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.”
