Levelling Up Skills: Are T Levels good for social mobility?

In its efforts to streamline and enhance the quality of post-16 education, the Department for Education (DfE) aims to make A Levels and T Levels, the new flagship technical educational programme, the main post-16 education qualifications in England. The vision is to establish two main educational pathways, an academic route and a vocational one, with the only other available alternative alongside to those being apprenticeships. Funding for overlapping post-GCSEs options, including many BTECs, will be removed from 2024. 

T Levels are new technical courses for 16-19 years old launched in September 2020 by DfE, which follow GCSEs and are equivalent to three A levels. These two year courses combine 80% of classroom learning and 20% of industry placement (45 days), and have been designed in collaboration with employers and businesses to meet industry needs and effectively prepare students for work, further training or study. 

T Levels are grouped by vocational routes with multiple qualifications within each route, there are 11 routes [1] planned to be available by the end of the rollout in 2023/24 . The first three T Levels within the Construction, Digital, and Education & Childcare routes were introduced in 2020. A further seven T Level courses became available from September 2021, including three qualifications in the Health & Science Route, another qualification in the Construction Route and two additional courses in the Digital Route. Subjects including Engineering & Manufacturing, Finance, Creative & Design and Legal will be introduced from 2022 and 2023 – bringing the total number of T Level courses to 24.  

DfE’s overhaul of the current post-16 vocational system follows, in great measure, the recommendations from the 2016 Post-16 skills plan and independent report on technical education also known as the Sainsbury’s Review, which addressed the issues that have prevented UK’s vocational education from delivering outcomes expected to skill the country’s labour force for years.

Among those issues are duplication and the number of different qualifications available in the market. There are over 17,000 vocational or technical qualifications at all levels offered by 174 awarded providers – and 4,000 of those at level 3 are eligible for public funding. This amount of qualifications on offer makes it extremely difficult to ensure the same standard of quality and avoid any duplications among them (i.e. there are 200 engineering qualifications and 15 plumbing qualifications). 

In line with proposed reforms, any other Level 3 qualifications apart from A Levels and T Levels, such as BTECs, will have to prove their “quality and distinct purpose” to receive public funding. With this, DfE aims to eliminate what are understood to be “poor quality” and “low value” qualifications for students and employers because they do not equip learners with the adequate skillset to work nor access higher education.  

Nevertheless, BTECs have been described as engines of social mobility by multiple stakeholders; for instance, a research paper by the Social Market Foundation [2] found that 44% of white working-class students entered university with at least one BTEC and 37% of black students entered with only BTEC qualifications.  In fact, the Social Market Foundation found in a previous study that not achieving five 4 to 9 (previously C to A*) grades at GCSEs increases the likelihood that a student will take a BTEC by almost 200% and residing in the most (rather than least) deprived area increases the likelihood by 104% [3]. 

Because T Levels are equivalent to A Levels (one T Level equals to three A Levels), they are likely to have stricter entry requirements than BTECs. It varies depending on each college provider, but normally T Levels require five GSCEs at grades 4 to 9 including Maths and English; 40% of young people in England do not achieve five GCSEs.

Students that do not meet the entry requirements can enrol in a T Level Transition Programme (Level 2) – a one year programme designed to support students to progress to the desired T Level (Level 3). With the Transition Programme, students need to invest three years to achieve a T Level, which is a longer route, thus less attractive, especially for young people looking to access the labour market soon.  This design has the potential risk of leaving behind students with lower GCSE attainment, who have benefited from the BTEC offer to progress into further education and work.

The Government response to the Review of post-16 qualifications at level 3 and below in England admitted that:

“Students from SEND [4] backgrounds, Asian ethnic backgrounds, disadvantaged backgrounds, and males are disproportionately likely to be affected by the changes. This is because students from these backgrounds are disproportionately highly represented on qualifications likely to no longer be available in future.”

However, according to the same document, it is expected that the proportion of students negatively impacted by the proposed reforms “to be the minority, and to be justified by the overall benefits to students.

Tougher entry requirements to post-16 education aggravate the declining number of entry level routes for low attainment students and those from disadvantaged backgrounds into vocational and further education. By the Government’s strategy to cut funding for entry level routes in favour of the Level 3 offer, there has been a reduction on Level 2 Apprenticeships offer and take up (our article on this). Businesses have been warning about the shortage of Level 2 skilled individuals in the UK labour force – which are needed in construction, social care and hospitality – contradicting the narrative that Level 2 courses do not add enough value. Level 2 apprenticeships are the most used by the youngest, especially school leavers and those from disadvantaged areas [5], similarly to BTECs. 

Many organisations, education providers, student organisations and MPs have raised concerns over the plans of “scrapping” a significant number of BTECs, which are well known and recognised by employers and universities, in favour of the T Levels approach. The main arguments are that T Level outcomes are unproven, courses have stricter entry requirements, and present a narrower number of choices to students, who have to decide on a specific path at an early stage, potentially impacting future opportunities.

In addition, because T Levels are only offered by a selected list of providers, there are accessibility risks due to potential provision gaps for some routes and courses – particularly during the rollout phase. This can have a detrimental effect on the level of accessibility to education of those most vulnerable, who normally have greater difficulties commuting long distances. 

For instance, within the Business West’s geography, the Construction route is currently only offered by a college in Weston-super-Mare and two in Gloucestershire; and the Hospitality and Catering Route will only be offered (2023/24) in Bath, Weston-super-Mare and Berkeley . Similarly, the demand for hospitality and catering skilled workforce is acute in Bristol, but colleges in the city will not be offering T Levels on this subject.

There is little public information on which specific BTECs will be defunded. Due to the geographical limitations of T Levels, there might not be “overlaps” in all regions – and discontinuing a BTEC qualification nationally might have detrimental effects locally. For example, discontinuing the Plumbing Level 2 BTEC or the Travel and Tourism Level 3 BTEC in Swindon, when equivalent T Levels alternatives will not be offered in the area is a potential problem that will impact both young people and businesses in the region, given the shortage of skilled workers in those industries. 

In total, about 11,000 students have studied all or part of a T Level or Transition Programme course since they were launched in 2020. In comparison, there were 250,000 BTEC students in 2019. Education organisations, such as the Association of Colleges, have asked to pause the elimination of funding of BTECs until the T Levels system is more established – to avoid a cliff edge for many students. In November 2021, the Government announced it would postpone the reform by a year, with overlapping qualifications now due to have the funding discontinued from 2024. 

Overall, businesses have welcomed DfE’s efforts to address the shortcomings of the post-16 vocational system, with some organisations invited and involved in the design of T Levels, which shows a willingness to listen and collaborate with industry. However, there are risks in pushing new policies over the current ones without having better guarantees that the new system will provide the volume of offer needed, as well as equip students with the right qualifications to progress onto work or further education.

BTECs are not ideal, but have proved to be useful social mobility engines and are recognised by both employers and universities, with around 250,000 students choosing to enrol into at least one BTEC every year. T Levels are still far off from these numbers in terms of course offer, geographical availability and students’ numbers; it is difficult to predict that this will shift to the degree that would be needed in the next two years. 

Moreover, there is a clear danger that the reforms to post-16 education targeted at reducing the entry level courses offer – such as intermediate apprenticeships and entry level 2 and 3 BTECs – squeeze the access of working class, low attainment, SEND or minority background cohorts of young people into training and employment. It also compromises businesses’ recruitment and growth efforts, with a smaller pool of suitable candidates to fill in their vacancies.

There must be fair and equal T Level courses’ availability across the territory before other “overlapping” Level 3 qualifications are discontinued. Otherwise, the new system risks reducing accessibility to post-16 education for disadvantaged young people, and hindering businesses' ability to employ local staff with the right skills to help them grow, which would be counterproductive for the national levelling up agenda.

Related articles on Skills Policy:

Entry level apprenticeships starts & participation levels in sharp decline spelling bad news for levelling up