Listen to this story Members can listen to an AI-generated audio version of this article. 1.0x Audio narration uses an AI-generated voice. 0:00 0:00 Become a member to listen to this article Subscribe Colleges and ITPs do a lot around learner recruitment. Campaigns, open days, outreach. There’s no shortage of effort going into getting people through their doors. They’re not short of interest or visitors to their websites. They lose prospective learners after that. A website visitor asks a question. It might be about funding, eligibility, or whether they can fit a course around work. It might come late in the evening, between shifts, or while they’re looking at other options on their phone. In my experience, around 60 per cent of enquiries arrive outside standard working hours, when most institutions have nothing but a contact form or a voicemail waiting. What they get back is usually a form they have to fill in, or a message saying someone will respond later. That is where things start to break, because the context FE is working in has changed. Right now, close to a million people are not in education, employment or training (NEET). Some have low-level qualifications or none at all. Many have already disengaged once and some won’t try again. At the same time, colleges are dealing with more adult learners coming back into education, more learners with additional needs, and more people trying to fit learning around unstable work or caring responsibilities. It’s a fragile pipeline. For all these learners, that first interaction carries such a lot of weight. If someone is unsure whether they qualify, or worried about cost, or just not confident asking the question, they are not going to push through a slow process. They are not going to fill in a form and wait for a reply. They are deciding whether education is for them at all. If the answer isn’t there for them, they don’t follow it up. They drop out before they’ve even started. Colleges work with many learners for whom English isn’t their first language. The enquiry process often assumes a level of confidence in written English, in forms and in systems. If the first step depends on that, some people won’t take it. That’s a barrier sitting right at the start of their journey. And it doesn’t show up properly in the data. It happens before enrolment, before conversion is measured, before there is anything to report. But it has a direct impact on who comes through the doors, and who never does. Colleges already invest heavily in reaching these learners. Outreach, partnerships, community work, employer links. The grassroots effort is there; I’ve seen it. But it is being lost at the point of contact. That’s where a significant drop-off sits. It’s easy to point to funding or staffing. Those pressures are real. Teams are stretched and demand is rising. But this is also about how the system is set up. Most enquiry processes still assume there is time. That the learner will wait, that someone can come back to them later. This is 2026 and that assumption doesn’t hold anymore. People are comparing options. They are making decisions quickly. They are doing it outside standard hours, often while juggling everything else in their lives. If they ask a question and don’t get an answer, they move on. Not just to another college or ITP, but sometimes out of learning altogether. If the sector is serious about widening participation, this is the point that needs to change. Not just how we attract learners, but how we respond when they reach out. We must remove the friction, making it easier to ask a question, easier to understand the answer and easier to take the next step. At AskEd, that’s what we’ve focused on – making sure that when someone asks a question, they can get an answer straight away in a way that works for them, including in different languages and outside standard hours. Because that moment someone decides to look at your website is more important than many admit. Get it right, and someone takes the next step. Get it wrong, and they’re gone.