The new technical training qualification, the T-level, has been hailed as the most ambitious post-16 education reform for 70 years. Lucy Hodges asks whether it will live up to the hype

When the additional funding for the new technical alternative to the A level, the T-level, was announced by Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, in the Spring Budget, it was welcomed as a game-changer, putting young people who choose a technical or vocational path on the same footing as their more academic counterparts.

The T-level is designed to produce teenagers ready for employment in key industries to bolster the British workforce after Brexit. It is also hoped it will improve Britain’s productivity levels, which lag behind those of our main economic competitors.

These issues are more important than ever as the United Kingdom contemplates its future outside the European Union, possibly without the option to hire European workers to fill the jobs for which British workers are lacking experience.