Our latest updates

October 2024 

Updated [10/10/2024]

News for all T Level providers

Please scroll down for subject-specific information. 

Key dates and reminders:

Access our standardisation materials and complete our compulsory administration training

You can now download our standardisation packs from the Portal, and you must complete the relevant training by 28 February 2025.  

The standardisation training materials are compulsory. They’re designed for your delivery teams. They contain detailed information about the moderated components of the Occupational Specialisms (OS), focusing on assessment criteria and marking bands. They’ll give delivery teams the confidence to discuss marks and develop a standardised approach, ensuring that you’re marking consistently and are prepared for the 2025 assessment window.  

To access the standardisation training materials, you’ll firstly need to book your students on to their OS. Then you’ll need to:  

• log on to the Portal
• go to the ‘Bookings’ tab and click ‘View assessments’   
• search for a batch number or product code to find learners on the relevant qualification/assignment you’d like to access training for   
• select all learners   
• scroll to the bottom and click ‘view bookings’   
• click on the desired assessment booking on the relevant session:   

• a further screen will drop down, where you’ll see sections for each assessment. The standardisation materials for moderated assessments are located under the moderated assessment heading:

• click ‘Show Details’ to view the materials and then click to download. If there are two parts to the assessment, the materials will be located under ‘Part 2’:

Compulsory Administration training 

You can find administration training relating to the moderated components on our Preparing for moderation page. The training consists of a series of videos supporting you through the administrative requirements associated with moderation, including but not limited to accessing and uploading assessment materials. Once you’ve completed this training, you must sign and return a declaration form via Microsoft Forms. This will confirm that you’ve completed both the standardisation and administration training.

If you have any queries about these standardisation materials or training, please contact our Moderation team via [email protected]  

Annual Monitoring Review (AMR): complete your self-assessment forms

Last month, your Quality Reviewer (QR) will have confirmed the date of your AMR for this session and given you a link to a self-assessment declaration. This should be completed and returned within 10 working days.

The self-assessment declaration asks you to detail any policies or procedures that have been updated or changed since your last AMR, or approval review for new providers. It also asks you to confirm which T Level qualifications you’re running this session and if you have the correct staff, work placements and physical resources to support delivery. 

The final deadline for all forms to be returned is 14 October. 

Key dates for the autumn 2024 Employer Set Project (ESP) including a reminder to register your students by 1 November

Key dates for the autumn 2024 Employer Set Project (ESP) including a reminder to register your students by 1 November.

Following on from provider consultation throughout 2023-24, we wanted to share the following key date information for the employer set project (ESP) and booking cut offs for the autumn 2024 series.

Remember to register your new students and book second year T Level students onto the Occupational Specialism (OS)

You must register your new cohort of students before 1 November 2024. After this date, you’ll be charged a late registration fee or very late registration fee, in line with our fees and pricing policy. You’ll be unable to register students for the 2024-25 session after 31 July 2025. Take a look at our T Level Portal User Guide for instructions on how to register students.

Please see our Key Dates Schedule for full details of key dates throughout the year. If you require any additional information, please contact our Assessment Delivery team via email at [email protected]. 

Book your second year T Level students onto the Occupational Specialism (OS) 

You must book your second year T Level students onto their chosen Occupational Specialism (OS) for the summer 2025 assessment series and ensure to complete this process before the deadline outlined within the Key Dates Schedule. Please ask your exams team to follow the booking guidelines in the T Level Portal Guide (from page 28).   

Once you’ve booked your students onto their chosen pathway, you’ll gain access to our provider standardisation materials, which were released on 1 October 2024 and must be completed by 28 February 2025. These training materials will support your delivery teams by looking at the moderated component of the OS, focusing on assessment criteria and marking bands and help you to feel confident that you’re marking consistently and are prepared for the 2025 assessment window. 

If any students are no longer completing the qualification or deferring, please notify our Moderation team at [email protected].  

Support and resources:

Support for delivering NCFE T Levels

We look forward to working closely with you in the coming year to support you and your students to achieve the best T Level outcomes. We want to remind you about what we have in place to support you, including:

• regular communications you can expect from us
• the support and resources that’s available from NCFE.

Regular communications and our provider hub

• T Level provider hub: This is a central place on our website to access useful resources and information, including our Key Dates Schedule, events, resources and communications.
• Monthly provider newsletter and communications hub: We provide regular updates on this page and we’ll notify you when there are updates to this via our monthly T Level provider newsletter. Checking our communications hub regularly will ensure you can stay up to date with all the latest information and news.
• End-of-month round up email: This newsletter will share reminders from the last month and anything you might have missed. From time to time, we’ll send emails outside of our newsletters focused on important milestones, for example the upcoming assessment series.
• Keeping us up to date with the right contact in your organisation: If you’re not the most relevant person at your organisation to receive our emails, or you want to add anyone else to our email contact list, please let us know via [email protected].

Resources 

We have a wide range of targeted resources to support your delivery. These include:

• free materials such as schemes of work, sample papers, project briefs, mark schemes and more, and
• additional teaching resources that you can purchase.

We've recently updated the suite of materials and resources available, which can be accessed from the ‘Teaching materials’ tab on the relevant qualification pages on our website. View the full list of resources available, and updated resources that will be available from 16 October 2024.

You can also find information about resources from external specialists, including Gatsby Technical Education Projects and RCNi on our Provider hub.

Support from our Provider Development team

Our dedicated team of experienced teachers and subject specialists provides both general and bespoke support directly to you and your team.  You can access:

• events and webinars
• one-to-one curriculum consultations.

Further support

If you have queries about industry placements, please refer to the Department for Education’s guidance document. Visit this webpage for a list of universities that include T Levels in their entry requirements.

We look forward to working with you over the coming months but in the meantime, if you have any further queries relating to T Levels, please contact us via [email protected].

Special Considerations Policy update

We’re pleased to announce that as part of our ongoing integration with JCQ, we’ve aligned our Special Considerations Policy with theirs, and all applications made will now be under this policy. As a result, we’ll be removing links to our current policy in the coming weeks and replacing them with the JCQ criteria under NCFE branding. Please familiarise yourself with JCQ’s policy.

Should you have any further questions regarding this topic, please contact the Assessment Delivery Team ([email protected])

Have your say:

Complete our provider annual review surveys

To ensure that T Levels remain at the forefront of education, each year they’re reviewed by industry representatives and providers, so that they remain valid and reflective of current industry practice.

We’d like you to have your say and share your feedback with us to inform the review process. Click the links below to tell us your thoughts about our qualification content and learning resources. Please complete the surveys before 31 October 2024:

• annual review of qualifications content
• annual review of learning resources.

Take part in our delivery and assessment focus groups

We’d like to gather insight from you about the delivery and assessment of the T Levels in Digital, Education and Early Years, and Health, Healthcare Science and Science. The information gained will be used to inform our future support and CPD offer.

We’re inviting you and your colleagues to share your views with us as part of a virtual focus group. These will take place in the first term of 2024-25 and will run for approximately one hour each.

We’ll explore topics including:

• managing and getting the most out of industry placements
• the challenges of 'upscaling' and increasing student numbers
• how to prepare students for assessments.

We’ll also share the feedback we’ve received on T Levels during our first four years of delivery and how we’ve responded to this and made improvements for you and your students.

The focus groups will take place at the following times:

• Education and Early Years – 8 October, 10:30-11:30am and 3:30-4:30pm
• Health, Healthcare Science and Science – 9 October, 10:30-11:30am and 3:30-4:30pm
• Digital Business Services and Digital Support Services – 10 October, 10:30-11:30am and 3:30-4:30pm

We'd like as many of you represented as possible, so if you’d like to be involved, please email [email protected] stating which date and time best works for you.

Changes to centre contact details

If any contact details have changed at your centre such as programme contact, head of centre, finance or exams contact, it’s important to let us know as soon as possible. It’s quick and easy to notify us by filling in this form: change of centre contact details form.

With the right contacts, we’ll be able to communicate important updates to the correct individuals and our External Quality Assurers (EQAs) will be able to organise your reviews more efficiently. We also send out automated emails when planning and completing EQA reviews and it's vital that we have the most up-to-date contact, so you can receive a copy of your visit report and Direct Claims Status (DCS) outcome for qualifications that are eligible for DCS.