Vocational T-levels offer England’s students poor value, Ofsted says

The government’s “gold standard” vocational qualifications, T-levels, have been strongly criticised by Ofsted for offering poor value, inappropriate work placements and having high dropout rates.

The report, the first independent evaluation of T-levels commissioned by the Department for Education (DfE), is highly critical of the complex teaching and industry placements required during the two-year courses, which are intended as a vocational equivalent to A-levels in England.

The Ofsted chief inspector, Amanda Spielman, said there were “teething issues” with T-levels that colleges and employers were working to overcome. “However, we saw a range of shortcomings which providers and the Department for Education will want to address,” Spielman said.

Ofsted inspected T-level courses and interviewed teachers and students taking subjects such as healthcare and construction. It found that some colleges were struggling to recruit staff qualified to deliver the curriculum, with the high workload making it “particularly hard to teach everything in the time available”.

Ofsted also found that while most students complete their T-level, “many leave before the end of the course, and the number of students who progress to the second year of T-level courses is low in many providers. In at least one provider, no students progressed from the first year of the T-level course to the second year.”

The report concludes: “At worst, courses are not at all what students expected, and many students reported being misled and ill-informed about their content and structure.”

A spokesperson for the DfE said: “We have already made good progress to address many of the areas highlighted in the report, but we know further action is needed. To support providers and ensure T-level delivery is a success, we are continuing to offer a range of support, including funding to help more businesses to offer industry placement and additional funding for facilities through the T-level capital fund, with £100m for over 100 projects in the latest wave of funding this month.”

Only 10,000 students enrolled in the qualification in 2022-23, with colleges unable to fill courses in several subjects. A new T-level in catering, which was expected to be popular, has been delayed until 2025 after the original awarding organisation pulled out this year.

Despite the problems, the government has pushed ahead with funding cuts for rival level 3 qualifications such as BTecs, which are taken by more than 200,000 students each year.

James Kewin, the deputy chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, said Ofsted’s report “is clear that T-levels are not yet the gold-standard, mass-market replacement for BTecs the government believes them to be”.

He said: “It also highlights the dismal record of the T-level transition programme, where the vast majority of students do not actually progress to a T-level, and the associated risk of relying on this initiative as way of boosting T-level participation. Ministers need to drop the rhetoric, face the reality and rethink their plans for qualification reform.”