Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the (1) quality, and (2) accessibility, of industry placements offered by T-Levels providers.

The department is committed to ensuring students have access to high quality industry placements and have provided an extensive programme of employer and provider support to help with the delivery and scale up of placements. We have invested £200 million over the past four years to help providers build their capacity and networks with employers to deliver high quality placements and we have published practical industry placement delivery guidance for both education providers and employers. We also have comprehensive packages of support in place for both providers and employers, which offer them tailored advice and hands-on support to deliver high-quality placements.

To ensure access to placements, we have implemented several different delivery models to ensure placements are accessible and meaningful for all students, across all industries and locations. We are also engaging directly with employers through the department’s employer engagement teams to provide a strong pipeline of employers for the future, across all sectors and across the country, ready to offer placements. We have established a T Level employer ambassador network to engage with others in their industries on T Levels and placements, and our communications campaigns are continuing to raise the profile of T Levels and industry placements to an employer audience.

We will continue to monitor placement provision and work closely with providers and employers to identify any potential barriers to the delivery of placements for each of the T Levels, including access, and identify appropriate mitigations.