A 45-day remote placement for T Level Digital students. Short lessons lead to practice on the Cyber Range, then real tasks on your own secure virtual machine, with a named supervisor online every day.
Students join through their school or college, which stays responsible for them. Lessonsmith is the employer. Nobody gets a login or a machine until the placement is approved.
The placement lead tells us about the student, their supervisor at the college and any support needs.
We sign the placement agreement, check safeguarding and agree learning goals together.
The student gets a placement account with two-step sign-in, and their own virtual machine reached through IAP.
Each day's brief sets the lesson and activity. Work is logged daily and signed off every Friday.
Every topic follows the same four steps, so students always know what comes next.
A short lesson with slides and a quick check, on the placement intranet.
A linked mission on the Cyber Range, a safe pretend school network in the browser.
The assigned task carries on on your own VM, through IAP Desktop: real tools, a real copy of a small school network.
Screenshots, reports and a log book entry, mapped to your goals and the T Level skills.
Simulated practice is kept under a third of the placement, as the guidance asks. Most of the time is real work on the VMs.
🟢 The Cyber Range is open to approved placement students. Log in with your placement account and two-step sign-in, then open the Cyber Range: every mission, on weekdays from 8am to 6pm, with your progress saved for your supervisor.
Cyber attacks on Britain are in the news every week, and they cost real money and real jobs. Every Cyber Range mission is a pretend version of one of them, run as a lesson of 60 to 90 minutes.
📰 In the news
The costliest cyber event in UK history stopped factories and hit 5,000 firms.
Jaguar Land Rover’s factories stopped for about five weeks from September 2025. The Cyber Monitoring Centre estimated the cost to the UK economy at £1.9bn, across more than 5,000 organisations in its supply chain.
About £1.9bn
Summary by Lessonsmith. Read the report: Express & Star ↗
Mission: The supplier's back door
📰 In the news
A phone call was all it took to reset passwords, then empty shelves followed.
Attackers are reported to have talked IT help desks into resetting staff passwords, then spread through the networks. M&S stopped online orders for weeks; the Co-op’s members’ data was taken.
About £300m off M&S profits
Summary by Lessonsmith. Read the report: LBC ↗
Mission: The phone call: help desk hijack
📰 In the news
Thousands of London hospital operations and appointments were postponed.
Ransomware hit Synnovis, which runs blood tests for London hospitals, in June 2024. More than 6,000 operations and appointments were postponed at King’s College Hospital and Guy’s and St Thomas’.
An estimated £32.7m
Summary by Lessonsmith. Read the report: Digital Health ↗
Mission: Ransomware · The supplier's back door
📰 In the news
Britain’s cyber security agency says serious incidents more than doubled in a year.
The NCSC handled 204 nationally significant incidents in the year to August 2025, up from 89, and 18 of them were highly significant.
204 serious incidents in a year
Summary by Lessonsmith. Read the report: NCSC ↗
Mission: The network tour
📰 In the news
One flaw in file-transfer software exposes staff at many UK employers.
A criminal gang exploited a flaw in the MOVEit software used by the payroll company Zellis, taking names, addresses and other details of staff at British Airways, the BBC, Boots and others.
Tens of thousands of staff affected
Summary by Lessonsmith. Read the report: Computing ↗
Mission: The patch race
📰 In the news
Around 19,000 appointments were cancelled when ransomware spread.
In May 2017 WannaCry ransomware spread through unpatched NHS computers, disrupting about a third of hospital trusts. The government later put the cost at about £92m.
About £92m
Summary by Lessonsmith. Read the report: Digital Health ↗
Mission: Files are locked: ransomware
Each mission ends with a Level 4 challenge, a longer piece of real work like an incident timeline, an ICO breach report or a supplier checklist. Together they build towards the options Skills England lists after this T Level:
🪙 A Cyber coin tracks it all. Every mission adds to the student's coin: XP, a 🥉 Bronze, 🥈 Silver or 🥇 Gold medal, and the 🎓 Level 4 challenge. The coin changes colour at 3, 6 and 12 missions, and turns Platinum with Gold and Level 4 in every one.
Each clipping is our own short summary of the report it links to. Figures are as reported at the time by the organisations, the NCSC, the Cyber Monitoring Centre and the Department of Health and Social Care.
The student works as a junior cyber security technician. Tap a week to see its lessons, activities and evidence.
The brief: “A small school wants a safe, low-cost way to let staff reach a file server from home.”
7 working hours a day. Fridays end with a weekly review. Nothing after 4:30.
| Rule | How this placement meets it |
|---|---|
| At least 315 hours | 45 days of 7 hours, logged daily and signed off each Friday |
| Remote working | The guidance recommends about 20% remote where possible, but sectors where remote work is normal, like digital, can go further. We agree the remote days with the college before the start, and can add on-site days |
| Team projects | Supervised teams of 5 to 7 for the final 3 weeks, under a third of the placement |
| Simulated environments | The Cyber Range is for practice only and kept under a third |
| Safeguarding | The college stays responsible; we provide a safe environment and report any worry the same day |
| Working time (under 18s) | 9:00 to 4:30, Monday to Friday, with a 30-minute lunch: 7 hours a day, 35 a week |
| Timesheets | Checked and signed by the supervisor every Friday; up to 35 hours of sickness can count |
| Employer appraisal | Reviews on days 15 and 30, a showcase on day 45, and a written appraisal of skills and workplace behaviours |
Matches the Digital Support and Security T Level (cyber security specialism). Final evidence and assessment stay with the college and the awarding body.
We recommend Year 12 students start straight after the summer exams: exams are done, schools and colleges are still open until mid-July, and the team project lands in September, ready for Year 13. Dates below are for summer 2027; each year we start on the first Monday after the late May half-term.
College: choose students and a placement supervisor, then send us a request.
College: Placement request Word for each student, and the employer due diligence checklist ↗ DfE completed on us.
Us: Host employer information Word with insurance and policies.
Together: the industry placement agreement ↗ DfE, the risk assessment Word and the safeguarding checklist Word.
College: the home working check Word and parent or carer consent Word.
Us: approve each student, create their placement account with two-step sign-in, their VM and Cyber Range access, and send the data protection note Word.
One 30-minute welcome call before half-term. Nothing else is asked of students.
Day 1: rules of engagement Word and learning goals Word. Every Friday: the weekly timesheet Word. Day 15 (Fri 25 June) and day 30 (Fri 16 July): reviews Word.
No placement work. Accounts stay, but the VM and the Range are closed.
The team project, ending with the showcase on day 45 (Fri 1 Oct).
Us: the final employer appraisal Word and hours confirmed in writing. Together: the student completion declaration ↗ DfE. Access removed and the VM deleted.
Can't do the summer? We also run a spring window (January to March) for Year 13 students, or one or two days a week through Year 13. 45 days of 7 hours make the 315 hours in every option.
Our forms sit alongside the official DfE templates, so nothing is missed. Each form starts with a short “How to fill this in”.
⬇ Download the whole pack (Word)
| Form | When |
|---|---|
| Placement request and student details Word | By the end of February |
| Employer due diligence checklist ↗ DfE | By the end of February |
| Home or school working check Word | March |
| Parent or carer consent and acceptable use Word | March |
| Industry placement agreement ↗ DfE | March, signed by all three |
| Learning goals agreement Word | Week 1 |
| Student completion declaration ↗ DfE | After day 45 |
| Form | When |
|---|---|
| Host employer information for due diligence Word | February |
| Risk assessment: remote placement and kit Word | March, reviewed day 15 |
| Safeguarding checklist Word | Before approval |
| Data protection note for students Word | Before day 1 |
| Rules of engagement for safe testing Word | Day 1 |
| Weekly timesheet and log book sign-off Word | Every Friday |
| Reviews and employer appraisal Word | Days 15, 30 and 45 |
The DfE updates its templates from time to time: always download them from GOV.UK. The final evidence and assessment stay with the college and the awarding body.
The same 9-week shape, the same secure setup, with a kit posted to the student. Register interest now.
Build a small device that reads sensors, sends data securely to your VM and shows it on a dashboard: electronics, embedded code, networks and secure design in one product.
Make a soft gripper moved by air or cables, control it with an Arduino, and teach it to sense and decide with a small machine learning model from Model Forge.
Partnerships are welcome from schools, colleges, businesses and institutions in the local community who want to offer the programme in their own spaces.
For placement leads and partner organisations. Students: please ask your college's placement lead to apply for you. Once you're approved, your supervisor sends your sign-in and VM details.