Employer support fund for T Level industry placements

DfE are launching a one-year employer support fund. This fund will provide financial assistance to employers offering high-quality T Level industry placements in the financial year 2023 to 2024.

What the employer support fund is for

From April 2023, employers can claim funding to cover legitimate costs associated with hosting a T Level industry placement student. This could include:

• set-up costs
• equipment
• staff training

More guidance on the types of costs that employer can claim for will be available shortly.

Eligibility

Any employer who offers a suitable placement opportunity for a T Level student is eligible to claim for legitimate costs.

Claims cannot be made for placements that started before 1 April 2023.

Funding

Employers will receive the funding from the T Level provider where the student is studying.

We’ll allocate all T Level providers an amount of money based on their T Level student numbers.

Employers will need to provide basic information about their business, as well as evidence of the costs they are claiming for as part of a short declaration form.

The provider will be responsible for:

• validating any claims
• making the payment to the employer once a start date has been agreed or once a placement has commenced
• reporting back to DfE on the claims they have paid out via an online tool

We’ll publish full guidance on the employer support fund for both employers and providers in March 2023.  Providers will also receive confirmation of their allocations at this time.

Sector Response

AoC interim director of education policy Cath Sezen said:

“Today’s T level funding announcements will be welcomed by colleges. We hope that the employer fund in particular will help engage businesses to offer placements which in turn will help meet their skills gaps. The higher rates for T levels will help colleges deal with considerable challenges in recruiting staff for these new qualifications. However, to make real impact funding needs to be a permanent fixture. T levels are large programmes requiring specialist teaching expertise which is difficult to find, fund and keep.

“And funding alone will not address college concerns that T levels will only meet the needs of those young people who have achieved good GCSE grades at 16, rather than those who have lower starting points but flourish on current qualifications which are going to be defunded. There is a real risk that a large minority in future won’t have a suitable qualification to work for.

“These are young people who currently go onto successful careers in the health service and construction. Defunding is a blunt and unnecessary instrument which needs to be stopped before it damages young people’s life chances.”