Future support for T Level and T Level Transition Programme Providers

Tender description

The Department for Education (DfE) is exploring commercial options to appoint a national delivery partner(s) to design and deliver a package of support for T Level and T Level Transition Programme providers to enable them to deliver high quality T Levels, T Level Transition Programmes and industry placements. The three areas of support will help providers to: • be ready to deliver high quality T Levels; • ensure Industry Placements delivered are high quality and consistent; and • design and deliver a high quality Transition Programme. Lot 3: Future Support for T Level and T Level Transition Programme Providers Background T Levels are a new 2 year qualification for 16-19 year old that are co-designed with employers to be introduced from September 2020. Every T Level will include an industry placement with an employer and lasting a minimum of 315 hours to develop the learners’ practical and technical skills for the occupation. The Transition Programme is a new type of 16-19 study programme, specifically designed to ensure students who would not otherwise have been able to access a T Level are well prepared to start their chosen T Level and are more likely to successfully complete it. More information is available here. Required services The purpose of the support package is to ensure T Level and Transition Programme providers are able to deliver high quality programmes. The package includes 3 strands of support: 1) 2 years of support for 2022, 2023 and 2024 T Level providers to help them prepare to deliver high quality T Levels (support starts 2 years prior to T Level delivery) including: • development of a self-assessment tool to enable providers to track their progress; • conducting termly face to face conversations over the 2-year development period with providers to discuss and feedback on the self-assessment; • development of guidance materials; • targeted and more intensive support for some T Level providers who need additional support. 2) Industry placements – support to 2020, 2021 and 2022 providers to deliver high-quality industry placements (support is in-year throughout first 2 years of T Level delivery) including: • providing a tiered- level of support according to need at different stages of the placement, with a particular emphasis on good preparation; • a proactive rather than reactive offer as our expectation is that all eligible providers will engage; • working with the provider to help secure employer and student feedback to help tailor the support; • structured engagement including visits to industry placements where appropriate to ensure the right processes and systems are in place; • targeted advice to providers on key issues, including advice on developing objectives and structuring placements and identifying and addressing gaps in existing guidance; • gathering good practice and lessons learned documents from providers; • design of a self-referral model of support for 2022 providers. 3) Transition Programme (TP) – support to 2022 and 2023 T Level providers to prepare for and deliver the TP in Sept 2022 and Sept 2023, and for 2024 providers to prepare for delivering the TP in Sept 2024 (support to start with an engagement phase, followed by a preparation year and a delivery year) including: • delivery of support to enable providers to design, develop and deliver their transition programmes through a mixture of relationship manager support, peer to peer support and national, regional and virtual events and guidance resources; • gather good practice and lessons learned, sharing these with the Department; develop good practice materials and resources to support providers’ development and delivery. The three strands of support will run to different timescales; the support for provider readiness and industry placements will begin in November 2020 followed by the T Level Transition Programme support starting in Spring 2021. The ITT will therefore ask bidders to set out detailed proposals for how they would deliver the support over a 4 year period from November 2020 to September 2024.