‘Heartbreaking’: How colleges are forced to turn away students as demand outstrips space While colleges try to swallow a spike in the teenage population, balance sheets are being weakened by inadequate government funding. It’s a situation that is ultimately worsening the country’s NEET crisis, sector leaders tell Jessica Hill
Speaking and listening exams are failing Gen Z’s anxious learners, it’s time for a rethink As anxiety among young people rises, the speaking and listening element of English functional skills feels increasingly out of step with reality
Providers aren’t failing by accident, they’re designed to fail Behind every collapse lies a deeper problem: organisational structures that separate quality from delivery make failure almost inevitable
Learning doesn’t fit neatly into hours, so why do we force it to? Guided learning hours promise structure, but in reality they ignore the messy, individual nature of how people actually learn
Engineering’s entry point is disappearing A sharp fall in entry-level apprenticeships risks cutting off access to engineering careers before they even begin
For the first time in forever – fund SEND properly in colleges High needs funding has stayed ‘Frozen’ since the movie came out, but students’ needs have changed
We don’t need new apprenticeship metrics, we need to use the ones we have Completion data already tells us which providers deliver. The problem is, employers can’t easily see or use it
I passed my exam, but the SEND system in FE failed me SEND support is judged by whether it exists, not whether it works. For many students, that gap comes at a cost we never measure
Teenagers aren’t googling your organisation, they’re asking AI Young people are using AI first for FE answers. If you’re absent, you risk being misrepresented