BTEC/T level/other vocational 25/26

[BTECnewbie]

Hello all. My DS will hopefully be starting a level 3 extended diploma in September (assuming he gets the grades). I know very little about BTECs having come through the A level route myself. So I’d love to have a support thread for parents of kids taking vocational qualifications this year.

We'd been worried about the narrowing of options at 16 but I've come to view it as a positive. There have been so many news reports recently about post-grads struggling to find work that I now think having two years' more practical experience in a niche subject will give them a head start. Even more so with the impact AI is going to have on the jobs market in the next five years. Plus my DD is so passionate about her subject that I can't actually imagine her doing anything else for a job!

Narrowing options only matters if you might be interested in the options you are excluding. Even doing A levels narrows options.

Thanks for the new thread. It should be really useful for those of us who have had no experience of BTEC before. My DD is nervous about starting somewhere new but is adamant she wants to do her L3 Extended Diploma.

@TheFunSponge Same here with the nerves - none of DD's friends are going to her college or studying BTechs so it's very much starting from scratch. What subject is your DD taking?

Super, she has a couple of friends going to the same place but different courses. She's doing Art. What is your daughter going to study?

She's doing Animal Management. She's wanted to work with animals since she was tiny!

Although I worry about her narrowing her options, as a previous poster said, it's better to do something you enjoy. The A levels she would have chosen would probably narrow her options too I think. The workload looks huge for the BTEC too.

Hi all!

DD's doing a L3 Extended Diploma from September - but with RSL so think not "officially" a BTEC but basically the same thing. Music in terms of subject.

She did a BTEC L2 in place of a GCSE so we have some experience of them.

I would say that as a parent it is worth being very, VERY on top of the requirements.

DD's college are very keen on parents being involved and have the whole parent's portal, parent's evenings, reports system, but I know a lot of colleges don't.

Our experience with the L2 is that they are brilliant for kids who struggle with exams due to SEN (working memory, processing speed, dyslexia etc) but require a lot of attention to detail and making sure every box is ticked and they are submitted on time. Working out exactly what is required can be a flipping nightmare though.

Do not let them sit back and relax as it's very much not like A levels where you could potentially coast through and then revise like crazy at the end and still get stellar grades.

Dd is hopefully doing RSL L2 Music Practitioners alongside her A levels instead of an EPQ. I hope it isn't going to be too much work but she has the option to drop it if she thinks it will impact on her other grades. She did GCSE art and worked really hard on the coursework and enjoyed it so hope she will treat this the same.

Thanks for this! I had a big chat with DD earlier on the back of this thread and she understands that the workload is going to be huge and that she needs to be on top of it. I've said I'd help her get organised and she was pleased, but she also said that I shouldn't worry because it's a subject that she is truly interested in, unlike all her GCSEs. Let's hope it stays that way!

I'm hoping that the FE college provide a list of things needed at enrolment?

DD needed specific PPE for weekly practical days which was listed on the website and a link to the supplier. (Steel capped boots, overalls, etc). They had a bit of time to get it though to allow for late joiners to the course.

She also had a ring binder with file dividers, pad of paper, pencil case.

Oh, and a calculator and geometry kit for maths resit ....

My DC3 has just completed T’Level. It was a bit of a risk/unknown to us at the time: 2 older siblings both took STEM A’Levels at our ‘exam factory’ college which gets fantastic results but with a lot of pressure. DC3 would not have thrived in that environment.
Before signing up to do T’Level I contacted some (non-Russell group) unis to enquire about acceptance. The T’Level was definitely less stressful than A’s would have been, and doing the work experience really helped grow. After passing the T’Level DC3 has just been accepted to a top 10 uni (non-Russell group). AND will be studying the exact course already has 2 years experience in (whereas others on the degree course who have done A’Levels will have a bigger learning curve). Most definitely the right path for my DC.

Dependent on Thursday DD will be doing either a T Level in Animal Management or a foundation year / L2 course with resits. She is organised and smart but really struggles with Gove style examined GCSEs as she has some verbal processsing difficulties. So I’m hoping that the more practical and work based focus of the T level will really suit her.

Shes been offered a work placement in a vet practice which is 🤩 as she wants to do vet nursing (at the moment …)

Dependent on Thursday DD will be doing either a T Level in Animal Management or a foundation year / L2 course with resits. She is organised and smart but really struggles with Gove style examined GCSEs as she has some verbal processsing difficulties. So I’m hoping that the more practical and work based focus of the T level will really suit her.

Shes been offered a work placement in a vet practice which is 🤩 as she wants to do vet nursing (at the moment …)

@TheForgetfulCat I may know this already. Is that at Sparsholt or elsewhere?
DD has done 3 years of Animal Care, 2 at Level 1 and 1 at level 2.

Not Sparsholt, we are further north but it’s a well thought of college locally and they have a lovely range of animals. Bit outing to name on here but if you know the world of FE land based colleges you can probably guess 😀
Really hoping she makes it to the T level for her own self belief, but the sodding English Language is on a knife edge. Grrrr.

I only ask because I no no-one with kids there and I feel quite isolated at times.

Another one who’s DS did extended Btec in sport. I was worried he was specialising and narrowing his options. However, he has historically struggled at school, and this was something he was interested in. Two years later he has been accepted at a RG uni in a completely different subject. The Btec was the best fit for him, and he contacted the Uni’s he was interested in attending as soon as he realised what he wanted to do for guidance re admissions. Yes, the work is continuous, but it helped him ‘step up’ because he was interested in the subject. He too, was never the most organised and it took a few false starts at the beginning, but he got there.

@TeenToTwenties no need to apologise for asking! Be great to link if it was Sparsholt but having looked up where that is it’s right at the other end of the country :(

We also have English Language on a knife edge. DS really struggled with completing the exam in the time allowed. He managed a 4 in the mocks despite not really answering q4 in paper 1. We worked hard on prioritising the order of the questions to avoid that happening again (with no guidance from useless school) so I’m hoping that he will have just about managed it in the real exams. If not, I just hope that college provides better English lessons than school. I am frustrated to be in this position as DS was always easily meeting expectations in English at primary school and should be expecting a 5 based on CAT scores. But high school have been worse than useless and I am cross with myself for not realising how bad things had got.

What we found with Eng Lang in college was they were very focused on getting over the 3/4 border. They stripped guidance back to only what was needed. Had DD been in the right frame of mind it might even have worked. Though they may not do the same exam board as your school...

DD is halfway through a level 3 diploma in adventure education. She is an SEN kid with terrible school experience so really just needed a different environment.

She loves it - the assignments are relentless and instructions not always the clearest but she has got through it and done pretty well.

Work experience has been the hardest bit as DD has been unrealistically focused on trying to find paid work to meet criteria.

Just wondering if anyone knows for sure - does the legal result requirement for English apply to language or literature, or will either one do?
DDs FE colleague told me it had to be language but I’ve seen some threads on here suggesting that in fact either English will do and the Govt won’t fund resits if they get Literature.
Despite having slightly less grasp of English lit than I do of nuclear physics, I think it’s possible DD might scrape a 4 in that and not Language. Thanks to last minute cramming and what I understand was a fairly jammy Paper 1.

So just wondered if anyone knew.

@TeenToTwenties thank you for the reassurance about college. I’m not sure DD was well served by a mixed ability English class. In general I am in favour of mixed ability but I fear she felt like the stupid one at the back (she isn’t but she does have verbal processing issues and needs more time to sort out her ideas).
So some teaching very focused on the 3/4 border would probably do the trick in her case.