Students start new industry-guided ‘tech-levels’

Students at UK colleges will begin taking a series of new ‘tech-level’ courses designed with the help of industry this week. The new qualifications from exam board AQA will cover a variety of design and IT engineering areas. The courses are in response to the 2011 Wolf Report, which said that many vocational courses were failing to help students’ career prospects, and have been created with the help of technology companies and professional bodies, including Siemens, Toshiba and Microsoft.