In recent years, we’ve seen collaboration between FE colleges and employers intensify as we attempt to tackle the widening skills gaps affecting major sectors. While this is a brilliant response from the sector, we need to be really honest with ourselves and ask: are we approaching this in the best way? 

Instead of just consulting with employers to help inform our existing offering, shouldn’t we actually be working with them and each other to design entirely new qualifications, ones that are able to address specific needs, and that make FE a lot more accessible?

As a group of eight FE colleges across north and south east London (along with partner sixth form colleges, HE providers and adult education centres), we’re doing just that. After being awarded £6.5 million as part of the Government’s Local Skills Improvement Fund, we’re using a chunk of that to consult closely with employers and design new courses and qualifications. Specifically, we’re focusing on micro-credentials in green and digital skills.

These mini courses are based around a particular learning outcome an employer has told us they need. They can be a stand-alone qualification or can be stacked to form part of a larger qualification which could be equivalent to a HNC or HND.

Currently, we’re developing 50 externally accredited micro-credentials in areas including building information modelling, retrofit and power BI. These range from 10 to 120 hours of learning and can be delivered in bite-sized ‘modules’ of 15 to 20 minutes, making learning more flexible for those in work. We believe this approach throws the doors open to making FE infinitely more accessible and financially viable.

Imagine you’re an employer and you want a plumber with 20+ years of experience to upskill in retrofitting. You don’t want to put them through a 40-week training course, which may require attending a local college one day a week. Huge chunks of the course would be telling them what they already know. Instead, putting them through a tailored 20-hour online course would be far more appealing and cost-effective. 

It means that a broader range of employers would be able to engage with FE at volume. It even means that they could design a bigger national qualification (if it meets the study hours requirement) that’s bespoke to a specific role, by taking a pick-and-mix approach to micro-credentials. In turn, this would boost the extent to which employers are using the apprenticeship levy to fund skills training, assuming the qualification met the levy criteria. 

We’re also working hard to ensure that micro-credentials are financially viable for smaller employers, where possible. For example, we’re looking to align all appropriate micro-credentials with the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) to make them eligible for CITB grant funding, where unused levy gets reallocated to smaller construction firms.

For a sector where 95 per cent of employers are SMEs, this is an integral step. Without this access to funding, there’s a danger that we leave huge sections of industry with technical skills gaps that are too difficult to overcome.

For individuals too, micro-credentials can open new routes to funded learning. From 2025, individuals will be able to use their Lifelong Learning Entitlement for micro-credentials if, like ours, they’re externally CPD-accredited.

Currently, many individuals pay for CPD out of their own pocket, which can be a significant barrier to upskilling. Again, we’re working with sector-specialist training providers such as the BIM Academy to offer learners a direct route. 

Ultimately, micro-credentials offer FE providers a means of being much more agile and responsive to emerging skills challenges. Instead of tinkering with the existing curriculum, if it’s not feasible as a programme offering, we need to evolve.

Micro-credentials give us a brilliant opportunity to do that. This is a key strategy in responding to Local Skills Improvement Plan policy, as well as demonstrating a responsive approach to meeting ‘local need’ in ESFA local accountability agreements.

If it doesn’t already exist as an off-the-shelf programme, build it! We encourage other FE colleges and groups to consider taking a similar approach, and look at how they can better align provision with employer needs.

There’s a growing consensus within education that the current assessment system is not adequately addressing the needs or recognising the skills of diverse learners.

Our recent research with TeacherTapp asked more than 7,500 teachers if they felt GCSEs are suitable for every pupil. Only 7 per cent said that they do, and 81 per cent disagreed.

Assessment methods often focus on recall of knowledge that may advantage some but may be to the detriment of others, particularly those with additional learning needs, those from under-served backgrounds and those from ethnic minorities.  

According to Rethinking Assessment, the list of pupil groups who are disadvantaged by high-stress exams includes those with dyslexia, young people with poor mental health, those with English as an additional language, those from economically challenged and minority-ethnic backgrounds, autistic learners, and anyone who lacks the financial means to benefit from personal tutoring.

The upshot is clear: We need to rethink the purpose of assessment. It should be used for more than just generating a final grade. And it can and must be used to help develop skills, moving us beyond a largely high-stakes assessment system to an environment where formative assessment is embedded throughout the learning journey.

But how? Answering this question is why, back in 2021, we committed £1 million and created NCFE’s Assessment Innovation Fund (AIF). Its aim is to support the development of new ideas and methods for assessing learners at different ages and levels, and to help fill an evidence gap in the sector.

Over the past two years, this fund has supported 12 projects, with 3,289 learners now having participated in those pilots. In total, 206 educators across two continents and 49 institutions have been involved in AIF-funded studies.

One of the very first AIF pilots saw The Sheffield College using virtual reality (VR) in summative and formative assessment. The pilot’s aim was to explore how VR can be embedded in assessment to improve the learning experience and learners’ outcomes.

Using the funding to purchase VR headsets and build virtual assessment experiences in animal care, catering and construction, the pilot explored the possibilities of allowing learners to develop their skills outside of the need to always be in a practical setting.

Since the publication of the two-year impact report, the AIF is continuing to go from strength to strength thanks to our partnership with UFI VocTech Trust. Our aim was always to influence the debate on assessment innovation and lead digital disruption in the education sector – something we’re continuing to do through further grant funding, an innovation competition and investigating the impact of digital credentials.

We are committed to making all findings from the AIF pilots free and accessible to everyone, to ensure innovation in assessment methodologies continue to recognise the skills of the learners, are personalised to individual needs and place learning in context. You can find all the AIF final reports on our website.

While the mindset is changing, thanks in part to the impact of the Covid pandemic, the introduction of new assessment and feedback methods remains slow.

It is true that we must be certain that any adaptations deliver tangible benefits for all, that they retain appropriate rigour and consider any financial and practical implications. There are also concerns about innovation allowing more opportunity for academic manipulation.

This has led to a landscape that’s siloed and disconnected, with innovation on smaller levels and access to new technologies resulting in an assessment arms race. Technology is clearly pivotal but, as we saw during the pandemic, it doesn’t automatically bring equality and can even reinforce previous inequalities or create new ones.

There’s a need for rigorous, funded investigations into a range of innovative assessment methods that bring clarity to the sector. If we can fill the evidence gap through research, collaboration and investment, we can move the sector closer towards consensus on what form assessment innovation takes.