One in three T-level students drop out of health course

Nearly 1 successful 3 students doing a T-level successful wellness and subject driblet retired successful their archetypal year, according to a caller report.

The Education Policy Institute (EPI) says T-level students wide are 20% little apt to implicit their qualification than students connected different types of courses.

Health students saw precocious levels of dropouts aft botched exam papers successful 2022, which saw the exam committee liable fined £300,000.

A Department for Education (DfE) spokesperson said the findings showed wide pupil retention rates were "improving arsenic providers turn much acquainted with delivering the courses".

T-levels are present successful their 5th year, aft archetypal being rolled retired successful 2020.

They are two-year vocational courses taken aft GCSEs, which absorption connected subjects similar education, operation and IT, and see a enactment placement that makes up astir 20% of the course.

Just implicit 16,000 students started a T-level successful 2023. Although 2024 figures are not yet available, enrolment numbers person been rising each year.

But the rollout has drawn disapproval from the regulator Ofsted, and the government's education prime committee, with issues varying from the prime of teaching to the availability of enactment placements.

The latest EPI study besides highlights a persistent contented with students dropping retired of courses early.

The dropout complaint of first-year wellness and subject students was 31%, the study said. Only legal, concern and accounting courses had a higher rate, with 33%.

Aleasha Lancaster said 3 of her wellness T-level classmates dropped retired aft the exams fiasco successful 2022.

Ofqual said it had had to instrumentality "unprecedented" enactment against the exam board, NCFE, to get 1,200 students' results recalculated, aft it failed to make "valid question papers".

Aleasha, 20, said it was a "big shock" erstwhile questions astir "the acidity of volcanoes" came up successful her subject exam, alternatively than the health-based questions she had been preparing for.

The healthcare T-level is recognised by NHS Employers arsenic 1 mode young radical tin commencement their vocation successful nursing, oregon different NHS roles.

Aleasha has gone connected to survey intelligence wellness nursing astatine university, but said she and her classmates often felt similar "guinea pigs", having the people tested connected them successful existent time.

"I deliberation that due to the fact that the lecturers didn't truly cognize the people themselves, it was similar the unsighted starring the blind," she said.

She said the people was sometimes disorganised, and lacked structure.

The EPI study besides raised issues which galore T-level students person recovered with utilizing their qualification to get into university.

It comes aft a informing from the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) past month, that the fig of radical studying to go nurses has "collapsed" successful each portion of England.

“Across the NHS unsocial determination are tens of thousands of vacancies, and request for services continues to rise," RCN's Prof Nicola Ranger said astatine the time.

"We desperately request much radical to articulation the profession, but the world is nursing numbers are going successful the incorrect direction."

UK-wide Ucas information from August recovered 23,800 students were accepted connected to nursing courses for this world twelvemonth – 340 less than past twelvemonth and 6,350 less than successful 2021.

The EPI study recovered that astir fractional of wellness and subject T-level students who driblet retired aboriginal extremity up leaving acquisition altogether.

It besides criticised the T-level modulation programme (TLTP), a instauration twelvemonth of survey to assistance students hole for the T-level, with lone 2% of wellness and subject TLTP students progressing to the afloat course.

T-levels were launched by the erstwhile Conservative government, which planned to marque them the main way into vocational acquisition by defunding alternate courses, similar BTecs, with overlapping taxable areas.

Critics person warned that galore students who mightiness not beryllium suited to T-levels could beryllium near with less options for post-16 acquisition if the alternatives are removed.

The caller Labour authorities said it would proceed with T-levels, but it is considering whether to proceed defunding different courses.

The effect of that reappraisal is expected earlier the extremity of the year.

A spokesperson from the DfE said: “We invited these findings that amusement T-level students are much apt to spell onto precocious apprenticeships and different higher levels of survey than different vocational qualifications."