Jess Staufenberg | FE Week

The Church of England offensive in FE colleges must be resisted

The Church’s proposals have little to do with education and more to do with reversing its declining numbers among young people, write Chris Higgins and Keith Sharpe The Church of England is on a missionary offensive in our FE colleges. This is the thrust of a recent report, Vocation, Transformation and Hope: a vision for the Church of England’s engagement with further education, fronted by the […]

The government must do far more to fix the new labour market crisis

We need a revolution to close the potentially disastrous skills gap, writes Kirstie Donnelly Skills gaps are nothing new. But, since March 2020, the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic and a series of subsequent lockdowns simultaneously unlocked a wave of seismic change in the UK labour market, significantly changing the sorts of skills sought by […]

Can the Centres for Excellence master the GCSE resit problem?

The Centres for Excellence in Maths are headed into their fourth year. With just two years of funding left, FE Week looks at how it all adds up “I’ve been in the sector 20 years, and this is the first big initiative on maths I’ve seen with FE in the title,” says Zia Rahman, head of maths […]

The Skills Bill could set the scene for Ofqual’s demise

The government is effectively nationalising technical education through the Institute for Apprenticeships, writes Tom Bewick Leviathan was a mythical sea monster in the Book of Job. In the modern context, it refers to an enormous superstructure that sucks the life out of innovation, investment and entrepreneurial endeavour. Monopolies – like those in the state or […]

A big lesson from the pandemic is the role local government plays

Councils have had to respond to the collapse of some of their region’s biggest employers, writes Richard Leese As the vaccine is rolled out and the economy opens up, local government is turning its attention to planning and supporting recovery. With the powers to work in partnership with national government and others, councils can help […]

Young people aren’t digital natives in the way employers need

Being a digital native for employers is very different to how young people use their devices daily, writes Bev Jones Generation Z is regarded as digitally enabled. They are the generation that has grown up with technology being an inherent part of their lives – in the way they communicate, socialise and access entertainment. So […]

Land-based colleges lose millions in commercial income

From the drop in the price of cream to zero weddings, the land-based colleges sector has lost millions of pounds. But innovation is still happening, reports Jess Staufenberg At Wiltshire College the plans for a new, robotic dairy farm had been in place for three years when lockdown hit. It is an extraordinary piece of […]

The National Colleges debacle reveals Whitehall’s goldfish memory

If ministers did the necessary background research, failed initiatives like the National Colleges would be less likely to be repeated, writes Tom Richmond Albert Einstein famously asserted that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. When the policy memory of many government departments – particularly […]

College collaboration is a gamechanger for driving improvement

Initial challenges to making best use of the College Collaboration Fund were tackled by both sides, write Rebecca Conroy and Sam Parrett “Collaboration” brings to mind teamwork and shared goals. This is what we were thinking of last year when London South East Colleges applied for a grant to work with East Sussex College Group […]