From Diplomas to T Levels: What 16 years of reform have changed and what remains stubbornly familiar.

This blog was written by Colin Bentwood – SDN Mesma Group Co-Founder

Between 2006 and 2010, I had the pleasure of serving as national director for the leadership and management strand of the 14-19 Diploma rollout.

I worked on behalf of the Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS), now the Education and Training Foundation (ETF), and the National College for the Leadership of Schools and Children’s Services.

It was a very different time. The Labour government invested heavily in capacity building, much of it focused on creating 145 local consortia involving leaders from schools, colleges and other organisations expected to collaborate to deliver the new Diploma qualifications.

In 2010, Michael Gove ‘cancelled’ the programme as one of his first decisions as Coalition Secretary of State. It may have been for the wrong reasons, but it was the right decision. Bussing students around town was impractical and locally designed delivery models became overly complex.

Yet despite the failure of Diplomas, the need for a strong, nationally understood, parentally and commercially backed technical qualification system never disappeared. It was important then and remains so today. Sixteen years later, progress is being made through T Levels and the forthcoming V Levels.

The history of technical education is littered with new qualifications. The harder challenge has always been changing attitudes.

The core problem remains the same: creating respected technical pathways alongside academic routes that improve employer engagement, support progression into skilled employment and build a coherent technical education system.

The major difference is that Diplomas relied on institutional collaboration and a broad hybrid curriculum, whereas T Levels focus on employer-led occupational standards and substantial industry placements to achieve similar goals.

But we are still far from establishing technical education in the hearts and minds of parents and businesses. It is encouraging that the government’s ‘Circuit Breaker’ places strong emphasis on TVET, but without a collective effort across education and skills, will we have moved things forward enough in another 16 years? Will our economy be productive enough to support an increasingly complex and ageing society?

One uncomfortable truth is that governments can create qualifications, but they cannot create esteem. Respect has to be earned through quality, progression and outcomes. If parents, employers and universities genuinely believe a technical route leads somewhere, parity of esteem will follow.

For me, this is not just about economic growth. It is about helping people build fulfilling, productive lives with meaningful careers in the multi-job reality of modern life. Perhaps the biggest lesson of the last 20 years is that qualification reform alone is not enough. Before debating Diplomas, T Levels or V Levels, we should answer a more fundamental question: what sort of young person are we trying to develop? If we cannot answer that clearly, we will continue arguing about qualifications when we should be talking about outcomes. Interestingly, that was one of the central questions in Tomlinson’s blueprint for 14-19 education 20 years ago, and it remains largely unanswered today.

Before looking at lessons learned, let me remind you about what Diplomas actually were and how they differed from today’s T Levels.

One thing Diplomas tried to get right is that learners need visible progression routes. Qualifications matter, but what matters more is where they can lead.

I’m certainly not claiming to have all the answers, but 35 years in the sector and 4 years working on Diploma implementation has left me with a few firmly held views. From that perspective my 3 priorities for strengthening the technical education system would be:

Employer engagement

When I started, there was an impressively funded, locally owned Education-Business Partnership network. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it specialised in connecting schools, colleges and businesses. Schools and colleges are just not good at that, don’t particularly want to do it, and struggle to resource it properly. The order of priority for leaders seems to be 1-teachers 2-leaders 3-specialists 4-everyone else and then maybe employer engagement teams and that’s without even mentioning Ofsted, compliance and funding. I’m not saying all employer engagement is always poor – and there are brilliant strategies and wonderful implementations – but quality is incredibly patchy and with so many demands on employers, unless schools and colleges professionalise their employer-facing staff, systems and processes, it just ain’t going to work, the whole system will try to pick off 1 initiative after another with zero focus on employers as customers, who will mainly switch off.

One lesson from Diplomas remains as true today as it was in 2010: employer engagement works best when somebody wakes up every morning with that as their primary job. We would never expect a geography teacher to run payroll or lead safeguarding. Yet we regularly expect employer engagement to be squeezed into somebody else’s day job.

Careers education in schools

If technical education is ever going to live happily alongside academic routes, young people need high-quality career education from an early age. Every learner and parent should understand the full range of pathways, supported by meaningful time with employers, real labour market insight and clear progression routes. Careers education works best when employers are partners in curriculum, experience and progression, not occasional visitors at a careers fair.

For all our talk about learner choice, it isn’t really a choice if nobody explains the alternatives properly. And explaining alternatives is only part of the challenge. Too many young people make decisions about future careers without meaningful exposure to workplaces, employers or the realities of modern work.

Provider collaboration.

145 Diploma consortia was undoubtedly excessive, but 1 lesson worth preserving is that collaboration improved when organisations focused on learner benefit rather than institutional protection. The strongest partnerships were characterised by trust, shared leadership and a willingness to solve local problems collectively. When that happened, schools, colleges, employers and local authorities were capable of creating opportunities that no single organisation could have delivered alone. Too much of the system still talks about collaboration while rewarding competition. We talk endlessly about collaboration whilst funding, accountability and recruitment systems encourage competition. Then we wonder why collaboration is fragile.

Collaboration cannot be driven by policy alone. It survives when participants can see clear benefit for learners, employers and themselves. That was true during the Diploma era, and it remains true for T Levels today.

20 years on, we’re still debating many of the same issues Tomlinson identified in 2004. Political parties have changed, qualifications have changed and the acronyms certainly have, but many of the underlying problems remain stubbornly familiar. That should make us a bit less excited by the next qualification reform and more focused on culture, behaviour and implementation

I’ve always shied away from taking a stance. I’ve always wanted to help the system be better, not snipe at policy from the sidelines. So, take this for what it is. A few observations from someone who started with YTS and went to Training Credits, Modern Apprenticeships, NVQs, Diplomas, T Levels while A Level chugged away, unchallenged.

• 20 August 2026
• Chloe Bjarkan
• Insights
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