Tag Archives: T levels

Gender expectations: alive and well in T Level courses?

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The DfE has released data about entrants to ‘T Level’ courses starting in 2025. T Level and T Level foundation year entrant data 2025 to 2026 – GOV.UK

What is striking about the data are the gender disparities between different courses, and how much work among this group of young people and their families may still need to be undertaken if stereotypes are to be confronted.

For instance, 95.6% of those starting the Education and Early Years course were female, whereas 96.9% of those starting the Building Services Engineering for Construction course were males. Males also dominated the three digital courses, whereas the craft and design course participants were 90.4% female. Males made up two thirds of the Agriculture Land Management and Production, but only 19.7% of the Animal care and Management

There was more parity in courses such as Media Broadcast and Production, the Science courses and, interestingly, the overall total ended up 49.3% female and 50.7% male!

The DfE note that 27,446 learners started T Levels in the 2025 to 2026 academic year, up from 25,508 in the 2024 to 2025 academic year. This represents a 7.6% increase in entrant numbers. From the time series data, it looks as if more women are now taking these qualifications.

Table 3: T Level entrants split by T Level pathway and legal sex, 2024 to 2025 academic year

RoutePathwayFemaleMale
Agriculture Environmental and Animal CareAgriculture Land Management and Production35.8%64.2%
Agriculture Environmental and Animal CareAnimal care and Management80.3%19.7%
Business and AdministrationManagement and Administration42.7%57.3%
ConstructionBuilding Services Engineering for Construction3.1%96.9%
ConstructionDesign Surveying and Planning for Construction17.5%82.5%
ConstructionOnsite Construction (discontinued)6.9%93.1%
Creative and DesignCraft and Design90.4%9.6%
Creative and DesignMedia Broadcast and Production43.8%56.2%
DigitalDigital Data Analytics (formerly Digital Business Services)12.9%87.1%
DigitalDigital Software Development (formerly Digital Production Design and Development)12.0%88.0%
DigitalDigital Support and Security (formerly Digital Support Services)8.0%92.0%
Education and Early YearsEducation and Early Years95.6%4.4%
Engineering and ManufacturingDesign and Development for Engineering and Manufacturing9.2%90.8%
Engineering and ManufacturingEngineering Manufacturing Processing and Control12.0%88.0%
Engineering and ManufacturingMaintenance Installation and Repair for Engineering and Manufacturing9.7%90.3%
Health and ScienceHealth91.8%8.2%
Health and ScienceScience53.4%46.6%
Health and ScienceHealthcare Science72.1%27.9%
Legal Finance and AccountingAccounting34.5%65.5%
Legal Finance and AccountingFinance22.6%77.4%
Legal Finance and AccountingLegal Services64.6%35.4%
Total 49.3%50.7%

There are now going to be ‘V Levels’ to add to the mix of qualifications that young people can study for after the age of sixteen. Should we be more worried about the gender split in courses more closely linked to careers than for academic subjects, or doesn’t it matter at all?  

Personally, after thirty years of trying to change attitudes to career choices, I find this data somewhat disheartening, especially as the majority of classroom teachers in secondary schools are now women. It seems as if teachers cannot override stereotyping, and we need to do more careers and work experience to challenge entrenched attitudes.

Why ’V’ Levels are important for Labour

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Alongside her campaign to become deputy leader of the Labour Party, the Secretary of State for Education has found time today to announce a new post-16 set of qualifications, called ‘V’ Levels, presumably to bring order to the landscape of such qualifications that she sees as confusing.

As I write this blog, the exact details of the new qualification to sit alongside ‘A’ & ‘T’ Levels has not yet been announced to the House of Commons, so we don’t yet know about the nature and format of ‘V’ Levels in detail.

However, as the following table shows, they may be important to many Labour Party members fighting non-metropolitan seats in the north of England, The Midlands and the South West region.

RegionNumber of pupils completing key stage 4Sustained education, employment & apprenticeshipsSustained education destinationSustained apprenticeshipsSustained employment destination
North East26,93191.581.74.65.2
South West53,11193.984.14.75.0
Yorkshire and The Humber58,91892.082.84.34.9
North West79,55092.183.34.14.7
East Midlands50,00292.684.24.24.2
East of England64,44594.287.42.74.1
West Midlands64,56592.485.23.24.0
South East90,64994.387.72.64.0
London84,42794.692.00.91.7
Outer London55,92194.892.01.01.7
Inner London28,50694.191.90.61.5

The data is for 2023 and was published last week by the DfE as Destinations of key stage 4 and 5 students: 2024 – GOV.UK although it doesn’t seem to contain the 2024 data yet.

London students, and especially those in inner London Key Stage providers seem overwhelmingly to remain in a sustained education institution, albeit not necessarily the institution where they undertook their Key Stage 4 courses. Less than 1% of inner London students proceeded to a sustained apprenticeship. Obviously, there is more room for such apprenticeships to be offered to these pupils. By contrast, the further away from London the region, the more likely that over 4% of students will proceed to apprenticeships.  

The pattern for employment, not regarded by previous government as a key option after the raising unofficially of the learning leaving age to eighteen, mirrors that of apprenticeships, with higher rates the further away from London students are located. Indeed, London is something of an outlier in respect of employment rates for this group, following the pattern expected after the raising f the school leaving age.

Missing for the table are the NEETS – those not in any category in the table. Will ‘V’ Level qualifications help reduce this number, and might it help if such qualifications started at 14, the age when many NEETS fall out of interest in schooling? I was going to write, ‘fall out of love’, but many, I suspect, were never actually in love with schooling.

Anyway, I will be interesting to see whether the announcement helps the Secretary of State’s own election campaign and, if so, whether she will be in place to take the initiative forward?

Better outcomes but rankings don’t change much

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Congratulations to everyone receiving examination results today. And a big Thank you to all the other family members, including siblings, the teachers and other school staff, and, indeed, anyone that helped the candidates achieve their grades.

In the first year of this blog, 2013, now available as a book, TEACHERS, SCHOOLS AND VIEWS ON EDUCATION: How 2013 unfolded as viewed from my blog eBook : HOWSON, JOHN: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store I wrote a post comparing the percentage of A* grades between physics and media studies. At that time physics had a much higher percentage of A* outcomes than did media studies. That didn’t make physics easier than media studies as an ‘A’ Level, but might reflect the policies around who could take the subject, and of those that took the subject who were entered into the examination.

Fast forward to 2025 and we find the following

CategorySubjectYearNumber SatA* %A*-A %A*-B %A*-C %A*-D %
A Level UKPhysics20254495711.232.152.971.786.0
A Level UKMedia / Film / TV Studies2025233202.414.850.582.396.0

A level and Level 3 results – Summer 2025 – JCQ Joint Council for Qualifications

There is still a big difference between the percentage of candidates in the two subjects gaining A*-A results. Such differences makes it is risky to talk about average outcomes when there is a difference of more than 17 points in the percentages gaining A*-A grades between the two subjects. It is worth blanking out the subject names and asking a random group of people to tell you which set is physics and which media studies, a subject sometimes rubbished by politicians as easy.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been doing some work on funding across the country, and an apparent bias towards London, as measured by changes pupil teacher ratios during the past 50 years as a proxy for funding. The paper can be found on Researchgate at: (PDF) PTRS OVER TIME: A REVIEW OF PUPIL TEACHER RATIOS BETWEEN 1974 AND 2024 AND TWO PERIODS OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT RE-ORGANISATION PTRS OVER TIME: A REVIEW OF PUPIL TEACHER RATIOS

It is worth looking at how the regions fared in the ‘A’ level results. The table places the regions in the order that the percentage of A*-A grades achieved and the change between 2023 and 2025

regionDifference % A grade
North West2.50%
Yorkshire and Humber2.30%
London2.10%
England1.60%
East Midlands1.50%
East1.40%
West Midlands1.30%
South East0.90%
North East0.80%
South West0.70%

DfE release 14th August 2025

It would be interesting to drill down within the regions to see whether types of schooling -see next post for national outcomes – makes a difference. Why is the improvement so small in the South West and North East regions? Is the small increase in the South East partly a result of the higher number of candidates from either private schools or selective schools where outcomes were already high. This will be one static to track over the next few years to see any possible change due to the VAT imposition on private schools.

I am sorry that there is less to say about T Levels and other Level 3 qualifications that are equally as important as A Levels to both those that took them and society as a whole.