A Q&A With Robert Halfon
4 min read
The minister for Apprenticeships and Skills talks to The House over email about T Level placements, extending opportunities to people from all backgrounds, work experience and more.
How will you encourage universities to consider T Level entry requirements?
We want employers and the higher education sector to take vocational qualifications as seriously as they take A Levels or university degrees.
To achieve parity of esteem between vocational and traditional academic routes, universities need to embrace technical qualifications before students enter their doors. T Levels are the gold-standard technical qualification for post-16 students and last year the first cohort saw over 400 students secure a place at university. Since then, we have added 10 new courses and more and more students are choosing this route.
I recently wrote to higher education institutions asking them to make a clear statement on their website setting out their approach to T Level students so that students can easily access correct admissions information for this UCAS cycle and beyond.
Research found that 63% of employers were not interested in offering T Level placements. How do you tackle that?
T Level industry placements are helping employers discover the workforce of the future and many have already reaped the benefits. They give employers the opportunity to teach the industry-specific skills they need to grow, helping to develop a pipeline of talent that will boost recruitment in their sector. They enable employers to sit at the forefront of training in their sector, ensuring that those who are entering the workplace for the first time are equipped with the skills they need to succeed, and the business is keeping up with the latest training and technology.
To encourage more employers to offer industry placements, we recently introduced greater flexibility, to ensure that the placements are aligned with businesses’ working practices and that they equip students with the specific skills that employers need, enabling those students to successfully progress beyond their T Level.
The Sutton Trust found that people from lower income areas were less likely to do a degree apprenticeship than go to university for a traditional course. How do you make sure these new opportunities are being taken up by all and ensure that universities embrace degree apprenticeships?
Social justice means extending the ladder of opportunity to people from all backgrounds, and degree apprenticeships offer a fantastic opportunity for that. Available in everything from construction and cyber security to nursing and digital technology, they combine the best of the academic and vocational routes by giving students the opportunity to develop their skills in the workplace while securing a degree without any student debt.
Since their introduction in 2014/5, 148,000 students have started a degree-level apprenticeship. Despite the impact that the pandemic will have had on the number of students starting their apprenticeships, the number of starts increased by 10% last year, which is great news. I want universities that do not currently offer degree apprenticeships to start and ensure that all students understand that this is an option available to them. That’s why we are making up to £8 million available to encourage higher education providers to expand their degree apprenticeship offers, and before students even step foot in university, our Apprenticeships Support and Knowledge (ASK) programme enables schools to ensure that students are aware of the benefits of apprenticeships.
For learners with a learning difficulty or disability, we’re working to make sure this isn’t a barrier to an apprenticeship. Training providers can access learning support funding of £150 a month to deliver reasonable adjustments for their apprentices. I’m also pleased to say that, from August this year, we are increasing the apprenticeship care leavers’ bursary from £1,000 to £3,000, on top of £1000 each for the employer and provider. This will enable even more care leavers to take up apprenticeships and fulfil their potential.
If apprenticeships/ T levels were more widely available when you were leaving school, would you have pursued that over university?
I definitely would have considered pursuing a technical education route if they had been more widely available when I was leaving school. When I was growing up, it was all about university. My dad arrived here as an immigrant and wanted the best for me, so he encouraged me to go down the traditional academic route, which I did without really considering other options. Though there is undoubtedly great value in achieving a university degree as I did, the range of high-quality technical courses has expanded hugely and there are opportunities to develop your skills in almost every sector.
