T Levels are a new post-16 technical qualification that includes a 45-day work placement. Will the pensions industry use the opportunity to benefit from attracting young talent? 

 

The realisation that the country needs technical skills has led the government to introduce T Levels to complement the more academic-style A Levels and raise the profile of technical qualifications. 

 

The two-year T Level courses are taken after GCSEs and are “broadly equivalent in size” to three A Levels, according to the government, giving access to either jobs or universities. The first three T Levels launched in September 2020, with a further seven introduced in September 2021. 

 

According to the government, offering a placement allows employers “to grow your workforce in the short-term with little or no cost and scout future talent in your area”. Students can – but don’t have to be – paid for their placements. 

 

Dawid Konotey-Ahulu, co-founder of mallowstreet, is championing the qualifications as part of his role on the prime minister’s business council. He says most companies have not heard of T Levels, nor that they could approach T Level providers to show interest in hiring placement students, and so there is a need to raise awareness of this route to early talent acquisition. 

 

Though companies are not obliged to pay students for the placements, Konotey-Ahulu says most of those he has spoken to are willing to pay for the nine-week work experience. 

 

For students, such placements can make an enormous difference.  “It’s a way in,” he says, noting that T Level students are largely from socially deprived backgrounds. 

 

Konotey-Ahulu is therefore calling on the financial services sector to make good on pledges to increase diversity.  

 

“This is the decade in which every company has to get to grips with not just E and G but also S,” he says.
  

The right opportunity at the right age can determine the course of someone’s life, he says: “At 16, if you don’t come from a background with a huge amount of support, your life can go off the rails in a very big way." 

 

Even if there is no job offered by the employer at the end of a placement, the experience itself will be on the young person’s CV, unlocking doors to other opportunities – something he says he has already observed the benefits of with the #10000 Black Interns programme he helped launch in 2020. 

 

“Anyone who is serious about the S in ESG and is involved in early talent acquisition should be thinking about this. It’s a complete gamechanger,” he says. 

 

T Levels were off to a bumpy start when they first launched. There was a muddle-up with exams results, and education inspector Ofsted found issues with staff training and retention, while some providers did not have access to textbooks and practice exam papers.  

 

However, Ofsted also noted that “the more effective industry placements gave broad, high-quality and appropriate experiences that helped learners make decisions about their futures”, and the more effective T-level curriculums were developed by providers in collaboration with employers. 

 

Judith Codling, director of client services at pensions firm Zedra, is a former primary school teacher and secondary school governor and worked at the Pensions Management Institute when the PMI implemented its apprenticeship scheme.  

 

Codling says there is a danger that T Levels could be treated by higher education institutions like BTECs are treated today. For BTECs, there is no standardised recognition by universities, with each one applying its own criteria. 

 

“My concern with universities is that they will still have that snobbery [about] what type of qualification students they want to have,” she says. Therefore, “we need some very clear direction from government” about the criteria universities can apply to select students. 

 

She believes certain employers, for example large supermarkets, will drive the T Level qualification, rather than education institutions. Other employers – for example accountancy firms – might still prefer apprenticeships, she argues, where there is more focus on one specific job and even one firm, and potentially a contractual ‘tie-in’ to work at the firm for a certain time once qualified. 

 

T Levels have the advantage that they will be able to adjust to what the world of work needs, while A Levels continue to be in traditional subjects, she believes. 

 

For Codling, the key to success for T Levels is for government to know what it is trying to achieve with the new qualification and how. “Implementing them without a support package is almost doomed to failure,” she says. 

 

This support must start with developing the right teaching staff, she says, which will take a minimum of two to three years. It must also include horizon scanning for the types of jobs that will be needed in five years’ time, rather than now.

Placements should be structured so that young people learn something. "An employer shouldn’t just be able to say, ‘I need three warm bodies to unload boxes and make coffee’,” she says. 

 

Though not insurmountable, there is another hurdle for placements – Covid-19 has made hybrid working the norm for many desk-based professions, raising questions over who would support students while they are on placement. Codling therefore sees employers with an existing emphasis on early talent acquisition as those best able to offer placements. 

 

Will your company consider offering T Level placements?