From revelation in Grimsby to tackling racism head-on in Sunderland, frontline nursing to testy mergers, Ellen Thinnesen’s unorthodox path to FE commissioner will undoubtedly shape how she does the role, writes Jessica Hill
If the new FE commissioner found a college employing a teacher for a whole year without pay, you can imagine her reaction.
But that is how Ellen Thinnesen started out in FE in her mid-thirties. A single mum-of-two, she’d moved back to England from the States, and badly needed work.
Now she has risen to the very top. Her role running the government’s college troubleshooter follows a decade as chief executive and principal of one of England’s largest college groups, Education Partnership North East (EPNE).
Thinnesen has a monumental task ahead. She must steer the accountability system through structural change, whilst supporting colleges rolling out reforms in the post-16 white paper.
She is setting out a mandate for the FE commissioner (FEC) to lead not just with the expectation of accountability and standards, but the values of “humanity and compassion” – ones that she holds dear.
A defining moment
Thinnesen started out as a nurse, and spent five years working in the USA. But life took a different turn when her marriage broke down. After five years in Columbus, Ohio, and Chicago, Illinois, she and her children moved in with her parents in North Yorkshire.
Waiting at the traffic lights one day in a car borrowed from her parents, Thinnesen looked across the road to Grimsby Institute. She had taken a health and social care course there a decade earlier.
“I need to go work there, because at least I’ll get the summer holidays,” she thought.
At first Thinnesen taught literacy to engineering students, and then an entire unit of an access to nursing course.
She worked for 12 months – unpaid. Is that legal? “It probably isn’t. I did that probably longer than I should have. But I loved it.”
Fortunately, paid work followed – teaching health and social care. She progressed quickly to leading departments, first in higher education and then quality.
Nursing lessons
Thinnesen’s dad was a fisherman. Her mum ran a charity supporting communities, mainly in Ukraine.
Occasionally accompanying her, Thinnesen recalls seeing “the most abject poverty”. She describes being similarly shaped by working in critical care, witnessing regularly “the fragility of the human spirit”.
She sees “huge similarities” between qualities she honed as a nurse, and those required leading in FE. require being patient-/learner- centred, decisive under pressure, resilient, collaborative and evidence- and risk-informed.
“When you’ve gone through a career in critical care, you never panic at anything.”
Words of wisdom from her predecessor
Thinnesen greets me in the lobby of one of her new workplaces, the Department for Education’s (DfE) Sanctuary Buildings HQ in London.
She then quickly dashes off to change out of her flat, comfy trainers into shiny black heels that more befit her style. She says she has always worn heels, being “from the North”.
Until now, at least. She has begun wearing flat shoes while travelling. Her predecessor Shelagh Legrave’s parting advice was that Thinnesen should look after her own wellbeing – as “the job requires a lot of travel”.
Thinnesen oversees four deputy commissioners, around 15 advisers, ten national leaders of FE (NLFEs) and 12 national leaders of governance (NLGs). The FEC has offices in Coventry, Darlington, Sheffield and London.
When asked her biggest flaw, Thinnesen admits: “It is very easy for me to work beyond the boundaries of a normal working day.”
But she is “always really mindful” of her own pace when working with others, and “moderating that to circumstance”.
Today however, she is tired. She is staying at her daughter’s home while working in London. Babysitting grandchildren last night meant a “terrible night’s sleep”.
Thinnesen is softly spoken, but precise. She cautiously refers to laptop notes when answering tricky questions – perhaps to avoid upsetting new government bosses.
There is now a new tier of support for colleges, on top of the ‘universal support’ the FEC provides to drive best practice.
New-look support for colleges
This is private ‘targeted support’, before colleges hit the threshold for formal intervention or a structure and prospects appraisal known as ‘intensive support’.
Targeted support is a “move away” from the “active support” programme introduced in December 2022. Under this new tier, colleges are supported by new regional improvement teams made up of “sector and industry experts” who have a “much broader remit” than DfE’s existing place-based teams, and “incorporate functions of [DfE’s] independent market oversight team”.
These teams include “civil servants, public officials and colleagues from MSAs [mayoral strategic authorities]”.
Thinnesen has aligned each of her deputy commissioners and advisors to these teams, and will do similarly with NLFEs and NLGs.
It mirrors similar regional improvement for standards and excellence (RISE) teams for schools, whose focus extends to individual providers too.
Some question the need for greater sector oversight, though. Just eight colleges have a live ‘notice to improve’, which triggers intervention. When her predecessor started in 2021, there were 23.
Thinnesen claims not to have picked up such concerns. The new targeted tier is aimed at reducing the number of colleges in intervention even further, although Thinnesen “can never guarantee that”.
“I would absolutely stress that college governors and senior leaders should engage with us early so we can work with you to prevent more intensive forms of support.”
The new teams will, she explains, “support and advise on improving individual college performance and building stronger collaborative systems across places, particularly in response to local skills priorities identified by a local skills improvement plan or the mayors”.
They will be “absolutely integral to my office.”
Enabling a self-supporting sector
Thinnesen sees her work as primarily about “enabling a self-supporting sector”.
But under the universal support offer, she is “likely to review and refocus” the Just One More Thing conferences introduced by Legrave. These see chairs, governance leads and principals share best practice.
The skills white paper calls for closer integration between colleges and universities. Thinnesen says her team will “definitely be working closely over time with the HE sector”. She wants to “create a space” for collaboration, and “shape what world-leading governance looks like”.
Thinnesen believes FE has a role supporting HE, or simply sharing “how the FE sector has navigated complexity and changed over the last several years, and the lessons learned”.
More to do to raise the bar on leadership
Others believe college governance still leaves a lot to be desired, though.
I put it to Thinnesen that recruiting high-calibre governors with sufficient experience and skills is challenging. She acknowledges “more to do in that space”, but is yet to take a view on pay for board chairs.
She wants colleges to improve governance through “approaches to risk and broad assurance frameworks, because no governing body should be over-reliant on one single leader”.
But she does not want leaders feeling in the firing line for their college’s problems.
“I’ve never used the word ‘blame’ in any of my career, and I know that no CEO sets out to find themselves in intervention.”
However, she acknowledges “more to do to raise the bar” on leadership.
The skills white paper pledged a new law to bar ‘unsuitable’ leaders. Does she think this is now much needed? Thinnesen will not be pinned down. “Ask me that question after a year in post.”
She points out existing laws already bar unsuitable people from running independent schools including academies, though. Having similar rules for FE providers “makes sense”.
Managing ‘incredibly complex’ mergers
Thinnesen had an impressive track record of improvement at EPNE, which went from ‘good’ to ‘outstanding’. But that has not always been the case in her career.
Seven months after she left Grimsby Institute to join Tameside College as assistant principal in March 2015, Tameside was downgraded from ‘good’ to ‘requires improvement’. It was, she says, experiencing “challenges particularly around curriculum quality”.
Thinnesen left Tameside College 10 months later, taking up the reins at Sunderland College. She led Sunderland’s merger with Hartlepool Sixth Form College in 2017, and another merger with Northumberland College that formed the EPNE group in 2019.
That “incredibly complex” merger proved the most challenging moment of her career, particularly as Covid began.
Northumberland had recently been put under intervention, following what the then- FEC described as a “major failing in financial management and oversight”. Leaders reportedly set “wholly unrealistic targets” for new levy apprenticeships and “over-optimistic” income targets.
Jobs were slashed under Thinnesen, who needed to “drive rapid and significant financial and quality turnaround and harmonisation”. She learnt “a huge, huge amount”.
Leading a large and complex merger and turnaround was the “defining feature” of her time leading in FE. It ended up “hugely helpful” preparation for her current role.
In 2022, she became an NLFE, supporting other leaders, either new or facing intervention.
Thinnesen says she has always had a “very human-focused element” to leadership. But the NLFE role brought the “human element of what it means to be a CEO more into focus”.
She learned how, for senior post holders at colleges undergoing intervention, it can feel “personal, hugely overwhelming and professionally very, very difficult”.
“Workload and pressure increase exponentially in an intervention and merger situation. It’s really important going forward that the system and the regulatory response to that situation is extremely well coordinated and doesn’t unnecessarily overburden, particularly the chief exec – who has a lot to contend with.”
The riots ‘accelerated our direction of travel’
Following the post-Southport riots, Thinnesen led EPNE’s response to improve community cohesion and race relations.
Thinnesen had witnessed her mixed-race son dealing with racism in both England and America.
“The fundamental bigotry and hate and racism that I saw in the riots almost felt like a calling to me.”
When the mayhem was over, and others remarked to Thinnesen that “we’ve gone back to normal”, her family experiences made her reflect: “Actually, your normal as a white, middle-class person is not the normal of others from very different backgrounds and diversities.”
The saga led EPNE’s leadership strategy to pivot. “It galvanised and accelerated our direction of travel, in probably a way that it might not have had those riots not happened.”
This sentiment is reflected in EPNE’s 2025-2030 strategic plan. Thinnesen writes in it that “in a world facing unprecedented change and growing issues of social justice, a deep understanding of purpose matters”.
EPNE’s name reflects its pledge not to take on new colleges outside the North East. Thinnesen believes colleges should be “deeply rooted in local communities”, playing a wider role “beyond the boundaries of their own campuses”.
“Increasingly and through really considered strategy, colleges need to focus on how they catalyse and galvanise engagement…within communities where residents probably would not in first instance go to a college, often due to barriers to opportunity.”
But expanding provision to meet community needs is “not necessarily about leasing lots of off-site premises and weakening liquidity”, she warns. “It’s certainly not about duplicating or weakening existing provision. It is about a systems approach to solving problems.”
“There is more to be done in that space.”
Help to intervene when young people disengage
On that front, Thinnesen is supportive of colleges subcontracting provision to independent training providers (ITPs) – provided it’s “done carefully”. There are some “amazing ITPs”, which are “key to tackling some of the challenges…we face within our communities”.
As for young people not in education, employment or training (NEET), Thinnesen is wary of treating them as a “homogenous entity”. Her own experience shows they come from “hugely varied backgrounds”.
Last year, colleges reported waiting lists for courses in all eight industrial strategy priority sectors, plus health and construction, an Association of Colleges (AoC) survey found. The overwhelming demand for such provision could be blocking pathways for NEETs.
Thinnesen says regional improvement teams will come in and look at the context of provision for NEETs, electively home educated young people and those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) – and “hold dialogue with colleges”.
Thinnesen’s team is committed to improving transition from the post-16 sector. They will give colleges new “risk of NEET indicator tools”, and support monitoring attendance, so they can “intervene early when young people start showing signs of disengagement”.
Praise for leaders bringing authenticity and compassion
Thinnesen is particularly proud to have “always kept the learner at the heart of my thinking and decision making”. This can be “easy to forget” with “so many distractions” as a leader.
She made it her “absolute mission” to visit learners whenever she had an hour free, to “understand context and triangulate that to help inform my thinking and drive it through my strategy”.
“Many leaders will tell you they spend a lot of time in meetings. As chief exec, sometimes you have to be really disciplined about freeing up time to engage in meaningful ways with learners facing disadvantage.”
Thinnesen recalls how EPNE colleagues “put their heart and soul into leading success at a huge discretionary effort at times when they had really significant personal challenges in their home lives”.
Thinnesen’s eyes well up, and her voice cracks. “When I look back, it’s those people that I’m most proud of.”
Before leaving (to change back into her flats again), Thinnesen describes the leaders she admires most. It’s those who bring “authenticity and compassion to the table”.
Whether compassion can sit comfortably alongside intervention will be one of the defining tests of her tenure. But Thinnesen is clear about one thing: accountability, in her view, must never come at the expense of humanity.
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