Case Study: Supporting T Level progression with Keele University – routed in collaboration

T Level students are excellent. They develop a unique blend of academic and professional skills throughout their studies and many are keen to progress to higher education. They are driven by a passion for a particular vocation and have a range of professional skills from the moment they enter higher education or the workplace. Many are eager to build on their existing skills and develop them further at university.

Here at Keele University, we’ve worked hard to put our T Level entry requirements front and centre alongside other level 3 qualifications. All our course pages clearly tell students exactly what they need to study and then achieve.  We also have a route for all our courses outside of medicine and veterinary science, although there is a T level route into medicine via our foundation year.

Information empowers young people to make the best choice for them at every stage of their educational journey. So, if we accept T Levels, let’s put the work into how we make that clear to prospective students.

A long mapping exercise followed, where collaboration with experts in the college space was key. We spoke to the experts leading T Level delivery and connected academic colleagues with teaching staff in colleges to mutually enhance understanding.

The importance of our partners in colleges cannot be overstated. These are the experts working with these student’s day in, day out and nobody knows the T Level quite like them. Harnessing that expertise, setting entry criteria collaboratively, and having a route for complex questions was vital for us to progress with confidence and pace.

Starting with a collaborative mindset, we continue to host two T Level networking and development round table events, bringing together the college and university communities. This allows for knowledge exchange between the colleges, but also for university staff (both admissions and academic) to build and enhance their own T Level knowledge.

For providers, do think about who your champions are. They are often in school and college liaison, outreach or student recruitment teams and are driven to engage with you directly. These are your strongest links into your universities and have the power of influence and connections within their institutions to ensure they are set up to support your T level learners.

We know we’ve still got work to do at Keele to keep improving and embedding our approach.  

Nonetheless, we will always do our best to put the student at the heart of our work and remain steadfastly committed to collaborating between higher education and colleges to produce evidence and insight-informed policy.