partners to better understand that technology too. 

“I feel privileged that I can look into some of these brilliant things,” he says.

Blakeley and I meet at the Voco Zeal hotel at Exeter’s Science Park, which recently opened becoming the first net-zero hotel in western Europe, and is almost entirely clad with vertical solar panels. Exeter College will soon be applying the technology at its own solar training centre.

Blakeley believes cladding all industrial buildings with solar roof and side panels would put the UK “ahead of the game” in hitting net zero and would remove the need for solar farms. 

Not properly skilling up tradespeople for retrofitting can have dire consequences. Homes across the country have been rendered unsellable after being improperly insulated with spray foam. Blakeley puts such “bad news stories” down to the “underdevelopment of green skills,” which has led to those tasks being undertaken by “jobbing builders who don’t actually know what they’re doing, so it ends up as a disaster”.

Blakeley was inspired to take his GSAP movement national so regions could learn from other people’s mistakes in setting up green skills initiatives, as “the effort being put in to solve individual problems was immense”.

 “With no national framework or network that sets out what we’ve actually got to do, you just get these initiatives whizzing like cheap fireworks – someone’s lit a match, and we’ve gone ‘bang’,” he says.

Beyond token gestures

Many building projects in the south west now have “some net-zero elements” such as a few solar panels, as “the token gestures are easy”. “We’re finding it harder to gain traction with the harder things,” Blakeley explains.

Labour shortages meant a retrofitting project in Exeter, intended to take six months, hadn’t been completed two years later, and no work can currently take place on a site in Plymouth designated for 50 affordable homes. 

“There’s a tiny pool of labour that jumps between whoever wins the contract, but it’s never enough to deliver whole project areas. It’s an impossible challenge unless everyone works together.”

Exeter College has taken the initiative by launching a new construction innovation centre in an old industrial unit on the edge of town. It is also an overspill for its roofing skills provision, which has expanded by 300 learners since last year. 

Part of the problem is that although skills plans are sometimes laid out in planning applications, because local authorities do not hold construction firms to account for them, many never happen. 

Instead, Blakeley would like to see councils, contractors and training providers or colleges drawing up what he calls “skills plans plus” for large construction projects and green initiatives, to “create the formula for jobs”.

GSAP in action

Today I am attending one of the three networking conferences that his South West GSAP holds each year. 

“This isn’t a talking shop – it’s about action,” GSAP’s chair, local consultant AJ Eaton, tells an audience of 80 people, mainly from the building trade, colleges and training providers.

“By bringing our FE providers on that journey with us we can make a massive difference,” he says.

The head of the south west’s net-zero hub, David Lewis, provides the lowdown on the latest government net-zero policy announcements. 

Tidal energy is back in vogue. 

Exeter College’s new retrofitting expert Paloma Hermoso laments how EPC (energy performance certificate) requirements are “no longer fit for purpose”, and there is an air of disgruntlement over how retrofit projects are subject to 20 per cent VAT but demolition is VAT free. 

More positively, she talks through the new level 5 course in retrofitting the college is about to launch nationally. 

It is one of 13 qualifications Exeter College has developed, including its own suite of insulation short courses in partnership with NOCN. 

Courses include the UK’s first PAS accredited insulation courses (for retrofitting dwellings), allowing existing installers to upskill through a three-day practical course. 

Eaton

Stop-start funding

Blakeley is hoping the college will be successful in its bid for £25,000 under the warmer homes scheme to offer a retrofitting course at a 40 per cent discounted rate. But that is still up in the air and the course starts in September.

It will be the sixth warmer homes-type scheme to have been rolled out nationally in the last five years, with its predecessors mired in red tape and supply chain bottlenecks. 

Significant portions of pledged funding for retrofitting remain unallocated and are returned to the Treasury. Some £2.2 billion of the £6.6 billion pledged for building energy efficiency and heat decarbonization by 2025 remains unallocated, an E3G report found, including £1.5 billion specifically for the home upgrade grant. 

This time around, an agency is understood to be planning to ensure the warmer homes scheme delivers its objectives, but that has yet to be formally announced.

“With no stabilised funding streams, it’s really difficult to plan and you can see the consumer confusion with the stop-start nature of warmer homes grants,” says Blakeley.

The quiet scrapping of the government’s public sector decarbonisation scheme which Exeter is a current recipient of, “seems counterintuitive” to Blakeley. “These confused, choppy waters that we’re in… means certain policies seem to be working against themselves”.

The college had been able to nurture “good business relationships” with the local tradespeople tasked with retrofitting its buildings under the scheme. “If they’re doing work for us, we generally strong-arm them into doing something else for us training wise,” he admits.

Devon and Torbay are in the early stages of forming a county authority without a mayor, but the lion’s share of net-zero funding is currently being channelled into mayoral combined authorities which, with a mayor, have a “very simple decision-making matrix”. “The drift to the red wall is massive, and everyone else gets left behind.”

Full tilt forward

It is hard to imagine Blakeley ever being left behind though. “Everything is absolutely full tilt forward” for him, and he admits that his “biggest mistake” with GSAP is “not allowing enough time to do everything”.

His own boundless energy also comes in handy as a dad of 17-year-old triplets. On a college staff dinner last week, he lost no time in pulling aside the restaurant manager to discuss apprenticeship opportunities, much to the amusement of his principal John Laramy. 

Laramy and Blakeley

Scaling up nationally

When Blakeley talks to those in the construction trade about their skills shortages, he does so with the advantage of having had first-hand experience of their sector. He spent four years in ground work having left grammar school feeling disillusioned with academic learning. 

“Had I been stood here 38 years ago, you would have found me knee deep in a trench, putting 50 meters of concrete in… my DNA is construction.”

He also worked for a pupil referral unit, an education charity, a land-based college and a training provider, and was chair of Devon & Cornwall Training Provider Network. His insight into different sectors came in handy when he set up GSAP in January 2022, initially as a “back of a fag packet-type activity”.

In November 2024, GSAP launched a national board with a focus on targeting key ministers and officials across Whitehall. 

He admits other national sector bodies “probably” eye GSAP as competition with their offers. But the Department for Education has been “receptive”, and GSAP’s honorary chair, former skills minister Robert Halfon, “pushes us hard and says one voice has far greater impact”. 

He feels fortunate he has “freedoms and flexibilities” to make things happen in the south west, including a sponsor (NOCN) to pay for its event catering. 

GSAP does not charge for these events or for its training webinars, but the work “definitely pays for itself” by giving Blakeley’s team close access to “the biggest stakeholders in this game” to develop business with.

He sees the new industrial strategy and the clean energy workforce strategy as the “easy bit”, having seen many similar strategies go “by the by” over the years. 

“It’s the implementation that’s the challenge. If this green skills agenda is as complicated and challenging as we know it is, working together will keep us inspired and make sure that we deliver an absolutely great product.”

Ofsted reveals how it will inspect providers’ AI use

Ofsted will not assess FE providers’ use of AI “as a stand-alone part” of inspections – but the tech’s impact on outcomes for learners will be looked at. 

Guidance published by the watchdog this morning reveals how it will evaluate FE providers’ use of such tools during inspections.

The inspectorate has also released new research into so-called AI “early adopter” school and FE colleges – which revealed that some are developing their own chatbots. 

Ofsted chief Sir Martyn Oliver said: “As the use of AI in education increases, we need to better understand how schools and colleges are using this technology to take advantage of its potential, as well as manage the risks it poses for pupils, learners and staff.”

AI not standalone part of Ofsted checks

The new guidance states inspectors will not look at providers’ use of the technology “as a stand-alone part” of their assessments and won’t “directly evaluate” its use.

Part of the reason for this is Ofsted does not “not have the evidence we would need to define good use of AI for the purposes of inspection or regulation”. 

But Oliver stressed the watchdog “can consider the impact a provider’s use has on the outcomes and experiences of children and learners”.

Any evaluation “of the use of AI will ask whether the provider has made sensible decisions”. 

As part of this, inspectors could ask how leaders ensure any use “supports the best interests of children and learners”. 

Assessing AI’s risks

When any AI is used by learners at an FE provider, inspectors will assess if this is being done in their “best interests”. 

If learners are deemed to be using it “inappropriately, inspectors may evaluate how the provider has responded and addressed the impact of this”. 

The guidance says that while the risks associated with the tech “will not be evaluated separately in our inspections, they will be addressed when they have implications for areas that are already considered”. 

This can include data protection, safeguarding and bias and discrimination. 

“Any evaluation that Ofsted makes is about the provider’s decision-making, what they have considered, and the impacts on children and learners, not about the tool itself,” the guidance says.

“Inspectors only need to consider AI when it is relevant to something specific in their evaluations.”

‘Early adopter’ research

The guidance was informed by research, also released this morning, into how 21 “early adopter” schools, colleges and MATs are integrating AI into teaching, learning and admin.

Research suggested that FE colleges were “more likely” to permit learners to use AI unsupervised due to their age.

In total, four senior college staff spoke to researchers earlier this year – they had all started their “AI journey” in 2022 and 2023 

Most settings had an “AI champion” charged with getting staff to “embrace” the tech. They typically created a “buzz” and “played a vital role in demystifying” it to address “anxieties and build confidence”. 

In larger settings champions would bring “together their data management teams, IT systems managers and curriculum leads” as AI “requires skills and knowledge across more than one department”.

One champion, an FE college’s director of digital transformation, said a demonstration session was a “turning point” that convinced staff of ChatGPT’s significance in terms of both teacher workload and learning.

He told Ofsted: ““One of the first things the principal said was, ‘This is an employability skill I need students to have.’”

A critical lesson for staff was effective use of prompts. They added: “If you put junk in, you’ll get junk out.”

AI’s use was usually divided between those wanting to cut workload and those who wanted it to “directly” support learning. But the researchers found this “often shifted with time”. 

A few of the leaders were already developing and testing “their own AI chatbot, while others were in the process of doing so”. 

Some also highlighted how tools “allowed teachers to personalise and adapt resources, activities and teaching for different groups of pupils”, including young carers and refugees. 

A ‘wild west’

However, most were “at the early stages of developing a longer-term strategy” on how to integrate AI into their curriculums as they had not yet considered how to combine it with pedagogy. 

One of the reasons for this is there are “not many… tools tailored to individual school or college contexts”. Some bosses also had not thought “strategically about what success with AI looked like or how to evaluate its impact”.

One college deputy principal said it was difficult to envision a wider strategy as they were also learning “day by day”.

A principal said: “It’s the Wild West and all we are at the minute is the sheriff. What comes in and what goes out of the town is what we’re managing to deal with at the minute.”

Safe use

Leaders were said to be “clear about the risks of AI around bias, personal data, misinformation and safety”. 

Some had a separate AI policy, while others added it to “relevant existing policies including those for safeguarding, data protection, staff conduct, and teaching and learning”. 

But “the pace of change meant that many leaders were updating their AI policies as often as monthly”. 

Earlier this month, the government published toolkits and guidance on how colleges should plan to use AI.

Finding Governors for Schools… and now FE too

Governors for Schools has been handed a two-year £879,000 contract to deliver FE’s governor recruitment service.

The Department for Education contract win marks a return by the charity to the delivery of free FE recruitment services after it lost a similar contract in 2016 under its old name of School Governors’ One-Stop Shop.

The service helps colleges with difficult-to-fill governor vacancies and provides bespoke help for those in intervention.

Peridot Partners, an education recruitment firm, had delivered the scheme since 2020.

Governors for Schools already offers a free governor recruitment service to schools and academy trusts, and a paid “enhanced recruitment service” for all education providers, including colleges.

Its chief executive Hannah Stolton told FE Week it bid for the contract so the charity could deliver a free service for colleges.

“We have historically been able to offer it free to colleges, but we are having to charge now, so that was a key driver,” she said. “And we want to be able to offer it to all colleges, not just those that can afford to pay.

“We’re in the position now where we absolutely need to be sustainable going forward, like many charities so this contract came at the right time for us.”

Stolton said the organisation currently fills around 20 FE governor vacancies a year and has “quite a number” of vacancies on its books from colleges seeking the charity’s paid service.

The DfE service is only available to FE corporations, sixth-form college corporations and designated institutions that are referred to the scheme by DfE officials.

Colleges in intervention, receiving FE commissioner help, or that are located in remote areas will get a fast-track referral to the service.

Nominations for the referral can be made by the FE commissioner team, the DfE’s place-based teams, national leaders of further education or national leaders of governance.

Stolton said: “When we spoke to the DfE on Tuesday, they said, ‘some of these colleges are ones that we have put through the process before,’ so obviously, they are ones that have struggled historically.”

Governor recruitment targets

The contract, signed this week, will run for two years with the possibility of a one-year extension.

Stolton said the DfE has imposed a target of placing 20 per cent of roles with ethnic minority applicants and 50 per cent with women. Last year, Governors for Schools filled vacancies with 40 per cent of people from ethnic minorities.

“The service is designed to strengthen governance in colleges by supporting the recruitment of a diverse range of appropriately skilled and knowledgeable governors to key roles on governing boards,” the 2025 tender notice said.

The previous contract delivered by Peridot Partners was worth £458,000 and demanded the delivery of a minimum of 137 “well-matched, diverse and lasting” governor appointments across three financial years. 

A pre-procurement notice, published in December, revealed the DfE was aiming “subject to budget availability” for the renewed service to recruit 210 governors over the contract term.

The official tender specified that the target was a minimum of 140 “appropriately skilled and diverse” governors across two years, with a minimum of 60 appointments in the first year.

Should the contract be extended for one year, Governors for Schools will have to place a minimum of 210 governors spread across the three years.

Stolton said she was “confident” they would meet the minimum targets as it placed 2,000 governors across the education sector last year and it has a team with FE college recruitment experience.This service replaced an earlier version called the inspiring FE governance matching service, launched by the Education and Training Foundation in 2017. The DfE had funded the scheme until 2021-22.

Foundation apprenticeship success could ‘add risk’

The introduction of foundation apprenticeships could place this year’s record apprenticeships budget under strain, a senior official has suggested.

Speaking on day two of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) annual conference in London this week, the Department for Education’s apprenticeships director warned of potential “savings” and “trade offs” if the new scheme, launching this August, became too popular. 

Kate Ridley-Pepper highlighted that the DfE’s apprenticeships budget was “99 per cent fully spent” in recent years. 

She told delegates: “As we look to the future, it is worth reflecting on the fiscal context. In 2023-24, 99 per cent of our £2.5 billion apprenticeship budget was spent, and that picture is likely to be very similar for 2024-25.

“And while thankfully not all large employers utilise all of their levy funds, which enables us to give 30 per cent of our budget and invest that in SMEs, the position is not sustainable in the long run”.

Ridley-Pepper cited rising demand for higher-level apprenticeships, which attract higher levels of funding than lower-level programmes, as the reason for “tough decisions” about how to fund the government’s new growth and skills offers, including new short courses in specific subjects from April.

Foundation apprenticeships, new eight-month programmes designed for young people, come online this August. Skills minister Jacqui Smith told MPs this week she hopes for 30,000 young foundation apprentices. 

Other pressures on the budget could come from reduced duration apprenticeships and the removal of English and maths rules earlier this year, which the government believes could generate 10,000 new starts. 

Then there is the widely anticipated rush to start level 7 apprenticeships before January when funding is removed for new entrants aged 22 and over. 

Asked by AELP chief executive Ben Rowland about how one could convince the Treasury that spending on “loads of” youth foundation apprenticeships could help reduce rising NEET levels, Ridley-Pepper said she needed “compelling cost-benefit arguments”.

She added: “As I say, we’ve spent 99 per cent of our budget in the last couple of years. So there is a slight, not risk exactly, but if [foundation apprenticeships] were popular, that might cause pressures that mean we have to look elsewhere to make other savings and trade offs, unless we can provide that case for additional funding.

“But there isn’t a lot of additional funding in the system”.

The DfE’s apprenticeship budget has risen to £3.075 billion this year.

Assessment reforms ‘just a correction’, says Bauckham

Apprentices should expect simpler and “streamlined” assessments under Ofqual’s proposed reforms, the chief regulator has said. 

Sir Ian Bauckham gave a keynote address at AELP’s annual conference on Monday, days after the assessment watchdog published consultation proposals to scrap end point assessment requirements and allow providers to do some assessments in-house. 

He claimed his reforms were “about adjusting and improving the system, making it more streamlined” and “increasing simplicity”.

End point assessments have brought “lots of benefits in terms of reliability, trustworthiness, rigor and esteem,” Bauckham said. 

Ofqual publishes ‘flexible’ apprenticeship assessment rules

“But it’s also brought some problems, and those problems include complexity, levels of duplication, repetition and in some cases, too much burden and delays on getting assessments.

“All of that has accumulated to cause some levels of frustration among both apprentices and training providers.”

The regulator was keen to stress that reforms didn’t necessarily mean wholesale upheaval for apprentices, particularly on programmes where assessment is already working well.

Charlotte Bosworth, group chief executive of Lifetime Training and until recently managing director of assessment organisation Innovate Awarding, told the conference: “If the learner experience is where it needs to be, if the quality is right, if you believe the time, cost and effort that is being spent and if the assessment is absolutely right, don’t change it”.

Bauckham replied: “What these reforms are intended to do is put in a correction that brings things back to the middle and address some of those concerns, but absolutely not throwing the baby out with the bath water”. 

Ofqual’s consultation closes August 27, 2025.

It follows the government’s revised assessment principles for apprenticeships announced earlier this year. 

One of those new principles was allowing training providers to do some of the assessment of their apprentices themselves. Currently, all assessments must be done by awarding organisations (AOs) and must take place at the end of the apprenticeship programme. New assessments will be able to take place during, rather than at the end, of an apprenticeship.

The current system of end point assessments has come under criticism in recent years. Training providers have complained about high costs and bureaucracy. And crippling assessor shortages in some sectors have left apprentices waiting months longer than planned to complete their apprenticeship, leading to dropouts and low achievement rate scores for training providers.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 502

Sharon Ryan

Assistant Principal – Students, Bradford College

Start date: June 2025

Previous job: Head of Disability Services, Bradford College

Interesting fact: Sharon has worked in FE for over 20 years and has taken part in a lot of interesting events, but her claim to fame is that she once shared a stage with both the Dalai Lama and Clare Balding

Mark Burrows

Group Principal – Adult and Higher Education, Capital City College Group

Start date: August 2025

Previous Job: Deputy Chief Executive, Southport Education Group

Mark enjoys pushing his limits through endurance challenges. Last year, he successfully completed five triathlons over the course of just one weekend.

Oliver: Postponing Ofsted inspections too risky

Ofsted chief inspector has criticised calls to postpone the launch of new-style inspections, saying any delay would be “dangerous” and “seriously worrying”.

From November, inspections across early years, schools and further education will follow Ofsted’s new reformed inspection model; replacing inspection reports with report cards and a new five-point scale of grades.

But it was revealed this month that confirmed plans for reformed inspections won’t be released until September, leaving colleges and training providers just weeks to prepare for November inspections. This is because Ofsted needed more time to analyse consultation responses.

Full inspections will not take place in September or October so inspectors can be trained. Monitoring visits and new provider monitoring visits can still go ahead.

The pace of Ofsted’s inspection reforms, and the short timescale between announcing details in September and launching inspections in November, has angered unions. 

Two leaders’ unions, the Association of Schools and College Leaders (ASCL) and the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), are considering asking their members to quit as Ofsted inspectors.

On Monday, the leaders of four education unions wrote to education secretary Bridget Phillipson requesting a pause on the new inspection regime from November to the start of the 2026/27 academic year.

The letter, signed by the general secretaries of ASCL, NAHT, NEU and NASUWT, warned: “If the responses to the consultation exercise indicate that significant revisions to Ofsted’s original proposals are required, then it is not clear how they could be made in the very short period of time that would be available”.

That same day, Ofsted chief inspector Sir Martyn Oliver was a keynote speaker at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) annual conference. AELP itself suggested new-style inspections shouldn’t be introduced until January. 

Responding to a question from FE Week, Sir Martyn said his advice to the secretary of state on how to respond to the unions’ demands would be “private”, before then listing off reasons why delaying inspections was “seriously worrying”.

“I would worry, seriously worry, about not inspecting for the whole of September, October, November and December,” he said.

“Whilst everyone in here [training providers], 88 per cent of you get ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’, there are some 12 per cent where it’s not good enough for learners and apprentices. I would worry what’s happening in those sectors.”

He concluded: “The question is, do we want the pause of inspection, or do we want to continue on with the education inspection framework? But I think no inspection is a dangerous and bad thing”.

Elsewhere in his speech, the chief inspector praised the training sector for increasing apprenticeship achievement rates last year, and congratulated the 88 per cent of the 161 apprenticeship inspections this year that scored ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ results. 

Sir Martyn said he was “really sorry” to have delayed publishing his final inspection proposals. 

He added: “We fully intend to read every bit of feedback before we publish any improvements to what we proposed in February.

“Our consultation has provided us with a great deal of information to consider. We had over 6,500 responses from parents, providers and representative bodies. We’ve been testing inspection methodology and gathering feedback from providers who took part in well over 200 test visits.”

PAC: T Levels could remain ‘minority pursuit’ without serious campaign

T Levels could remain a “minority pursuit” if ministers fail to achieve a “critical mass” of student enrolments by clarifying career pathways and improving employer engagement, MPs have warned.

Parliament’s public accounts committee (PAC) recommended the Department for Education enter “campaign mode” and set out “publicly” how its flagship qualification fits with other qualifications and career routes.

In a report released today following its inquiry into T Levels, the PAC urged the DfE not to “lose focus” and detail a plan to improve employer awareness through local skills plans after finding only a third of businesses knew about the qualification.

The probe followed a National Audit Office report in March that highlighted doubts about the scalability of the technical education route for 16 to 19-year-olds after finding student number forecasts were missed in three-quarters of subjects.

PAC chair Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said: “T Levels have the potential to be a significant force for good in equipping young people with everything they need for their burgeoning careers.

“But without the wider awareness in industry and critical mass of student enrolments, T Levels may remain very much a minority pursuit, when they could become a natural and enriching step in many students’ lives”.

A DfE spokesperson said it would consider the PAC recommendations “carefully” and respond in due course.

Understanding college costs

The PAC made six recommendations, including speeding up updates to teaching content to “meet evolving skills gaps”, and gaining a better understanding of how awarding organisation fees and costs impact the T Level-related funding pressures faced by colleges.

The report concluded T Levels have a “risky” all-or-nothing assessment approach – a point raised by City & Guilds – where failing one part of the course leads to an overall fail, which deters enrolments.

The PAC also recommended the introduction of a workforce strategy to support colleges recruiting and retaining T Level teachers “especially given that T Levels themselves are addressing areas of skills shortages”.

Benefits of T Levels uncertain

Education civil servants told MPs in April that T Levels needed 60,000 to 70,000 students to enrol each year to be viable.

The NAO report said the DfE feared T Levels would be a major value-for-money risk if they failed to offer more benefits than other level 3 qualifications.

While the DfE’s best judgment is T Levels are 25 per cent more valuable than other level 3 qualifications and bring £23,000 more lifetime benefits to students who achieve them, the committee found this was “very uncertain”.

With permanent secretary Susan Acland-Hood’s estimation of 66,000 enrolments by 2029, the DfE expects T Levels to reap £8.10 of benefits for every £1 spent.

PAC members pointed out the DfE did not track two of the four benefits associated with T Levels: student earnings data and employer confidence.

It recommended the department refine its benefit tracking, update the estimated economic benefit for T level students, and define clear milestones to better understand whether progress, for example on pass rates, aligns with expectations.

“For these benefits to be realised, the department needs to ensure students enrol, complete and pass T Levels,” the report said.

Clifton-Brown added: “As well as providing true clarity on what T Levels can offer interested students and employers, government must allow far more flexibility for the qualification for it to be a tool that can swiftly meet needs where they arise.”

The PAC said of the DfE: “It expects pass rates to increase over time, as T Levels mature, but the proportion of students passing has fallen from 97 per cent in summer 2022 to 89 per cent in summer 2024. It does not have a target”.

One of the PAC’s main recommendations was the development of a “campaign approach” to raising student awareness of T Levels within six months.

It also recommended an examination of how curriculums could be tailored to appeal to a “diverse student group” including women, after it was revealed women were underrepresented on engineering T Level courses.

Industry placement pressure 

The report also raised the risk of colleges not being able to secure enough industry placements. T Level placements are a mandatory 315 hours, or 45 days, and must be completed over the two-year course.

While the PAC noted recent changes, such as allowing 20 per cent of placements to be done remotely, and this week’s boost to employer financial incentives, it said colleges would need to find “significantly more” placements if student numbers increased in line with forecasts.

We must build to deliver our city’s big reconstruction goals

Big changes are on the horizon for Bradford. After decades out of the limelight, our city is finally in the spotlight for all the right reasons. 
 
As we celebrate the rollout of Bradford 2025 City of Culture, other exciting initiatives grow closer. The Bradford City Village development promises to create 1,000 new houses, and the just-announced Southern Gateway Scheme would double our city centre and make it one of the largest regeneration sites in the UK.  

With talk of £4.5 billion transport upgrades and substantial economic and social benefits, this period of renewal will transform Bradford. However, add in the government’s target of 1.5 million new homes by the end of this parliament, and we start to see a separation between national agendas and local skills gaps. 

Just before her Spring Statement, the chancellor announced £600 million worth of investment to train up to 60,000 more skilled construction workers. Given the scale of impending capital and infrastructure work in our city alone, this funding is both timely and urgently needed. 

Bradford College is well oversubscribed for construction courses. We receive four applications for every place available. The sector-wide difficulty of recruiting experienced lecturers (caused by FE’s inability to keep pace with construction salaries) is problematic, but for Bradford College, the real issue is capacity.  
 
As one of the region’s largest FE providers, which has invested over £40 million of funding into new facilities over the last three years, we are ready to scale our impact even further. With the right capital investment, our ambition is to create a flagship technical excellence college in construction.  
 
Our proposal will be a catalyst for regeneration and produce the skills desperately needed to deliver the government’s social mobility agenda, the transition to net zero, and infrastructure-led economic recovery. More than this, a new technical excellence college in construction will solve another Bradford challenge – large scale under-employment.Sadly, geography and poverty still dictate life chances and social mobility in the UK. This point was underscored by the recent Sutton Trust opportunities index report. Take Bradford South – the constituency of deputy speaker Judith Cummins MP.  This area is classified as one of the most disadvantaged in England but is also where we recruit about a third of our 16 to 18-year-old cohort. 
 
Despite extensive partnership work, 37 per cent of Bradford South’s young people are on free school meals, and only 14.1 per cent of those achieve English and maths passes. Around 12.6 per cent complete a degree by 22, and only 7.4 per cent have moved to a different region by age 28. 
 
Likewise, although NEET (not in education, employment or training) numbers here are lower than the national average, we also see a huge amount of economic inactivity as soon as young people reach 18. Bradford has the largest cohort of 18 to 24-year-olds claiming universal credit in the UK (11 per cent). These young people are massively behind national achievement rates: nearly -11 per cent at level 2 and -12 per cent at level 3.  

Construction is a West Yorkshire local skills improvement plan priority sector and acute skills shortage area. Establishing Bradford College as a technical excellence college would promote high-quality training pathways through to level 3 and support the jobs plan, green skills manifesto and regional growth championed by West Yorkshire Mayor Tracy Brabin. 

In the last year, Bradford College has opened £3.5 million vocational T Level facilities and a higher education STEM facility called Garden Mills after a £6.9 million refurbishment project. Our £17 million Junction Mills building under construction is also set to become the home of our modern automotive curricula in 2026 – specialising in electric and hybrid vehicles. 

Capital investment in a new technical excellence college in construction would bolster these world-leading facilities and anchor Bradford’s ‘knowledge quarter’, driving a more diverse, future-ready workforce. With our construction results already surpassing national averages by 9 per cent, we’re ready to act at pace and help shape the city’s next chapter.