Following the fallout from the first-year health and science T Level results last summer, awarding body NCFE has been on a drive to ensure problems aren’t repeated in 2023. Jason Noble spoke to chief David Gallagher to find out what happened behind the scenes and whether the problems were avoidable.
“There was a lot of pressure,” says David Gallagher, chief executive of awarding body NCFE.
“As a parent, if my boys had been in this cohort and got poor grades, whatever the reasons, I would have felt the system had let me down. I would have felt that, so I’m not going to shy away from that at all.”
But he stressed that T Levels – designed by the DfE to be the flagship technical equivalents of A-levels – are “broader, deeper, more rigorous, more challenging, more aligned to employers’ needs,” than qualifications that have gone before and are “significantly harder”.
