T Levels are helping build NHS workforce pipeline

The main reason the previous government introduced T Levels was to provide young people with the necessary technical knowledge and experience to step into a career in their chosen industry, either through direct employment or via a higher apprenticeship or an undergraduate degree.

Are they delivering this objective? Recent research I have undertaken at King’s Business School (KBS), supported and funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, suggests that for the healthcare sector at least, they are.

The NHS is the country’s largest employer and has long experienced workforce shortages. Currently, there are 100,000 unfilled posts. The research, which looked at 20 NHS employers in England who have hosted (or plan to host) industry placements for students studying on the T Level in Health, showed how T Levels can address this workforce gap.

The NHS employers felt that the qualification not only met their knowledge and skills needs, but was also a more effective recruitment tool than other vocational qualifications or traditional careers interventions such as general work experience or careers talks.

The breadth, relevance and structure of the curriculum along with the 45-day industry placement, meant employers reported that students were ‘work ready’ and work-orientated once they had completed their studies.

Employers felt that students’ familiarity with working in a wide variety of healthcare settings meant that they were more likely to remain in NHS employment once they began working than direct recruits.

One employer, for example, had been unable to retain staff they had externally recruited into healthcare assistant roles in their accident and emergency department. In contrast, when these posts were made available to T Level students, all the vacancies were filled, and turnover dropped to zero.

Around half of the students completing the T Level in health began working for their host hospital or other local care provider after finishing the T Level. This included a number who began studying a healthcare higher apprenticeship.

The other half progressed to healthcare degrees to become registered nurses, midwives, or other healthcare professionals. Employers anticipated that these students, once they had completed their degrees, would return to them as employees; some had joined degree apprenticeship programmes.

Employers particularly valued the opportunity, through placements, to provide experience of careers students might not have been as familiar with, such as speech and language therapy and radiography. Indeed, some students had changed their career aspirations, typically from nursing or midwifery to a different healthcare role and in some cases to social care jobs.

T Levels provided employers with an opportunity to widen workforce diversity and access to NHS employment by recruiting young people from the communities their hospital served, people who might not have traditionally considered a career in healthcare.

Employers reported additional benefits. The Independent Commission on the College of the Future reported that links between the NHS and further education could be improved. Our research showed that delivering T Levels had strengthened partnerships where they already existed (which was in the minority of cases) and created partnerships where they had not previously existed.

These partnerships developed beyond the T Level in health to support other non-clinical T Levels and other college offers, such as apprenticeships or functional skills programmes.

Historically, vocational education has been criticised for not meeting employers’ needs or not delivering meaningful progression opportunities for young people. It has also too often been seen as being less valuable than ‘academic’ qualifications.

The clear message from employers was that the T Level in health simultaneously provides students with the knowledge, skills and behaviours they need for a career in health or social care, and provides a pipeline of future talent to draw from that reflects local communities.

Given the rising demands on the NHS and the enduring workforce shortages, T Levels represent an effective means of building long-term capacity and capability.