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T-Levels – A Game Changer in Vocational Qualifications?

April 5, 2023

T Levels
Written by Nicholas Hill, Viridian Consulting and Ashley Grute, HSDC

I talk to the CEOs of a lot of technology SMEs, particularly those developing electronics and software, and always make a point of asking what the biggest problem facing their business is. During 2022 there were two dominant answers. Around half of the businesses that I spoke to were struggling with production and product costs due to the broken electronic component supply chain. However, almost every business reported their biggest issue as being inability to recruit technical staff across a range of disciplines.

Anyone working in this space will know there is a massive supply and demand imbalance for staff in technical fields such as electronics and software. As a country, our high-tech SMEs have been doing really well of late, but unable to grow because we aren’t producing enough qualified staff. It’s an employee’s market, with rocketing salary demands combined with post-Covid expectations of extensive remote working and other benefits. Companies that can find any candidates at all are having to swallow starting salaries much higher than equivalent existing staff are paid, leading to knock-on effects through the organisation.

Instead of riding the wave of customer demand, shortage of technical staff leaves these SMEs struggling to deliver on their order book and hampered in the development of their future products. This is severely limiting their ability to expand in size and grow revenue and profits.

Typical SMEs in this space will be R&D-heavy, with a relatively large proportion of technical staff involved in product design and development (as opposed to say production and test) because manufacturing is often outsourced. Design and development tend to be highly demanding technically, so SMEs rely on recruiting staff with graduate-level or post-graduate qualifications, either direct from university or ‘relocated’ from another employer.

However, the slow growth in engineering and technology graduate numbers coming out of UK universities (e.g.  an 8,000 or 4% increase between 2019/20 and 2020/21) isn’t enough to meet the demand. Engineering UK estimates we are currently short of around 20,000 engineering graduates.

Aside from the direct financial impact of making expensive hires, running a recruitment campaign in times of candidate shortage is a real headache for SMEs. Many hours will be sunk into supporting recruiters, reading CVs and interviewing candidates, many of whom will then choose a different employer, perhaps with bigger pockets. Depending on their size they may not have the luxury of a dedicated HR manager and all those recruitment hours are preventing technical staff from doing their day jobs.

T Levels

Much thought is going into potential alternative sources of candidates, even if they need more training once on board.  Unfortunately, the most common vocational qualifications are too much of a step down from a degree in many types of engineering to be viable as an alternative source of candidates. But there’s a relatively new vocational qualification which might provide some relief in this highly stressed candidate market.

When I came across T Levels early last year I have to say I inwardly groaned. There is already such a plethora of vocational qualifications in the UK, with an alphabet soup of titles and awarding bodies, that unless you’re working in education it’s hard to keep track. It seems the powers that be keep adding new ones without ever retiring any old ones, so the list just gets longer and longer. However, when I dug into what these new “T-Levels” were, I was rather impressed. The subject that caught my attention was “Design and Development for Engineering and Manufacturing” and it did so because the course content was, unusually for a vocational qualification, aimed at a career in design rather than activities like manufacturing and test. The Year 1 Core syllabus was surprisingly comprehensive and, combined with industry placements, was clearly aimed at producing staff who could hit the ground running in their first job. In year 2 the students then complete an Occupational Specialism, for example ‘Mechanical Engineering’, and this helps prepare students for specialist roles I the sector. This then poses the question- could this new qualification help to solve the sort of staff shortages that I described above?

So, what are T-Levels?

They are, broadly speaking, a 2- year qualification equivalent to 3 A-Levels and have been designed in collaboration with employers. They include a 315 hr (approx.  45 days) industry placement with a focus on preparing students for entry into skilled employment, an apprenticeship or higher technical study. As they are phased in, they will replace other vocational qualifications and will become one of the main choices for students after their GCSEs, alongside A-Levels and apprenticeships.

Employers and providers have been working together to develop each T-Level. Groups of employers have defined the skills and requirements for each T-Level course, participating in T-Level panels to create qualifications that meet the needs of industry. The content of each T-Level has also been based on the same standards as apprenticeships in that sector.

HSDC (a leading Further and Higher Education College providing learning across three campuses in Hampshire) has taken this a step further and created Employer Partner Boards for each T-Level and consulted with these employers around curriculum design and delivery, and in some cases we have employers delivering some of the curriculum for us.

In year one, students study the Core, which is the underpinning knowledge for working in that sector. Then towards the end of their first year, students must select an Occupational Specialism to follow, which enables them to focus their learning towards an occupation.

The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical education has developed a number of occupational maps for T-Level programmes which show the skills, behaviours and core competencies required for industry roles. The occupational maps outline career pathways for progression after completion of a T-Level programme to help students with these decisions. The Occupational Maps for engineering can be found here.

Further good news is that the Department for Education are also streamlining the Level 3 offer nationally, which will mean that any qualifications that overlap with T-Level content will become unavailable for funding in the future. This should help employers navigate the currently complex education landscape, so that in future it will be clear what qualifications exist and that these qualifications deliver the skills employers need.

If you are an employer who would like to support the development of the engineers of the future or tap into a potential pipeline of talent for your business, or just find out more about T-Levels, why not contact HSDC by emailing ashley.grute@hsdc.ac.uk.