T Level system strategy: conversations with integrated care systems

• BOB ICS has scaled T Level placements from 62 students at pilot to 170 students in 2025.
• A diverse range of placements are on offer including in health, business admin, engineering, and digital sectors.
• A community of practice enhances collaboration amongst employers and education providers.
• Support for smaller organisations is crucial for equitable access to placements.
• A focus on celebrating achievement boosts morale and encourages participation.
• Effective communication and networking are key to developing successful industry placements.
• Documentation and resource sharing prevents duplication of efforts.
• The future focus of the ICS includes expanding placements in primary care and social care.

• As part of celebrating T Level industry placement achievements, employers are invited to apply for T Level Employer of the Year at the annual Apprenticeship and Skills Awards. In 2024 we spoke to a number of those regional finalists who shared their top tips and reflections.
• To find out more about how systems are collaborating to upscale their T Level industry placement delivery NHS Employers spoke to the previous seven industry placement coordinators, tasked with developing placements in their integrated care system.
• Shilp Bhatt references the Strategic Development Network, an organisation funded by the Department for Education to support organisations looking to support T Level learners. Their range of webinars are a useful resource for those starting on their industry placement journey.
• The Gatsby Foundation has developed a suite of resources to support the development of mentors for students on an industry placement.

Sam: Hello everyone and welcome to the first in a series of conversations with integrated care systems about how they are supporting T Level industry placement delivery and upscaling the number and variety of T Level industry placements on offer in their system. I'm Sam Jonas, Program Lead for our T Level programme here at NHS Employers and I'm delighted to be joined today by Shilpa Bhatt, Apprenticeship and Widening Participation Lead and Interim Retention Lead at Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West Integrated Care System, which as you can imagine, we'll be referring to as BOB from now on, as it's a little bit of a mouthful. 

Coming up, we'll be exploring how as a system, you can support organisations with their T Level industry placements, placing T Levels as an integral part to the system-wide talent pipeline. We'll look at the role that the system can take, explore how BOB is developing its strategic direction, and reflect on overcoming challenges.

Please don't forget to check out the other resources we have available to support upscaling T Level industry placements on our NHS Employers T Level hub. Well, fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us today, Shilpa. We'll go straight in with a question. So if you could start by giving us an idea of what the T Level landscape looks like in BOB ICS.

Shilpa: So T Level has been a bit of a journey for us. We were one of the pilots in 2019. So one of the trusts was a pilot. So we had a little bit of a head start on there. But after COVID, when it actually took up, we scaled up. started when in 2022, we had 65 T Level students and it's now grown to around 170 T Level placement students. We have seven local colleges and we have a thriving community of practice. So we have employers and providers in our community of practice. It's a key integral part of our supply for the workforce. You've mentioned that you've scaled up from 62 to I think it was 170 T Level industry placements. What T Levels are those in? Where the students going on industry placement? 

The T Levels we offer in range of disciplines or subjects. We currently have, the majority are health students, of course, but we offer placements in business admin, engineering students, as well as digital students. Our next thing that we're going to look at is the health students. They often have placements, or most of them have placements, in two phases. Some of them have first-year placements in social care, and then they have placements in NHS trusts, care homes, hospital estate teams, community pharmacies and charities. And for example, we've had placements in hospices and dementia charities as well. 

Sam: And I think it's really important that you clarified that they're sort of spending some time in one organisation and some time in another organisation as that really helps give them a solid understanding of the careers they could do in the future.

Shilpa: And some of the things that within our hospital trusts, the departments that have offered placements, the wide range of departments. So we've had placements in maternity unit, transplant units, theaters, spinal wards, dermatology, for example, occupational therapy, physiotherapies. There's a wide range of experiences that students are able to gain from these placements. And wherever possible, the employers try and match the student interest if it's possible. 

Sam: That's great. That's great. Thank you. And you mentioned obviously it's a huge increase from that 62 to that 170. And I would imagine at the same time, the amount of organisations offering it has grown. If you reflect back to the start of when you were first hosting students, what's the sort of progression of organisations? Was it all acute to start with and now has it moved to other areas? It would be great to have a bit of a vague timeline.

Shilpa: Yeah, so when we started, had two acute trusts that started. One was part of the pilot and of course they were ready to role. Our three acute trusts were first forthcoming in offering placements. We had then the community health trust offering placements. Alongside social care were also offering placements. So we had that going in parallel. One of our other community trusts didn't join us until this academic year. So it was a journey to get all employers to come into this programme. We also got charities involved. So I think that's still a bit of a slow kind of area that we need to grow into. And again, primary care is an area that we would like to grow as well. Amazing. Thank you. And we'll be touching on the different support you offer different types of organisations later.

Sam: But just for now, obviously yourself as a system lead, how do you support your colleagues? What's the role that you take when you interact with organisations across the system? 

Shilpa: So I think it's about motivating organisations to work together, share resources, know, managing their emotional, cultural aspects of it. You know, as a group we meet, but we need to kind of how we manage the small providers, giving space to the small providers, as opposed to the large providers who are in the space of providing this large colleges who are providing T Level for the students. But also how I support the employers is by creating positive culture amongst employers, making sure that we work collaboratively, save time, save money. And that I think getting them to understand the benefits of T Level and also getting them to understand that what they can offer and what they can't offer. So it's about that two-way conversation with the providers. 

The providers understand what the employers can manage to offer, what they can't. And I think in all this, it's about enhanced learner experience. As the programme grows, we want to make sure the learners have choice of placements. We are able to develop and grow our programme and be able to offer our students those aspirational possibilities and learners have a voice within all this as well. And it is important, I think, for us as organisation to actually take time and, you know, make sure that we take an opportunity to celebrate what we have done so far. Because very often that celebration, it's almost like we have to recognize that what we have developed is good as well. 

Sam: Thank you. And I mean, I think you've hit the nail on my head. That's the great advantage of having system level direction. It's that facilitation, bringing people together, preventing that rework and as you've correctly identified, it's so crucial to celebrate and what better way than to celebrate with colleagues who are also offering industry placements in the same space? 

Shilpa: Yeah, I think we had a fantastic T Level Thursday event. And I think that kind of highlighted to us that we have got so many T Level students in different disciplines. We had a T Level student, for example, doing digital who was placed in clinical engineering team and it was really nice experience for the others to hear what, so it was really good opportunity to, to see what the students had to say. 

Sam: And I guess it's motivating, isn't it? Because if you're an organisation that offers maybe fewer placements or perhaps is just interested and doesn't yet offer any placements, hearing from colleagues, seeing the success stories and being involved even prior to upscaling or starting on the industry placement journey is crucial.

Shilpa: Yeah. And it is, you know, upscaling that approach but also recognising that everybody's at a different stage of the journey as well Sam, yeah? 

Sam: Absolutely and so a lot of this we'll be discussing later on in this conversation but there were two points I wanted to pull out for the moment. You mentioned about preventing duplication of work in terms of documentation and the like, could you give us any examples of the documentation that through your interactions with employers, I should say organisations, you've been able to help others with. 

Shilpa: So I think one example that I can give is a couple of our employers have developed a student placement workbook together and they are sharing that as a resource together. The other area is there's been discussion about what induction, how they do induction, those kinds of things and sharing resources. Colleges are beginning to kind of share resources as well. So it's about not duplicating, say the advisory group that they are all required to do. So it's another area that they could work together on. 

Sam: And I think you mentioned something really important there. The reflection that education providers are starting to collaborate more closely together. It's something I've heard from a few different systems at this point. And I just think it's fantastic that you're bringing together employers, organisations, health and care organisations who are in turn collaborating more closely, collaborating more strongly. And it's almost like by osmosis, it's going to the education providers who are also collaborating more strongly. So it's just, it's incredible to see that happening. 

Shilpa: Yeah think initially they were feeling a little bit kind of protective about their students and something, an example, when we started the purpose, when we started this community of practice was just to make sure that there is fair access of placements for our students because the larger colleges were occupying the space in there. So I think it was more to kind of make sure that other colleges are getting that access to the employers and the employers are also learning to work with other colleges as well. That was the beginning of our journey of collaborative conversations. 

Sam: Fantastic. And you can see the widening participation aspect of your role coming in there, talking about equity and equality, which is so important, particularly when we're looking at a sort of system strategic level. You mentioned earlier that you're working with some smaller organisations, the voluntary sector, primary care. I would imagine there's still a lot you want to do in that space, but when it comes to that interaction with smaller organisations and a bigger trust, for example, do you find that the support you need to offer differs? 

Shilpa: Definitely, most definitely. So if I give an example, I'll use primary care as an example in this case, you know, it's very difficult for me to reach all the 67 GP practices in our region. And I think what I need to use is the connectors, the PCNs, workforce leads in the PCNs, the learning environment leads, and get that message out through those connectors. I also feel that it is important that they understand what T Levels are because there is very little that is out there for them. So what I have created is a one-pager sort of just for primary care colleagues to actually just see at a glance what the levels can offer, but also get them to think the kind of things that experiences they can offer would be equally valuable and different. 

Something that was challenging for us in primary care was the primary care colleagues came back saying, actually, the curriculum is very much has care aspects to it and we won't be able to offer the care aspects to it and I think we have negotiated with them that the first year the students would get that work in a care home or in a social care setting. And then the more health related part of the curriculum could be kind of met within the placements in primary care. So I think it seems like a good mix of opportunities for the students as well. 

Sam: You mentioned something really important there because there are, students can go to up to two employers or three if it's through a network. There is the opportunity for the placements to be slightly different. You of course wouldn't expect some of the more clinical skills to be developed during a placement in care, but there's so many important skills you've touched upon such as communication and presentation skills, professionalism. There's so much that can be learned in different environments, which is why it's fantastic to hear that you're considering that as part of the strategy. It's about developing a well-rounded student who has a solid understanding of some of those roles in health and care. 

Shilpa: I think the whole point of getting the students to come and attend our community of practice was to help them build their confidence, know, that communication, that public speaking, that getting that other skills was so important for them, but also networking with each other. think the students were delighted to see, even if it was on the screen, they were delighted to see other students from other colleges sharing their experience. And I think it's worth considering how we can do more often of such activities. 

Sam: Absolutely. Thank you. You've mentioned a few times as community of practice. What does this look like in practice? If you'll excuse the pun, how does this, how does this take shape? 

Sam: The way it started, like it started organically to improve access for our students. And I invited all the colleges that were locally providing T levels at the time. This was in 2022, we made a start and then the employers that were currently providing placement, also would want to kind of look at it. Initially, we started to think about the capacity of placements and also, like I said, making sure that the smaller colleges that get space for it. 

Now it has become a thriving forum, if you want to call it, or community of practice, but we have a very strong engagement. The colleges have representatives from different courses. The employers participate and we have done some amazing things. So we have thought about increasing placements and it came from that that they would like to do a webinar for introduction to T Level and aimed at anybody in the organisation so that front line managers would then hear what T Level are. And we developed that ourselves. We had local colleges who presented and shared how they prepare the students for placements, what is involved in the curriculum, and what sort of placement patterns are available through different colleges. 

The employers then presented about the environment, the opportunities, the paperwork that is required. And we had about 70 people from primary care, from range of different organisations attending that webinar. We had then planned a second part to it, which we did with, actually we did it with SDN. That was effective coaching and mentoring. And that's was again bespoke done for BOB and we wanted to highlight how what support the T Level students would require when they're on placements but also it is a fantastic opportunity for our support staff to take on that role so the burden is shared between the line managers and the support staff who are day-to-day mentoring those young people so it was fantastic. Again, a of our students participated. Our line managers were interviewed. So it was really well attended, well received by the organisation. So it's another way we are trying to grow our placements and opportunities for young people. 

The other areas we have tried to work on is how we facilitate consistent approach to documentation induction and have similar values and standards to the activities that young people are offered. So I think it's that whole piece of things. Again, at this time of the year in summer, we will look at what opportunities or how many placements each employers are able to offer. And that would help the training providers plan for their placements or finding placements as well. So it's a bit of planning, a bit of growing the future workforce, know, future placements, that kind of thing. Yeah, also we want to increase in different areas as well. 

Sam: Thank you, Shilpa. There's so much in there. I'm trying to work out where to start to ask you to elaborate on. That's fantastic. But just before I do, just for anyone listening, the SDN is the Strategic Development Network who organise a huge and varied range of T Level webinars for those looking to embark on or develop their T Level journey. 

So going back to something you said, Shilpa, we've talked about what this disperse community of practice does and all the different areas it's supporting that sort of upscaling agenda of T Level. But just on a practical sense, do you have a, we hear from a lot of organisations, they have networks or monthly meetings or quarterly meetings. How does it look in BOB ICS? 

Shilpa: So we've deliberately not kept it too frequent. sort of meet quarterly kind of things. It's a very informal group. We tend to sort of have set items on the agenda. it's, you know, updates from employers, updates from providers, any highlights, any issues, challenges, that sort of things. 

And then once a year we do this learner voice celebration type of you know, T Level Thursday is the classic date in our calendar. And I think increasingly we have now got more providers coming on board. And the kind of things that I tend to do to prepare so that we don't have too many frequent meetings is I try and send them a little questionnaire to say, you know, how many placements are you able to offer? A little bit around looking at new areas that the providers are looking at developing. It's a bit of a questionnaire both to the providers and through the employer so that when we are at the meeting, we can then have a sort of a informal mapping, if I call it, of the placements as well as the current status of students. And then the other kind of opportunities that we have, I talked about the webinars, the community of practice has been involved in doing that.

But also I think it is important that we kind of make sure that there is consistency of opportunities, consistency of how we deliver and the quality is maintained as well. And then they often say we need more placements for science. there, who should we contact? So I think it's about me connecting them to different departments as well.

Sam: That's such an important aspect of system level support, you knowing who to connect them to, having connections in those areas, sort of functioning, I guess, as that first port of call for those who might be interested. Y

Shilpa: Yeah, but it's also about creating that positive culture amongst the employers. Often in this current climate, they might want to say, we've got too much to do, but it's that getting them to understand the value and the benefits that it may bring in the future for our workforce as well. 

Sam: Cheerleader and facilitator and advocate. We've talked a little bit about the fantastic webinars that you've put together with the community of practice and it sounds like from your attendance figures, I think you mentioned 70 for the last one, that you're getting through to a lot of different areas who might have an interest in T levels or want to find out more. 

One of the challenges we hear about quite common is getting that, raising that awareness, how to make sure people understand what the T Level is. What methods did you use to get the word out there? You obviously decided to do a webinar together, but then it's how do we bring people in to attend it? 

Shilpa: Yeah. So I think the key thing is I deliberately decided to make it bespoke for BOB so that I used the local T Level students. I used the local employers, so it was very clear on the poster that they will be hearing from the local trust, local organisations about their experiences. You will be able to find out who the local colleges are. How did I get the word out? Through my connectors, actually. 

So within the NHS Trusts, we had different education teams that actually put the word out, I even asked the providers actually to take it to the social care placements that they currently link with. So within the social care space as well, we navigated our way there within primary care. had interest from primary care as well on that webinar. And again, through primary care training hubs, as well as colleagues in NHSE who helped me get the word out to primary care. So I think I would say use your connections to get it out. 

Sam: Let's now move to the future. How would you like to see the guidance that you're able to offer at that system level develop in the future? What's your next plan, I guess? 

Shilpa: So I think the next phase for us is to align whatever we do in the future with the national changes that are happening both in health and education and integrated systems, think, will be a part to it. But also we'll need to re-evaluate their roles as well as the strategies that we are having for our workforce. So I would say the areas I would quite like to focus on is a consistent approach to data collection, but also particularly focusing on destination data and showing that impact, because I don't think we show enough impact of this fantastic experiences that young people have, but also they are the future pipeline of our workforce. 

I mentioned earlier that I want providers to collaborate a bit more. And one of the examples, I would quite like them to focus on not going and setting up their own advisory group. But in effect could have a much more meaningful engagement if all the providers came together and then employers are not pulled into meetings with three different providers. So them coming together and they are keen to get employers to contribute to the curriculum wherever possible. And then the other area, we mentioned primary care. Yes, we have a handful in primary care placements, but where I want to grow is in that space for primary care. So I'm hoping in next academic year, we have, you know, more placements in primary care. I also would like to grow in engineering and science space as well. And giving more opportunities for our learners to network and share their stories. 

Sam: Wonderful. Thank you, Shilpa. All very worthy aims, I would say. So now I'd like to move to advice, if you'd be willing to share some with those who are listening. The first question I sort of have for you in this is what advice do you have for other systems looking at upscaling their T Level industry placement delivery? What have you learned along the journey since the pilot handful of years ago that you'd like to share any reflections? 

Shilpa: I would say certainly it works much better at the system level. Identify who you're champions and connectors are and understand their areas of expertise because you don't have to do everything. Those champions can help you draw into their expertise is what I would say. All organisations and employers will be at different stages of development. They might have different challenges, but they also might have unique strength. Some may take time to join the system working process, so give them a bit of space and time. Don't expect everything to happen overnight. Manage your expectation of colleges, but at the same time, time to work with them. For example, know, help them connect to new placements and things, because I think they are also working to grow the T Level as well. 

I think I mentioned earlier, and I'll say it again, take time to pause and celebrate your collective achievements. Because I think whether you showcase your achievements through data or through student voices or through case studies, all that is equally important, but also giving those individual colleges and employers opportunities to shout out about their own achievements as well. So, you know, it's not always focusing about the system achievements, but about those individual organisations. 

And I would say, don't forget at the centre of all this is the learners and their experience. So always keep that in mind, work from by thinking about the learner at the centre of this. 

Sam: So crutial. Thank you. To round us off today, are there any success stories you particularly want to highlight? 

Shilpa: I think in terms of success stories, obviously the webinars were a huge success. Our T Level Thursday was successful as well. But what I would want to particularly kind of highlight is we've had placements in really different places like dermatology department and digital students having placements in clinical engineering department. So there's limitless opportunities that we can create for these young people. Yeah just carry on offering those opportunities wherever possible.

Sam: Definitely such an important reminder to remember to celebrate so thank you very much Shilpa for speaking to us today I found the conversation incredibly insightful really highlighting what can be done at a system level to support colleagues, whether that be through facilitating, collaborating, supporting with guidance and advice or simply bringing people together to have a really successful webinar, you've highlighted the full range of that system level support so thank you, I'm sure colleagues who are listening to this will also find it incredibly useful, please do keep in touch, it will be great to hear how this continues to grow. 

Shilpa: Thank you for having me Sam, it was a pleasure talking to you as well.

Sam: For those listening to this conversation, this is just one of a number of conversations we're having and please do as ever get in touch if you want to share your own journey with us here at NHS Employers.