Why Gordon Brown is wrong to go against Labour’s T Level promise

Labour's commitment to pause and review the defunding of T Level alternatives is right - not least because of what learners say about the qualification

Labour's commitment to pause and review the defunding of T Level alternatives is right - not least because of what learners say about the qualification

17 Jul 2024, 14:31

Few former Prime Ministers have been as vocal in championing FE and skills as Gordon Brown, who has picked out skills for young people as “central” to Labour’s growth mission. He makes a hard-to-ignore call to action for the new chancellor to move skills and post-16 technical qualifications “from the sidelines to centre stage” in the upcoming budget. 

Unfortunately, on the basis of Edge’s latest interim report, What do students really think about T Levels?, I’m not sure we can agree on the best way to do that. 

Brown has recently written a foreword to a new report, Delivering Skills for Growth. The report blames the “critical skills gaps” (which we have highlighted consistently at Edge through our Skills Shortage Bulletins) on “failures in post-16 technical education”.

This is a grossly unfair argument, when technical skills and preparing young people for the world of work pre-16 have been supressed by policymakers embattled in ideological debates for decades. 

The WPI Strategy report, “supported by” T Levels architect Lord Sainsbury, suggests: “T Levels are already producing strong outcomes. Almost all T Level completers move on to employment, apprenticeships, or university degrees”. This is intended to bolster the case for accelerating their roll-out and to ignore calls to pause and review the bonfire of BTECs. 

However, our research finds that T Levels are not (yet) well enough established in the qualifications landscape for students to feel confident that employers and universities will value, recognise or even be aware of their qualification on completion.

Students told us they felt “apprehensive” about their prospects, sometimes limited by the very specialist nature of the course. The path to “good pay in the very sectors of the economy where we are experiencing key shortages” may be there, but it takes time to be realised. 

That “almost all” who complete a T Level do not become NEET at the end of their course is not exactly the marker of successful outcomes you might expect from a report calling for their accelerated roll-out. 

But critically, this claim also skirts the major challenge affecting T Levels: poor retention. It therefore masks a whole host of issues with the qualification which we must first examine and address, before cutting off viable alternatives for good. 

T Levels have potential – but potential is where they currently stand

According to FE Week’s analysis, among the 2021/22 cohort, nearly one in three (31 per cent) of 16-year-old T Level students withdrew from their course. This compares with one in five students on other large VTQs and one in ten A Level students that same year. 

The risk of making such bold claims is that we skew the truth and mislead young people.

During our focus groups, many students described having been ‘mis-sold’ the qualification. The actual experience of their T-Level course diverged significantly from their expectations, set by the guidance and information they received when making choices.

These include reliance on rote learning and PowerPoints over opportunities for practical, hands-on work, limited subject-specific teacher knowledge, high teacher turnover, as well as a lack of textbooks for certain courses and of past papers for exam preparation. 

Where we can agree is on the importance of rocket-boosting communication and promotion efforts with employers.

Industry placements were a key selling point for the students we spoke to, and often their favourite part of the course. However, we heard how a limited pool of employers meant common delays (of more than a year) to commencing placements, causing unnecessary stress for students over whether they would actually be able to complete their qualification. 

It’s great that 65 per cent of firms who hadn’t previously heard of a T Level would look at offering an industry placement, but we’ve got to make it easy for them. That means solid communication between parties, reliable guidance and support, flexible delivery and bureaucracy kept to an absolute minimum. 

Of course, one way to force T Levels to ‘work’ is to remove the competition. That is definitely an option available to the new skills minister, who served under Brown at the end of the last Labour administration.

After all, the post-16 landscape is over-crowded. But there is a balance to strike. Our polling of adults in England at the start of this year revealed that 57 per cent think young people should actually have more choice in 16-18 education. 

There are also much bigger questions around T Levels as a replacement for other level 3 technical qualifications:

  • the chunkiness of the qualification
  • squeezing out any room for modularity and ‘mix-and-match’ with other subjects (currently possible with BTECs and A Levels)
  • whether a twin-track system of A Levels and T Levels would actually entrench divisions, undoing years of progress to build parity of esteem
  • their value in a properly functioning apprenticeship system, with lower-level apprenticeships readily available to young people, and progression pathways onto degree apprenticeships for those wishing to pursue more ‘academic’ study. 

T-Levels have potential. They sought to raise the status of technical qualifications, and that can only be a good thing. But potential is where they currently stand.

So, while young people, their advisers (parents and careers leaders), educators and employers get to grips with the many benefits that T Levels can offer and we resolve the teething issues to deliver high-quality provision and good outcomes for all young people, it would be re-miss to toy with the credible alternatives in the meantime. 

It’s good to see healthy debate and challenge within the Labour party’s education and skills policy, but let’s listen to the views of young people undertaking these qualifications to make sure they don’t get caught in the crossfire. 

Between October 2023 and May 2024, we visited 11 colleges across England, conducted 28 focus groups and 13 interviews with 210 T Level students (Foundation Level, Year 1 and Year 2), and 24 teachers and staff supporting T Level students. 

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