Expert Contributor | FE Week

Six ways technology can boost productivity in FE

The further education sector plays an important role in England’s education system. In 2017/18, the country’s 266 colleges provided education and training to 300,000 apprentices, 600,000 young people aged 16 to 18, and 1.4 million adults. However, it has also received an average 30 per cent funding cut from 2009 to 2019 and staffing levels […]

Building a National Education Service: What’s Labour’s vision for skills?

Labour has taken two years to flesh out its National Education Service plans – so what do they mean for FE? Joe Dromey shares his thoughts on what was shared at party conference In the Labour leadership election of 2015, Jeremy Corbyn set out a vision for a National Education Service. Evoking the founding tenets […]

The fallacy of our ‘employer-led’ skills system

If employers are to be given the driving seat in workforce development, they have to be given the keys to the car, says Tom Bewick The mantra coming out of Whitehall is that our country operates a skills and apprenticeship system owned and “driven by employers”. In fact, just about every government white paper since […]

Complexity is a strength of FE, not a weakness

We shouldn’t be ashamed of the complexity of FE – we must embrace it and start explaining it to people in power, says Ruth Silver Analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies demonstrates the extent of the cuts further education has had to endure over the past two decades. Its 2018 annual report on education […]

How Team UK can do even better in EuroSkills

We still have some way to go before we will be on a par with other European countries – we must look past the podium to see what we can learn from their skills systems, says Ben Blackledge It’s no coincidence that Switzerland and Austria were in first and second place respectively at the last […]

What can we learn from vocational training in Germany?

As the Education Secretary tours the German technical education system, what might he learn that would be relevant to the UK? Ewart Keep explains England has been worrying about the superior performance of overseas vocational education and training (VET) systems since the Great Exhibition of 1851. Overseas study visits have been one device used to […]

Applied general qualifications: should they stay or should they go?

What’s the future of applied general qualifications – should they stay or go? Lee Hunt shares his thoughts on which ones, post-T-level, are doomed for the scrap heap In the context of the new T-levels, there’s a legitimate debate around the future of applied general qualifications. Rather than asking whether they will stay or go, […]

T-Levels: the challenges for employers

The T-level placement is an awkward length and requires new thinking, says Jenny Taylor, who is involved in designing the new programme for IBM The recent FE Week and Pearson-sponsored great debate in the House of Commons on T-levels – the incoming technical alternatives to A-levels – proved a lively and interesting event. From an […]

We urgently need a long-term funding strategy for FE

Further education has an important role supporting the economy, says Chris Todd, but the government sees it as an easy target for funding cuts “16–18 education has been a big loser from education spending changes over the last 25 years”. This was a stark, and hugely worrying, headline from the recent annual report on education […]