Raising the value of VET through qualification reform: the Case of English T levels

ABSTRACT

Poor quality VET is perceived to contribute to a lack of skilled workers, low productivity, and poor outcomes for individuals and society. Such economic failings are often attributed to the low value of VET, ignoring the equally low standing of many of the occupations VET serves. Raising the value of VET through qualification reform is thus problematic, as it fails to address this wider economic context. The introduction of new post-16 technical qualifications in England provides a pertinent and highly current lens through which to view such attempts at reform. T Levels were conceived as a ‘high-quality technical option’, designed to offer a pathway to employment in specific vocational areas alongside apprenticeships and to rival academic A Levels. This paper offers a critically discursive analysis of key policy documents associated with their implementation, and shows how the claims made for the qualifications’ inherent value exist in tension with their relational status within the English education system. Marx’s concepts of ‘use value’ and ‘exchange value’ illuminate this tension and suggest that without reform to other elements of the system, T Levels are unlikely to have an impact on the value of VET.

KEYWORDS:

• T levels
• vocational education and training
• policy
• use value
• exchange value

1. Introduction

T Levels represent the latest attempt by the UK government to reform vocational education through the introduction of a new qualification. As with previous reforms, the new qualification has been heralded as a break from the past, where poor quality, low-value vocational qualifications are seen as contributing to the country’s economic failings. The new ‘high-quality technical option’ (DBIS 2016, 6), introduced in England in 2020, is thus more than just a route available to 16-year-olds choosing how to continue their compulsory education or training; it marks a significant policy initiative designed to raise the status of vocational education, with implications for similar initiatives in other VET systems around the world. As Billett (2020) notes, the standing of vocational education relative to academic education is a ‘global concern manifested locally’ (163), with attempts to raise its status necessarily conditioned by the histories and practices within specific countries. This paper takes T Levels in England as its focus and asks: 1) how valuable are T Levels? and 2) what does this local case contribute to wider understandings of attempts to raise the value of VET through qualification reform?

This paper presents a critical discursive analysis of key policy documents associated with the initiation and implementation of T Levels. Documents are scrutinised for the ways in which they seek to assert the value of T Levels and thus engage in a conversation, both explicit and implicit, with previous initiatives aimed at reforming post-16 education. The discussion section applies a theoretical lens to this analysis, using Marx’s conceptions of ‘use value’ and ‘exchange value’ to situate this specific example of qualification reform within the wider context of a commodified educational system dominated by market relations. This theoretical analysis allows us to reach conclusions about the likely success of T Levels within England, and to point to factors pertinent to VET qualification reform more widely. It is first necessary, however, to set T Levels within their national context, and particularly within the context of previous failed rounds of reform.

2. VET qualification reform in England

T Levels are two-year vocational courses, normally started at the age of 16 and equivalent to three A Levels (referred to as level 3 in the UK). The latter are academic qualifications which have been established for over seventy years, while T Levels offer ‘practical and knowledge-based learning at a school or college and on-the-job experience through an industry placement’ (Lewis and Bolton 2023, 4). Each T Level has been developed by a single awarding organisation and each comprises three components:

• a technical qualification, which is the main classroom-based, occupationally focused element;

• an industry placement, normally for a minimum of 45 days in total (around 20% of the course);

• English and maths provision, embedded within the classroom element.

Students need to pass all three components to gain a T Level.

T Levels sit alongside apprenticeships within the government’s reformed skills system and they are based on the same set of employer-designed standards as apprenticeships. They differ in that ‘while apprentices will train for a single occupation, T Level students will undertake a broader programme, gaining skills and knowledge relevant to a range of occupations’ (Lewis and Bolton 2023, 4). Only 1,235 students were included in the first wave of three T Levels in 2020 and by 2021 there were 6062 students enrolled on a total of ten T Levels (33). For comparison, in the same year 612,000 students were studying towards A Levels (8). Six more T Levels were introduced in September 2022, with the final eight courses to be introduced by 2025 (4).

T Levels are only the latest reform of policy associated with VET in England, which has been characterised by instability for decades. In the past forty years there have been around 30 acts of parliament pertaining to VET and well over 50 secretaries of state with responsibility for VET (see Norris and Adam 2017). The Institute for Fiscal Studies, a leading economic think tank based in London, has described a ‘near-permanent state of revolution’ in the English Further Education sector, where most VET is delivered (Belfield, Farquharson, and Sibieta 2018, 38). VET policy has been stuck in a quandary which results from the tension between the government’s market-led approach to post-16 education and the government’s concurrent wish to have a training system that meets the needs of the country’s employers and economy (Orr and Terry 2023; and see; Augar 2019). Market driven policy has weakened regulatory constraints on awarding organisations that have promoted new qualifications even where there was little apparent demand for those qualifications. So, by the government’s own reckoning, there were ‘over 4,000 [qualifications] approved at level 3 alone’ in 2021 (Department for Education 2021, 8), many of which were poorly recognised by employers. This excess of vocational qualifications reflects precisely what Carneiro et al. (2010, 9) have described:

In countries [with] a less developed vocational system, the proliferation of vocational qualifications … has weakened the signal of what the vocational education is providing and returns are less. This is exemplified by the UK experience.

Vocational qualifications in England generally have lower status than academic qualifications; simplifying and enhancing the vocational offer to students was an important stimulus for the government to develop T Levels. Academic A Levels remain the qualifications of choice for most 16–19-year-olds in England and the perception of lower status persists with T Levels. The most recent survey of attitudes to technical qualifications commissioned by Ofqual, the government’s qualifications regulator, stated that:

Reported levels of understanding of T Levels … were relatively low for both learners and employers in comparison with other types of qualifications. Among learners, there was also a fair degree of uncertainty expressed when it came to various perceptions including whether they value T Levels, understand their purpose and think availability is sufficiently flexible.

(YouGov 2023, 5)

The driving motivation for all of these efforts at reform of VET derives fundamentally from the government’s concerns about Britain’s productivity, which lags behind that of France, Germany and the US (House of Commons Library 2023). The government commissioned Report of the Independent Panel on Technical Education chaired by Lord Sainsbury and referred to as the Sainsbury Review (2016) led directly to the introduction of T Levels. That influential report is explicit about the need to address the UK’s ‘long-term productivity problem’ which ‘is holding our economy back’. The report further argues that that ‘productivity problem’ derives from a poorly trained workforce and particularly ‘a chronic shortage of people with technician-level skills’ (Sainsbury 2016, 22). T Levels have, therefore, been designed to provide employers with people who will have the skills employers are deemed to lack.

Policymakers have never explained a coherent theory of change to connect new qualifications to improved productivity. Indeed, the evidence points to the significance of other factors, primarily a chronic lack of investment in the UK economy, as the major inhibitor of UK productivity growth over the last three decades (Keep, Mayhew, and Payne 2006; Van Ark and O’Mahony 2023). The assumption of a connection between qualifications and productivity reveals a reductive understanding of human capital theory: investment in skills training will produce more skilled workers, who will be more productive and so will also be able to earn more (Marginson 2019). As Brown, Lauder and Cheung (2020, 1) put it, educational institutions ‘have been transformed into drivers of capital accumulation in a new form of exchange where learning equals earning’. Systematically meeting the needs of employers is explicit in the rationale for T Levels, just as it was in the rationale for other short-lived vocational qualifications such as tech levels (introduced in 2013) and diplomas (introduced in 2007). Once again, VET is uncritically positioned as central to economic success, with further education colleges (where most T Levels are currently taught) tasked with ‘driving productivity’ through their ‘strong relationships with employers’ (Augar 2019, 118).

Although Pring et al (2009, 6) noted how the ‘Transient nature of new qualifications’ has been a distinctive feature of the English education system from the second world war, more recently this predicament reflects the government’s emphasis on the supply side in relation to skills (such as the introduction of new qualifications), and their neglect of the demand side (such as the creation of skilled jobs) (see Fleckenstein and Lee 2018). As Esmond and Atkins (2020, 7) observe, ‘the role of government in English skills formation is limited to create [sic] favourable market conditions for competing education providers to meet employer needs’. Yet, the repeated failure of policy to persist means that any new policy or associated qualification, however well intentioned, may be perceived as likely to fail or at least not to last by those who are to implement it. That perception discourages engagement (Policy Consortium 2018, 10).

A further exacerbating consequence of policy churn is the complexity of funding for skills courses and for the colleges that deliver them (see Bathmaker and Orr 2022, 63). That complexity is compounded by the overall reduction in funding for education. Government funding per student aged 16–18 in general FE and sixth-form colleges in England, which together educate the great majority of students of that age, fell by 11% in real terms between 2010–11 and 2020–21 (Sibieta and Tahir 2021, 2). It is into this context of political instability and convoluted finances, aggravated by the unprecedented problems posed by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, that T Levels have been introduced.

3. Methodology

In order to gain insights into the rationale driving the introduction of T Levels, policy documents were scrutinised for the ways in which they sought to distinguish T Levels from existing qualifications. Four documents were selected (see Table 1), each playing a slightly different role in relation to T Level policy. Policies are understood, in Ball’s terms, as ‘representations’, which are ‘encoded’ and ‘decoded in complex ways’ (1994, 16). They are constituted of both text and discourse, that is, both of the ‘language-in-use’ (Gee 2014b, 86) of the policy text itself, which invites and inhibits certain responses and actions, and the discursive frame in which the text is produced and received, which ‘articulates and constrains the possibilities of interpretation and enactment’ (Ball 1994, 23). Policy texts thus exhibit a ‘struggle over meaning’ (Taylor 2004, 435), allowing insights into both policy intentions and the context of their production and reception.

Table 1. Policy documents selected for analysis.

Document	Status of text	Rationale
Sainsbury (2016)	Report commissioned by government	Initiated the current reform of the skills system and the introduction of T Levels
Post-16 Skills Plan DBIS and DfE (2016)	Government response to report	Presents the government response to the Sainsbury Review; starts the process of policy implementation
T Level Action Plan DfE (2017)	Government plan for policy implementation	Marks the first phase of policy implementation
T Level Action Plan DfE (2023)	Government plan for and on-going review of policy implementation	Marks the latest phase of policy implementation; indicates how policy has developed since 2017

A critical discursive analysis was undertaken of the policy documents using Gee’s discourse analysis ‘toolkit’ (2014b). This analysis was critical in the sense that it enabled the inherently political dimension of language use and its implications for the ‘distribution of social goods’ to be recognised (Gee 2014a, 87). Tools were selected for their capacity to connect language with the ‘big picture’ (2), that is, the context in and on which the text is seeking to act. The ‘Figured Worlds’ tool, for example, asks: ‘What “typical stories” are assumed or is the reader invited to assume? What values are in these figured worlds?’ (177). One such ‘typical story’ identified in the Sainsbury Review is that of the undisputed connection between skills and productivity referred to above, with value accorded to education directed at this goal. Using a range of tools allowed the texts to be approached from different vantage points, reflecting the multiple levels at which texts function: through the ‘Big “D” Discourse tool’ (181), for example, Sainsbury’s use of the term ‘industry experts’ (2016, 6) was recognised as enacting a privileged role for employers, without acknowledging the implicit exclusion of educational practitioners; at the same time, the ‘Doing and Not Just Saying Tool’ (Gee 2014a, 50) highlighted how the modal ‘will’ was used in the Skills Plan to bring a desired future into being, even while ostensibly stating facts: ‘Employers will sit at the heart of the system and take the lead in setting the standards’ (DBIS 2016, 7). Working across the texts in this way allowed themes to be identified: the overarching theme of quality was initially identified and then further sub-divided into four contributory themes, namely meeting the needs of employers; technical not vocational; the market; and the academic option. These themes will now be used to structure the communication of our findings.

4. Policy expectations: a ‘high-quality technical option’

The policy documents which initiated the development of T Levels propose a ‘high-quality technical option’ (DBIS 2016, 6) in response to flaws identified in the existing skills system. The technical option is accorded inherent value in the policy documents through its connection to the needs of employers. Employers are given responsibility for specifying the standards and curricular content of the new qualifications, and thus determining what skills and knowledge are expected of a student following this technical route. At the same time, the value of the new technical option is shown to be relational, dependent on the status secured for the qualifications within a competitive post-16 ‘marketplace’ (Sainsbury 2016, 8). Strong assertions of the qualifications’ quality, therefore, exist in tension with a less acknowledged recognition of their relative position in the educational landscape.

4.1. Meeting the needs of employers

The Sainsbury Review and the accompanying Post-16 Skills Plan are fully aligned in their diagnosis of a system which, in failing to meet the needs of employers, contributes to the country’s ‘productivity problem’ (Sainsbury 2016, 22). The Sainsbury Review asserts:

our education system is failing to develop the skills employers seek. Unless we take urgent action, our economic competitors will leave us even further behind.

(Sainsbury 2016, 22)

The causal connection assumed here between skills development and economic competitiveness is spelt out explicitly by the Skills Plan: ‘Bringing training for young people and adults in line with the needs of business and industry will drive up productivity’ (DBIS 2016, 5). The documents invite the reader to assume a ‘figured world’ (Gee 2014a, 177) in which education contributes directly to national prosperity, echoing the assumptions evident in the Augar Review (2019). It is also assumed, despite little evidence to support this, that employers will make use of an increased supply of qualifications (Keep, Mayhew, and Payne 2006). In the Skills Plan, the new technical option is established as ‘high-quality’ precisely because of its close connection with employment and employers. Invoking the recommendations of the Wolf report (2011), the Skills Plan states:

Rather than the current crowded landscape of overlapping qualifications, we will ensure that only high-quality technical qualifications which match employer-set standards are approved.

(DBIS 2016, 8)

Furthermore: ‘What will give the technical option real status and credibility – so that it can lead all the way up to skilled employment – will be strong employer support’ (DBIS 2016, 18). Employers are to be the arbiters of quality, and the qualifications will have value because they are valued by employers.

4.2. Technical not vocational

Beyond this explicit affirmation of the link between education and employment, the documents engage in a more implicit conversation (a ‘big ‘C’ Conversation in Gee’s terms (Gee 2014b, 131)) with existing perceptions of vocational education, which relates closely to questions of quality and value. The new technical option, the Skills Plan argues, ‘must be a distinctive, prestigious, high-quality offer in its own right; a positive, informed choice’ (DBIS 2016, 17). The need to assert this at all suggests that this has not generally been the case: it evokes a poor-quality alternative which lacks status and is rarely chosen by prospective students. Indeed, the value of the proposed technical option is expressed in part through its rejection of the ‘vocational’, which, Sainsbury argues, has become negatively defined as everything that is not academic study (2016, 23). This appears to be the rationale for referring throughout to ‘technical’ rather than vocational education, the former used to convey opportunities for ‘progression to skilled employment’, a ‘substantial body of technical knowledge’ and the ‘practical skills valued by industry’ (23–24). Such use of discourse to address the low value of vocational education is not confined to England, as Haybi Barak and Shoshana’s analysis of the Israeli government’s ‘rhetorical transition’ (2020, 309) from vocational to ‘technological’ education demonstrates. The authors show how the opposition asserted by government ministers between vocational and technological education is indicative not of concrete measures of reform but of ‘the desire to construct reality differently’ (310). Similarly, technical education obtains inherent value in the T Level policy documents simply by virtue of its contrast with the vocational.

However, by insisting on the value of the new qualifications, the documents expose the fragility of this assertion: ‘Technical education is not and must not be allowed to become simply vocational education rebadged’ (Sainsbury 2016, 23). The exhortatory tone of this statement reflects Lingard and Ozga’s characterisation of policy making as a ‘political and normative activity’ (2007, 6), involving the ‘authoritative allocation of values’ (3). The texts seek legitimacy for the new qualifications by asserting their inherent difference from existing qualifications and attaching value to this distinction. This is particularly evident in the conversation they engage in with the academic option of A Levels, which need no such exhortation, as we explore in the section below. While Sainsbury is at pains to argue that the distinction constitutes more than just linguistic rebranding, the texts themselves show the struggle over language involved. This is illustrated by the attempt to distinguish between the terms ‘occupation’ and ‘job’ in the Sainsbury Review, as a proxy for the distinction between technical and vocational education. Occupation is used rather than job because:

‘occupation’ is a more all-encompassing term for individuals’ employment, and is not restricted to a particular workplace. The use of occupation also points to opportunities for progression, both within the occupation but importantly also to related occupations with similar skill requirements.

(Sainsbury 2016, 32)

This implies that education leading to an occupation is more expansive than job-related training, yet a footnote then confuses this distinction by associating occupation with the German term ‘Beruf’, which:

combines notions of skills, knowledge and professionalism and drives education and training to develop all of these facets. This contrasts with a sector-based approach, which tends to lead to the development of broad qualifications – covering knowledge about a sector rather than the knowledge and skills required for a particular occupation – which are less valued by employers.

(Sainsbury 2016, 32)

It seems that existing qualifications are at once too workplace-specific and too broad, while the new technical qualifications are both wide-ranging and specific to a ‘particular occupation’. The etymological link of ‘Beruf’ to ‘vocation’ or ‘calling’ further muddies the waters, and suggests, once again, that the favouring of technical over vocational education is an attempt to assert the value of the former through a relational opposition, even while insisting that technical education has inherent worth.

4.3. The market

The tension between the inherent value of a ‘high-quality’ technical option and its relational status within the wider skills system is evident, though not fully acknowledged, in the role assigned to the market in determining its value. Sainsbury states: ‘a central feature [of successful education systems] is a well understood national system of qualifications that works in the marketplace’ (2016, 6). The sentence that follows makes it clear that the ‘marketplace’ can be equated with the needs or desires of employers: ‘Young people will only work hard to get a qualification, and value it highly when they get it, if employers when recruiting give priority to those who possess it’ (2016, 6). Employers are thus expected not just to define the standards of the new qualifications, assuring their inherent quality, but to confirm their value by recruiting students who hold these qualifications. This reflects James Relly’s observation that vocational qualifications obtain their ‘worth’ through employers ‘buying in to their currency in labour markets’ (2021, 522). Progression to higher education, which may also be a motivating factor for potential students, is notably excluded from this marketplace, as we go on to explore below.

The Skills Plan similarly emphasises the anticipated role of the employment market in shaping the demand for technical qualifications, as opposed to vocational ones. It states: ‘We cannot continue to let so many work their way through a succession of often low-level, low-value qualifications that lead at best to low-skilled, low-paid employment’ (DBIS and DfE, 17). The repetition of ‘low’, appearing twice in each clause, gives the statement its rhetorical impact, and highlights the connection asserted between the value of the qualification and the opportunities for employment it affords. Such a correlation between the quality of supply and the demand for skilled labour cannot be assumed, however, as this policy again addresses only the supply side of the equation (see Fleckenstein and Lee 2018). Furthermore, and somewhat contradictorily, competition is excluded from the technical ‘pathways’ themselves, with only one awarding organisation being licenced to accredit each T Level. While the market is accorded a significant role in determining the ultimate value of the qualification, a proliferation of awarding bodies is associated with driving down quality and undermining the qualification’s ‘genuine labour market value’ (DBIS 2016, 24). The possible impact on quality of making only one awarding organisation available for each qualification is not acknowledged.

4.4. The academic option

The policy documents also strongly assert the independence of the new technical option from the existing academic route represented by A Levels, eschewing the question of parity of esteem which has plagued previous attempts at reform (James Relly 2021). As Sainsbury states:

In the past in this country the vocational option has often been defined not by what it is but by what it is not: the academic option.

(Sainsbury 2016, 23)

In an apparent effort not to succumb to the same tendency, the review seeks to define technical education without recourse to the academic, maintaining: ‘Technical education draws its purpose from the workplace rather than from an academic discipline’ (Sainsbury 2016, 24). Once again, the inherent value of the technical option is asserted, and its relational value within the wider educational system downplayed. This clearly takes significant effort, however, raising doubts about the self-evident veracity of statements made. Sainsbury implores:

we must communicate consistently and more effectively the truth that technical education leads to rewarding skilled jobs and opens doors for individuals to progress to the most senior roles.

(Sainsbury 2016, 24)

The assumption that academic study is the first-choice option for those aspiring to such roles is the unstated ‘story’ (Gee 2014a, 174) informing this mission, exposing the social stigma attached to vocational education (James Relly 2021, 519), even while seeking to evade it.

In other ways, however, the documents maintain the status of academic education as a yardstick against which the value of its technical counterpart may be judged. The Skills Plan states: ‘The academic option is already well regarded, but the technical option must also be world-class’ (DBIS 2016, 7), evoking the Leitch Review’s identification of the need for ‘world-class skills’ (HM Treasury 2006), yet implicitly attaching such a label to academic education. This statement is repeated word for word in the first T Level Action Plan, which goes on:

Academic study programmes are already well established following successful reforms to make them a rigorous option that supports progression to employment or further study. […] Provider-based T levels are a new initiative introduced to provide an equally rigorous level 3 classroom-based technical study programme.

(Department for Education 2017, 7–8)

While the document differentiates between academic and technical options based on students’ future aspirations (‘Who are they for?’, Department for Education 2017, 5), the concept of ‘rigour’ is used to assert their equivalence. Standards set by employers remain the ‘benchmark’ (Department for Education 2017, 14) for regulating the quality of T Levels, but the value of both their content and their outcomes is expressed in relation to A Levels. The Action Plan states:

T level programmes are substantial and will be high quality. They are likely to be equivalent in size to a 3 ‘A’ level programme and will have more teaching time built in to enable students to acquire more and better knowledge, skills and behaviours than can be achieved through other vocational qualifications currently offered.

(Department for Education 2017, 8)

This reliance on academic qualifications as the currency through which the value of T Levels is expressed reveals the contradictory pull between asserting the independence of the technical route and defining its position in relation to existing structures. The same tension can be seen in the progression routes anticipated for T Level students. The academic and technical routes are initially distinguished from each other by what they lead to, with ‘higher academic education’ (Department for Education 2017, 5) or degree apprenticeships anticipated for those following the academic route, while T Level students may progress directly to skilled employment or ‘higher levels of technical study, including degree courses with substantial technical content’ (8). In the later Action Plan (DfE 2023), however, progression to higher education, whether technical or not, is presented as a mark of the success of T Levels:

We are pleased that many students from the first T Level cohort entered higher education, with over 400 of the first cohort of around 1000 T Level students being placed into higher education courses in Education and Training, Computing, Architecture, Building and Planning and Social Sciences at a range of institutions

(DfE 2023, 53)

The value accorded to higher education in the public discourse (Wolf 2011, 20) is co-opted in the struggle to build and maintain the relative value of T Levels, despite Sainsbury’s earlier assertions of their independence.

5. Discussion

The policy documents reveal an unresolved tension between notions of value as inherent in the qualification and value as dependent on the qualification’s relational position. Marx’s distinction between the ‘use value’ and ‘exchange value’ of a commodity offers a way of understanding this tension and, consequently, of gaining a critical vantage point from which to view the on-going development of T Levels. While this involves transposing concepts drawn from political economy to education, there is justification for this in the increasing commodification of education over the last forty years, such that, as Lave and McDermott (2002, 22) argue, it now exhibits the same ‘alienated relations of production, consumption, distribution and exchange’ as are found in the capitalist economy.

Marx defines a commodity as something that fulfils a human need. By virtue of its physical properties, it has utility, and through being used or consumed it acquires a use value. It is important to note that a thing does not have a use value in itself, but only through the process of consumption. If we apply this definition to the T Level qualification, the use value of the qualification is not inherent in its content or the qualification specification. It is only realised when it enables the student to do something, such as solving a problem faced on placement or performing a specific task.

A commodity also has an exchange value, determined not by the material quality or utility of the ‘thing’ but by the quantity of labour socially necessary to produce it (McLellan 1977, 424). This enables commodities that are unalike in qualitative terms (such as corn and cloth) to be exchanged. The exchange value of the T Level lies in the labour expended in achieving it (it is debatable whether this is the labour solely of the student or whether it should include that of the teacher and placement provider), but, again, this value is only realised when it is exchanged for something else, such as points allowing admission to a university course, or employment in a specific occupation. A commodity is thus at once a ‘thing’ and a commodity relation [italics in original], that is:

an ensemble of social relations that includes the relations between producers and consumers and under capitalism also includes the owners of the means of production.

(Black et al. 2021, 103)

The T Level as a commodity thus includes the relations between students (producers) and employers (consumers), but also between students and higher education providers, as well as other bodies who gain from the qualification, such as colleges, schools, and awarding organisations. This dialectical understanding of the commodity can therefore offer insights into ways in which the value of T Levels is enmeshed within the contexts of their use and exchange.

5.1. The use and exchange value of T levels

In seeking to highlight the value of the new technical qualification as a ‘distinctive, prestigious, high-quality offer in its own right’ (Department for Education 2017, 17) the policy documents appear to assert its use value. Unlike other vocational qualifications, it purports to hold a ‘substantial body of technical knowledge’ (Sainsbury 2016, 23) and ‘practical skills valued by industry’ (Sainsbury 2016, 24), which allow the student in possession of such knowledge and skills to perform the tasks demanded by employment.

Yet even while asserting the use value of the qualification, the policy documents invoke its relative position as a unit of exchange. To be deemed ‘distinctive’ and ‘prestigious’ it must stand out from other lesser qualifications, the presence of the market further signalled by the reference to the qualification as an ‘offer’. Similarly, the ‘practical skills’ which, on the one hand, may be seen as intrinsic to the qualification, draw their value from the demand for such skills from employers. The ability to exchange the qualification, once awarded, for suitable employment, is seen as the fulfilment, in fortunate synergy, of individual and national economic needs.

The policy documents exhibit tacit recognition, however, that such demand for the qualification from employers is an aspiration rather than a feature of the current labour market, requiring academic qualifications and possible entry to university to provide the currency through which the qualification may be exchanged. Establishing its value with prospective students, parents and employers, involves asserting its equivalence to three A Levels (DfE 2017, 8). Even then, universities have had to be persuaded to accept T Levels on this basis (DfE 2023, 53), marking T Levels out from A Levels, which have a long-established exchange value.

A gap thus emerges between the potential use value of the qualification and its ultimate value as a unit of exchange. As Sainsbury states, ‘Young people will only work hard to get a qualification, and value it highly when they get it, if employers when recruiting give priority to those who possess it’ (2016, 6). This normative statement embodies Allais’ observation that qualifications are seen by governments as ‘a mechanism for translating something obtained in one area to something desired in another’ (2014, 9), with an assumed symbiosis between the two sides. Yet Simmons and Thompson (2011) note the polarising of the UK economy, where a growing proportion of jobs are low-skilled, leading to an ‘increasing mismatch between qualification levels and the availability of employment requiring such credentials’ (29). As Allais points out, ‘the value of a qualification may be dependent on how many other people have it, and not on its intrinsic worth’ (2014, 9), in other words, on its exchange value rather than its use value. The student, as the owner of the commodity, may use it for their own purposes (to help them perform a task more effectively, for example), but may also seek to exchange it for an advantaged position in the labour or education market. As both Lave and McDermott (2002) and Williams (2012, 65) show, students ‘learn to labour’ (Willis 1993/1977), behaving in ways that boost their own credentials but that may alienate them from others and from their own learning, since ‘the learner produces not for himself, but for his or her place in the system’ (Lave and McDermott 2002, 44). The student’s advantaged position is further bolstered by the scarcity of the commodity, achieved through restricted access to the qualification. Conversely, however, if the qualification is so scarce that it remains unknown, its exchange value collapses, and, to adopt Sainsbury’s terms, it fails to ‘work in the marketplace’ (2016, 8).

The contradictions inherent in depending on the scarcity of a qualification for its high exchange value have implications for those prospective vocational students who do not meet the entry criteria. The profit extracted from the qualification in the form of credentials by those admitted to this route, is taken from the labour of those excluded from it. Such scarcity might be countered by widening admission to the qualifications, for example, by lowering the entry requirements, and prioritising factors associated with their use value, such as their extensive industry placement. This echoes Williams’ plea to critical educators in the context of Maths education to ‘de-value’ (2012, 70) their subject by making it ubiquitous. Given that the exchange value of T Levels has yet to become securely established, however, this would pose a threat to their ‘distinctive’ and ‘prestigious’ status as new ‘technical’ qualifications, and risk subjecting them to the fate of multiple previous technical education reforms.

6. Conclusions

Despite efforts to establish a qualification of value in its own right, the worth of T Levels remains contingent on their position within a complex web of relations. On the one hand, T Levels are useful: they expect students to engage with a demanding level of content, which is vocationally relevant and prepares students for specific occupations; the development of both knowledge and skills is further supported by an extensive placement, designed to ensure that students can apply their learning in the workplace. Yet there are many relational factors that undermine this use value. The strong link to employers and employment, which is held up as the primary measure of the quality of T Levels, is threatened by the difficulty of securing sufficient industry placements (DfE 2023, 29). Ofsted, the inspection body for education and skills in England, also notes the poor understanding amongst employers of what students are expected to gain from their placement (Office for Standards in Education Ofsted 2023). The goal of T Levels to provide a route to employment is further undermined by the lack of demand for employees qualified to level 3 in certain subject areas, and the consequent likelihood of progression to higher education rather than employment. Indeed, of the 3,500 students who achieved T Levels in 2023, more than one third secured a higher education place (FEWeek 2023). This is indicative, once again, of the dependence on a flawed conception of human capital which fails to address supply-side elements of the labour market (Fleckenstein and Lee 2018).

Whilst T Levels seek to draw their value from employment, they show the impossibility of securing their value without recourse to existing qualifications. The use of exam-based assessment, the insistence on ‘rigour’, and the reliance on A Levels to express the size and level of the new qualification all point to the persistent dominance of the academic route in terms of status and recognition. Indeed, this is implicit even in continuing references to T Levels as the ‘new gold standard in technical education’ (DfE 2023, 5). Policy makers appear required to navigate a tightrope between insisting on the inherent merit of the new technical route and drawing on the known value of an established qualification to secure its worth. While emphasising that the reference to ‘technical’ rather than vocational education constitutes more than just rebranding (Sainsbury 2016, 23), this discursive assertion of difference remains just that unless the practical use value of the qualification is accompanied by wider recognition of its exchange value. As Ofsted notes, the T Level ‘brand’ is not yet recognised (2023), and until it becomes so by prospective students, parents, employers and other stakeholders, its value will remain insecure (see also Richmond 2018).

This paper contributes, therefore, to long-standing debates about how the status of vocational education may be raised (Billett 2020; James Relly 2021; Raffe 2015). The example of T Levels appears to suggest that reform of a qualification, however well-conceived, will be insufficient in addressing the many factors that contribute to its relative standing, not least the opportunities for employment it affords and its status in relation to academic qualifications. For the introduction of this qualification to achieve significant change in the standing of vocational education it would have to be accompanied by both labour market and wider qualification reform. Without these, T Levels are likely to become either a niche qualification serving a limited range of occupations, or to lose what makes them distinctive in seeking to achieve a broader foothold alongside other post-16 options. In either case, the relative standing of vocational education is likely to remain unchanged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).