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4 June 2026

Author: Jess Staufenberg

Unemployment is about to rise – ministers must drop plans to cut Universal Credit

With the job retention scheme about to end, unemployment will increase, writes Duncan Melville There is good news and bad news about unemployment from last week’s labour market numbers.    The good news is that employment is growing strongly. The number of people in employment went up by 183,000 in the three months from May to […]

I have sometimes felt I am just a money generator for college

A “bums on seats” mentality in FE can result in more focus on spreadsheets than on human relationships, writes Jason Boucher Although I have been a teacher of sorts for 19 years, I have only been in FE since 2016. What a journey it has been.    A military man beforehand, I bring a particular perspective […]

Focus feature: College improvement

How do you improve a college with a demoralised staff, a financial notice, a bad Ofsted and a haemorrhaging learner roll? Jess Staufenberg speaks to those with the huge task of college turnaround Everyone can name the scandals in further education. Leaders who perhaps once gained recognition, but later had to step down as their […]

Welcome to the white land of FE, Nadhim Zahawi

When the Cabinet is more ethnically diverse than FE leadership, the sector should be ashamed, writes Andy Forbes Well, what a positive move from Boris Johnson! A big welcome to Nadhim Zahawi, England’s first education minister of BAME background, someone who fled Iraq as a Kurdish refugee and started school in a local comprehensive in […]

Prison education: Too many reviews, too little action

Let prisoners have a say in changes to prison education too, writes Jon Collins Prison education has suffered more during the pandemic than education in the community. Prison lockdowns and a lack of access to digital technology have led to an almost complete hiatus that is only now beginning to ease.  The new year-long review […]

Ethnic minority learner numbers on the construction T Level are actually quite good

Ethnic minority students on the construction T Level is above the industry average – but scrapping the BTEC could be a problem, writes Hassana Ahmed Since the Department for Education introduced a move from BTECs to T Levels in 2020, there has been low uptake for construction.   Take June this year: the design, surveying and […]

Management, I advise you to trust your staff

Show faith in your staff, and support them to trial innovation, writes Laura Kayes Like my colleagues across the sector, I ended last year fuelled by the vapours of forgotten coffee and the stumbling velocity of an entire sector trying to regain its balance atop a treadmill of pulled rugs.    It was a year that we […]

Any focus on learning outcomes needs a long-term learning strategy

Nadhim Zahawi needs to think carefully about what outcomes we want to measure and what the long-term plan is, writes Stephen Evans   Nadhim Zahawi has arrived in post at a crucial time. We are weeks away from a spending review, various reforms are already in train to implement the skills white paper, and it is […]