Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to promote the (a) awareness of and (b) the changes relating to T-Levels.

We have engaged with a range of key audiences through a number of different channels to increase the understanding of T levels. We published the T level Action Plan last October, which set out our plans for the implementation of T levels and recent policy decisions. This was followed by a series of open engagement events to help raise awareness and ask attendees for their views. The events were well attended and well received.

We ran a public consultation from 30 November 2017 to 8 February 2018 to obtain views on particular elements of our proposals for T levels. The consultation generated 430 responses from a wide range of organisation types. We held ten consultation events around the country, with over 500 people attending. We will publish a response in due course.

In November 2017, the Confederation of British Industry supported the department’s Skills Summit which was attended by over 100 employers and included specific sessions on T levels.

We engage regularly with our delivery partners through various activities as we move closer to first implementation in 2020. For example, we have invited providers to express an interest to deliver the first three T levels in 2020 and to bid for funding to build capacity within their own organisations to deliver industry placements. We have also begun more sustained engagement with employers on the design and delivery of industry placements. Engagement with our key partners will continue to increase as we move further into the implementation phase.

We will increase promotions of T Levels on a frequent basis.