It’s fair to say that T levels continue to be the main preoccupation for many in the FE sector. And this isn’t just since Justine Greening’s recent announcement about the selection of the first subjects, the confirmation of timescales and the appointment of employer panels. In colleges, T levels have become the biggest topic of conversation since area reviews. Indeed, the mergers and turf wars have been subsumed into conversations about specialisation within the T-level framework.

The government, too, continues to put a great deal of emphasis on them - T levels have become the “proof” that it cares about improving technical education. Anne Milton, the newish apprenticeships and skills minister, described them in Tes as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to boost technical education” (“Collaboration is at the core of the plan for T levels”, 20 October).

Never mind that such opportunities - as well as skills ministers - seem to come along much more frequently. As thinktank the Institute for Government said, this is the 29th such opportunity since the early 1980s.

But to be fair to Milton and her colleagues, it’s not just the Department for Education telling this story. Chancellor Philip Hammond, business secretary Greg Clark and prime minister Theresa May have all piled on expectation, as recent budgets and the industrial strategy have offered extra cash and attention in return for an easy headline or a line to take in an interview on the Today programme.

I’ve written here before about how T levels may not be all that it’s hoped they’ll be. The lines to take, sector consensus and overall hype tend to obscure the fact that, even if they go to plan, it is likely to be a decade before T-level “graduates” enter the labour market. While three T levels will be in place from 2020, the current plan is for full roll-out in 2022, meaning that the earliest possible entry to the labour market across all subjects will be from 2024 onwards - and later if, as is likely, many go on to further technical study at level 4+ (where the real skills gaps tend to exist). So that’s after Brexit and the next general election. That’s an awfully long time in politics and, so it happens, in vocational educational reform.

So, returning to the industrial strategy as the context for reform, it’s clear that both it and FE need other tools and approaches in the short and medium term, too. And they need to make sure that there is some strategic capacity left over with which to do it. The challenges are piling up: some £200 million unspent in the adult education budget; learner loans totalling nearly £1 billion since 2013 left in the Treasury coffers.

Together with less-than-optimal engagement with apprenticeships and the levy, it shows that colleges are (much like universities) homogenising around young, full-time students at the expense of other groups and issues. That’s important, but other things matter at least as much. Both ministers and colleges need to shorten their horizons from the helpfully vague view of a future workforce, and think rather more about the one that exists today.

The budget next month will likely talk about the importance of T levels and institutes of technology, but also about places, people and skills for particular sectors. Colleges and DfE ministers should be thinking more about these agendas than they are. That includes more of a focus on improving productivity and economic growth in the next few years, and difficult issues around devolution, specialisation and “left behind” communities. Among all of these lies the biggest prize of all: public support and consent for FE as a real political priority.

You might be forgiven for thinking that T levels and their specialist routes, capacity, extra hours and work experience would be enough to concentrate on. But they’re not - and you won’t be.

Andy Westwood is professor of government at the University of Manchester and a former government special adviser