With the recent government announcement of the Industrial Strategy, Post 16 skills plan for Technical Education and the new T-Levels being elevated to the same position at A-Levels, its an interesting time in the world of education and skills.
As a company we have always been focused on providing high quality, easy to understand information on the labour market and skill requirements of employers to students and parents through our insights product and GoCareer careers portal. We are pleased to see the reduction in the amount of choices available, and raising of technical education to the same level as academic routes, but would caution there is still a long way to go before careers professionals, teachers and parents are on the same page with regards to the routes available and that we are not reducing the overall range of offers too far, but giving those who wish to study more esoteric options the cost/benefit of doing so.
We would recommend a concerted marketing effort by Government to push the message that the labour force needs increasingly higher level post 16 education, coupled with life long learning to ensure we get the most from the education budget and that the responsibility is always with the individual to manage their career plan, and invest in continual learning and skills development. With schools and parents being blinkered by the academic only options and push to increase participation in university education this will take a few years to reverse the policies of the past 10 years of increased HE participation as the only route open.
Here are the likely top sectors which T-Levels will be aligned to
Potential T-Levels by sector (ONS employment stats)
- Transport and Logistics Numbers employed: 589,509
- Engineering and Manufacturing Numbers employed: 1,319,645
- Social Care Numbers employed: 865,941
- Protective Services Numbers employed: 398,400
- Legal, Finance and Accounting Numbers employed: 1,325,482
- Health and Science Numbers employed: 915,979
- Hair and Beauty Numbers employed: 293,004
- Creative and Design Numbers employed: 529,573
- Digital Numbers employed: 351,649 (*1.7million according to Tech Nation report)
- Construction Numbers employed: 1,625,448
- Childcare and Education Numbers employed: 1,060,804
- Catering and Hospitality Numbers employed: 568,998
- Business and Administrative Numbers employed: 2,204,478
- Agriculture, Environmental and Animal Care Numbers employed: 454,726
- Sales, Marketing and Procurement Numbers employed: 957,185
For existing A-Levels and Higher education is has already been noted from the CIPD that over 50% of graduates end up in non-graduate jobs and the sustained employment data from DfE supports this.
If you are going to go down the Academic route then we would recommend downloading our Linking Education to Employment guide
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