By the time you’re reading this, the consultation on the forthcoming T-level programmes will be drawing to a close.
This has been the first real opportunity for people across the sector to give their feedback on the new programme, the qualifications it will contain, and the work placement required for completion.
Overall, we’ve questioned the forthcoming role of the Institute for Apprenticeships and technical education in approving and developing assessments – if these are to be of high quality and consistent across sectors, we would prefer sector experts, such as Awarding Bodies, to develop them.
We’re also keen to have Ofqual as regulator for this new provision. As well as being the existing ”experts in the room’’ in terms of curriculum and assessment, it would make sense for comparability of T-level programmes to other options available to 16 year olds. The rationale of having a different regulator for T-level just doesn’t seem to hold water.
What remains the paramount concern relating successful implementation of the T-levels is the work placement. We believe that the following will need to be addressed to enable successful integration of the work placement into the programme:
Resources need to be made available to help learners access work placement opportunities, as these will be primarily accessed by public transport.
The Institute will need to accept that not all institutions will be able to offer all pathways as there won’t be the range of employers in all locations. A way to overcome this would be to allow ‘on campus’ facilities, where existing, to be accepted as work placements.
The Action Plan outlines that work placements need to take place within the academic timetable, where possible – again, this may not be possible in some sectors.
In addition, some learners at 16 may not be able to access all aspects of a work placement (for example, care situations involving bathing clients etc.)
This raises further questions around the DBS considerations for wider industries, specifically who will pay for this (for example, if placements are in a school, each learner will need checking – does the employer/school pay or the T-Level provider?)
We would like clarification of how work placements and projects will be managed and held to similar standards across all of the routes?
We also request that small and micro employers are given the support they will desperately need to deliver these placements in the numbers needed.
In our response we have also pressed for a period of stability in the technical education space to allow the T-levels to be adopted across the sector, as well as the other relatively recent innovations such as Applied Generals and the revised GCSE and A-Level qualifications.
