Recommendation 23

The Department’s current “best judgement” is that T Levels will be 25% more valuable than other level 3 qualifications (around £23,000 per student over their lifetime, in 2019–20 prices).71 It will get a better understanding of this uplift as the programme matures. For example, it uses assumptions on students’ future earnings which are inherently uncertain.72 The Department acknowledged that its judgements were best estimates at this stage as so few students had completed T Levels making it hard to generate evidence on longer lifetime earnings. It described students moving into work and higher-level study as good signs of the quality and value of T Levels.73