The government has consistently underspent on a scheme to boost awareness of T Levels despite chronically poor understanding of the qualifications, new figures show.
Officials have failed to recruit enough T Level ambassadors, tasked with publicising the courses and encouraging take-up from businesses and students, and have spent just three quarters of the allocated budget for the ambassador network.
In March, the National Audit Office (NAO) cast doubt on the scalability of T Levels after finding that student number forecasts were missed by three quarters. This resulted in an underspend of almost £700 million from the qualification’s launch in 2020 to 2024-25.
To achieve revised student enrolment numbers the Department for Education (DfE) “recognises it must do more to improve awareness”, a follow-up report from Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said this summer.
The DfE told MPs on the PAC that despite T Levels being in their fifth year of delivery, only half of school students and a third of employers knew about them.
The T Level ambassador network was set up in 2021 to “advance the recognition and adoption” of T Levels. New figures obtained by FE Week through a freedom of information request show that the DfE has failed to spend its budget for this network in each of the past four years.
Of the network’s £360,000 total budget since its inception, three quarters (£258,000) has been spent. While a £102,000 underspend is small compared with the full T Levels budget, it raises questions about the DfE’s efforts at raising awareness of the qualifications.
Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the figures were disappointing.
“Lack of public awareness of these qualifications is one of the key challenges that we face in embedding them in post-16 education and it is vital that awareness-raising initiatives are delivered,” he told FE Week.
Missed milestone
The ambassador network has recruited over 1,000 providers, students and employers as volunteers. But it has missed a key target for employer ambassadors to make up 65 per cent of the network by June 2024.
Documents released by the DfE show that as of February this year, just over one third (313) of the 861-strong network were business representatives.
Industry placements are a key part of T Levels but there are concerns that there are not enough employers willing to offer work placements when T Levels are fully rolled out. T Levels suffer from a high-dropout rate, in part because employer placements have not been secured.
A report by the Edge Foundation last year found that while industry placements were a major draw for T Levels students, the reality had been “polarising”, with some students blamed when work experience could not be obtained.
Imran Tahir, senior research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said: “I think that is one of the big issues with scaling up a qualification like T Levels … they need buy-in from local employers to actually make them possible.”
The government launched a T Level Employer Support Fund in 2023 to incentivise employers to host the mandatory 45-day industry placement. But an FE Week investigation found that nearly half of the £8.5 million available was clawed back.
In June the DfE launched a fresh £6.3 million fund to incentivise employers to provide T Level industry placements, but only in construction and health for large companies and all subjects for small employers.
Offline ambassadors
Budget figures obtained by FE Week show that the main annual expenditure of the T Level ambassador network was hosting and sending ambassadors to events as well as establishing the T Level ambassador national conference.
In March 2023 the DfE injected £10,000 into an app for ambassadors to talk to each other and share ideas.
Documents of app usage data, which cover November 2023 to January 2024, show the number of users increased over the quarter but activity dropped. By early 2024, 192 of the entire cohort had downloaded the app, but only 19 were active.
The DfE declined to comment.
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