These are the employability and technical skills targets for the T Levels in the Digital route, broken down by occupational specialism. Use them to set learning goals and placement objectives in Navigate.

Routes covered

  • T Level: Digital Business Services
  • T Level: Digital Production, Design and Development
  • T Level: Digital Support Services

Digital Business Services

Employability skills targets

  • Self-managing: Monitoring, reflecting, and inviting feedback on own performance, managing time, setting personal goals, referring to others for advice.
  • Communicating: Active listening, use of visual, oral, and written methods, engaging an audience, sharing, building rapport, adapting style and tone.
  • Planning: Identifying discrete steps, estimating time and resources, prioritising, coordinating, sequencing activity.
  • Creativity: Lateral thinking, making novel connections, handling ambiguity, taking acceptable risks, forming ideas iteratively, future-proofing.
  • Decision making: Clarifying logical choices, identifying likely impact, using evidence and advice, justifying, substantiating, concluding.
  • Recording: Transcribing, noting, capturing, saving, storing.
  • Presenting: Conveying information to an audience to stimulate discussion, and/or secure consistent understanding.

Technical skills targets

  • Receiving and confirming a brief.
  • Sourcing and migrating data from different sources.
  • Collecting data from the web, social media, spreadsheets, and/or audio-visual sources and organising it into an easier-to-use format.
  • Manipulating and linking different data sets.
  • Using tools and techniques to identify trends and patterns in data.
  • Cross-checking techniques for identifying faults in data results.
  • Cleaning data by removing typos, duplicate entries, out-of-date data.
  • Summarising and explaining gathered data.
  • Producing clear documentation using standard organisational templates.
  • Using different data visualisation techniques (e.g., tables, charts, graphs, 3D models).

Digital Production, Design and Development

Employability skills targets

  • Team working: Working with others with different skills, expertise, and experience to accomplish a task or goal.
  • Assessing risks: Assessing a situation, a proposal, a product, or process for potential adverse effects.
  • Designing: Developing the form of an artefact or system to achieve a defined function.
  • Decision making: Clarifying logical choices, identifying likely impact, using evidence and advice, justifying, substantiating, concluding.
  • Solving problems: Applying a logical approach to identifying issues and proposing solutions.

Technical skills targets

  • Interpreting and analysing designs based on relevant information.
  • Writing up a design based on user requirements.
  • Using collaboration tools to enable communication and cooperation.
  • Following processes such as tracking and managing changes to code or design requirements.
  • Recording risks in different ways.
  • Searching for information relevant to a specific software testing issue or topic.
  • Creating a template to describe what needs to be done to test a web, mobile, or desktop application.
  • Applying testing principles (e.g., user acceptance testing).

Digital Infrastructure

Employability skills targets

  • Communicating: Active listening, use of visual, oral, and written methods, engaging an audience, sharing, building rapport, adapting style and tone.
  • Investigating: Identifying sources, developing search criteria/queries, interrogating data, designing and carrying out tests.
  • Recording: Transcribing, noting, capturing, saving, storing.
  • Self-managing: Monitoring, reflecting, and inviting feedback on own performance, managing time, setting personal goals, referring to others for advice.
  • Solving problems: Applying a logical approach to identifying issues and proposing solutions.
  • Planning: Identifying discrete steps, estimating time and resources, prioritising, coordinating, sequencing activity.
  • Decision making: Clarifying logical choices, identifying likely impact, using evidence and advice, justifying, substantiating, concluding.
  • Evaluating: Considering and appraising process and evidence, making recommendations.

Technical skills targets

  • Understanding how the organisation’s security requirements are met and the different ways of assessing risk.
  • Explaining the organisation framework for troubleshooting and practical problem management.
  • Capturing information about infrastructure problems.
  • Recording a response to an incident or fault detected.
  • Testing a virtual or physical network (e.g., server or firewall).
  • Identifying probable causes of a problem.
  • Developing an action plan to resolve a problem.
  • Implementing the chosen solution.
  • Recording the interventions taken and the outcome.
  • Reviewing a problem or incident to ensure it is resolved.

Digital Support

Employability skills targets

  • Communicating: Active listening, use of visual, oral, and written methods, engaging an audience, sharing, building rapport, adapting style and tone.
  • Recording: Transcribing, noting, capturing, saving, storing.
  • Self-managing: Monitoring, reflecting, and inviting feedback on own performance, managing time, setting personal goals, referring to others for advice.
  • Investigating: Identifying sources, developing search criteria/queries, interrogating data, designing and carrying out tests.
  • Analysing: Identifying common features, organising into types, discerning patterns, deconstructing, classifying, ordering.
  • Evaluating: Considering and appraising process and evidence, making recommendations.
  • Presenting: Conveying information to an audience to stimulate discussion, and/or secure consistent understanding.
  • Assessing risks: Assessing a situation, a proposal, a product, or process for potential adverse effects.
  • Planning: Identifying discrete steps, estimating time and resources, prioritising, coordinating, sequencing activity.

Technical skills targets

  • Understanding how the organisation’s security requirements are met and the different ways of assessing risk.
  • Explaining the organisation framework for troubleshooting and practical problem management.
  • Capturing information about service user problems.
  • Recording a response to a service user problem.
  • Monitoring information systems.
  • Analysing fault and call logs.
  • Identifying probable causes of a problem.
  • Developing an action plan to resolve a problem.
  • Implementing and recording the chosen solution.
  • Using the organisation’s systems to identify and service desk problems that have not been solved.
  • Communicating unresolved problems in an appropriate format.
  • Configuring accessories of a mobile device for network connectivity.
  • Installing and configuring software onto a laptop, smartphone, or printer/scanner.
  • Installing collaboration software applications.

Network Cabling

Employability skills targets

  • Communicating: Active listening, use of visual, oral, and written methods, engaging an audience, sharing, building rapport, adapting style and tone.
  • Working in a team: Working with others with different skills, expertise, and experience to accomplish a task or goal.
  • Investigating: Identifying sources, developing search criteria/queries, interrogating data, designing and carrying out tests.
  • Solving problems: Applying a logical approach to identifying issues and proposing solutions.
  • Analysing: Identifying common features, organising into types, discerning patterns, deconstructing, classifying, ordering.
  • Recording: Transcribing, noting, capturing, saving, storing.
  • Creativity: Lateral thinking, making novel connections, handling ambiguity, taking acceptable risks, forming ideas iteratively, future-proofing.
  • Physical dexterity: Precise and controlled movement, agility, coordination, delicacy, appropriate application of force.

Technical skills targets

  • Capturing necessary information of cabling plans.
  • Checking service orders, drawings, and instructions.
  • Understanding the need to work safely.
  • Selecting appropriate tools for testing.
  • Testing circuits and components.
  • Recording a response to a fault detected.
  • Assisting with the assembly and arrangement of material and equipment.

Cyber Security

Employability skills targets

  • Communicating: Active listening, use of visual, oral, and written methods, engaging an audience, sharing, building rapport, adapting style and tone.
  • Recording: Transcribing, noting, capturing, saving, storing.
  • Self-managing: Monitoring, reflecting, and inviting feedback on own performance, managing time, setting personal goals, referring to others for advice.
  • Investigating: Identifying sources, developing search criteria/queries, interrogating data, designing and carrying out tests.
  • Analysing: Identifying common features, organising into types, discerning patterns, deconstructing, classifying, ordering.
  • Evaluating: Considering and appraising process and evidence, making recommendations.
  • Presenting: Conveying information to an audience to stimulate discussion, and/or secure consistent understanding.
  • Assessing risks: Assessing a situation, a proposal, a product, or process for potential adverse effects.
  • Planning: Identifying discrete steps, estimating time and resources, prioritising, coordinating, sequencing activity.

Technical skills targets

Support with Network Security

  • Implementing and managing firewalls and intrusion detection/prevention systems.
  • Conducting network vulnerability assessments and penetration testing.
  • Monitoring network traffic for suspicious activity and responding to security incidents.

Support with Endpoint Security

  • Installing and configuring antivirus and anti-malware software.
  • Managing endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions.
  • Performing regular security audits on endpoint devices.

Security Operations

  • Participating in security operations centre (SOC) activities.
  • Analysing security alerts and logs to identify potential threats.
  • Assisting in incident response and forensic investigations.

Identity and Access Management

  • Implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA) solutions.
  • Managing user access controls and permissions.
  • Conducting regular audits of user accounts and access rights.

Compliance and Risk Management

  • Assisting in the development and implementation of security policies and procedures.
  • Conducting risk assessments and vulnerability management.
  • Ensuring compliance with relevant regulations and standards (e.g., GDPR, ISO 27001).

Security Awareness and Training

  • Developing and delivering security awareness training programs.
  • Creating educational materials on best security practices.
  • Conducting phishing simulations and other security awareness activities.

Source document attached below.