Change in schools is always hard, but changing school-leaving qualifications must be the worst. Minor year-on-year change screws up reliability while major change has to be right the first time because, for that cohort, it will be the only qualification they have.

It is unsurprising that many countries around the world have had the same school leaving qualification (at least in terms of its name and essential structure) for decades, if not centuries: the German Abitur and French Baccalauréat were established in 1788 and 1808 respectively.

In 1968, France added the Baccalauréat Technologique; in the 1970s, Germans started referring to the Fachabitur. Both offered vocational pathways granting entrance to polytechnics and universities.

T levels are meant to add another qualification to this pantheon. And the large and varied qualifications market in England should make a new introduction easier, as it does not require a full system overhaul. But it also heightens market dynamics: like any market product, a qualification will fail if too few students choose it. Moreover, its reputation - its brand - is in part constituted by the students who choose it.

T levels ‘hang in the balance’

The creators of T levels have been very conscious of this. There are already a slew of vocational qualifications out there which serve students who don’t want to take A levels. T levels were always meant to cut into the A-level market, scooping up students who might otherwise not complete. But as yet, the hope that T levels will be “a technical equivalent to A levels” (repeated again by John Cope, CBI head of education and skills) hangs in the balance. There is yet to be a clear message about how many universities will accept them, or how exactly they will be assigned Ucas points.   

To settle the question of their status, all eyes will be on the first cohort of T-level students. Their progression routes will be the first signals about what these qualifications are going to be. Their outcomes will form the results of the first impact studies. This may feel unfair to evaluate a qualification that is just getting going, but it will inevitably happen in a country with some of the best linked education datasets in the world.

This is why Anne Milton’s comments on Tuesday were so incredibly short-sighted. It is one thing to try to be an honest politician, but to say that she would tell her own children to wait out the first year of T levels is the worst possible message one could send. If all the students with choices take this strategy, the first T levels cohort will be made up of the disengaged and on-their-last-chancers. Of course these students deserve good educational programs as much as, if not more, than anyone, but they are not the group you want to try out a major new innovation on (just ask studio schools and university technical colleges…).

‘Leaving it a year’

But the comment likely had an ulterior motive: the concept of “leaving it a year” does not apply when the vast majority of students only make these choices once. This only makes sense if it is Milton’s way of joining the campaign of Jonathan Slater, the DfE permanent secretary, to get T levels delayed. 

Delay should not be the end of the world. In Canada, the province of British Columbia is in the process of introducing a new “grad program” in the form of new courses and assessment procedures for the final three years of school, grades 10-12.

The program has been in development since 2013, but next year’s cohort will be the first to go through the new procedures, after implementation was delayed for a year and assessments put back a further year. As a visitor to the province over the years, I’ve come across some consternation about the delays, but mostly relief at having more time to get to grips with the major changes.

Likewise, when New Zealand completely overhauled its upper secondary program to combine “academic” and vocational units into one certificate (a note for England: it is possible), the implementation timeline was extended by a year in 2000, so that the first students did not enter until 2002. The old sixth form certificate was allowed to co-exist alongside the level 3 certificate for two further years, so that schools only switched over when they felt ready. Today, the new certificate is in near-universal use across the country.

Delays will be forgotten

Ministers in England may feel like they have already delayed T levels by setting back the start date of some of the pathways. But from a brand perspective, it does not matter that only three routes will begin in 2020. These first cohorts will set the tone for what these qualifications are going to be; if the students are difficult to work with or the outcomes are poor, employers and parents alike will turn away from T levels (the apprenticeship levy barely got a year to bed down before businesses were calling it a failure). In decades to come, no one would remember that introduction was delayed a year. But if there is no extra time, it is more likely that no one will remember T levels at all.

Amelia Peterson is a PhD student at Harvard University and an associate at the Innovation Unit