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.
I can imagine it must be challenging to come up with an overall attainment measure when the workplace requirements are subject to whimsy.
If I may suggest this calculation:
The number of individuals who started a T level and where something happened…
Divided by
The number of individuals who started.
Instant 100% attainment, everybody is happy (except Ofsted of course, they’d want continuous improvement on attainment scores).
What a joke of a qualification. Tempted to do a freedom of info to sheffield college for aledged 500k (possible higher or lower) and the students haven’t even had a stable framework over past 2 years. Forced to resit because majority of the class didnt get good enough grade the first year… Teachers leaving, teaching not turning up. Teachers(if they are that) expect the students to teach themselves. This is fast becoming a waste of our future adult generation time. Time they will not be compensated for!
Hope the colleges that let down an entire cohort are thoroughly investigated and held to account. So far, getting them to acknowledge and accept responsibility is a joke.
Maybe they could do the same with the civil servants!