The Skills Show gets under way on Thursday (November 19) at NEC Birmingham and celebrity entrepreneur Theo Paphitis wants to see as many FE providers as possible.

Vocational education and careers are hot right now. Open any newspaper or magazine, watch TV or listen to the radio, and the talk is all about apprenticeships, traineeships and suitable careers for young people which involve earning while they learn — all music to my ears.

I have always been passionate about skills. Leaving school without any meaningful qualifications can make you really appreciate the learning that you do in the workplace and the skills that you pick up.

Make sure that you get involved with The Skills Show in some way to keep spreading the inspiration

I was lucky, I know, to discover the retail sector early in my working life — it inspired me, and motivated me to make the best of myself that I could. So how can we provide similar inspiration for young people to ensure they can make a meaningful contribution to the economy when they are actually out there working?

The government’s call to establish 3m apprenticeships during the life of this Parliament has shone a light on the sector, and is providing a great opportunity to showcase how varied and interesting FE is. It should also be a great chance for educators to link up with employers and provide a real link to the workplace for young people. So how can colleges take full advantage and change the perceptions of some parents that the sector is not for their children?

This month sees the fourth annual Skills Show at the NEC in Birmingham. I am delighted to be patron of this event, which showcases the very best in skills, apprenticeships and careers to more than 75,000 young people, their parents, teachers and other educators. I always make time to fit in a visit to the event, however busy my diary, because it inspires me and I find out new things — so how much more exciting must that be for a young person seeking a future career?

Every year, the college personnel that I talk to at the event say how inspiring it is for them to see so many young people finding their own passions — whether that be in manufacturing, engineering, accountancy, floristry or one of the other many different careers on show at the event. Seeing their peers demonstrate their skills in WorldSkills UK competitions, or hearing the successful Team UK representatives from WorldSkills São Paulo talk about their experiences earlier this year can only be motivational for visitors.

Of course it is a great opportunity to sign up new students. One college principal last year told me he filled an entire intake for one subject simply by staging a Have-a-Go at the event — that’s what I call a marketing budget well spent.

For 2015, event organisers at Find a Future have established a Future Skills zone, showcasing some of the careers which will be vital to sustained economic growth in the future. When I started work, mobile phones were like bricks, and about as agile — technology has moved the world of work to new heights since then.

But careers of the future are not just about space-age technology — the way we live our lives is constantly changing, with new opportunities in all sorts of traditional areas from engineering and manufacturing through to catering and design, and this will undoubtedly create new careers and training opportunities for all.

Working together at The Skills Show, FE colleges have the chance to change the way people think about skills and vocational education as a whole.

As a collective, the Premier Colleges group has shown how collaborative working can raise the profile not only of their individual colleges but of FE as a whole.

The event showcases the next generation of talented young people, who will be the backbone of our future workforce, and it is up to all of us to give them the inspiration they need.

My challenge to the FE sector is to make sure that you get involved with The Skills Show in some way to keep spreading the inspiration — I look forward to seeing you there.

Competitive marketing between neighbouring colleges was criticised by FE Commissioner Dr David Collins when he wrote to principals and chairs with his view of a collaborative future. However, Andy Wilson explains how marketing has played its part in his college success story.

Even by the Alice in Wonderland standards the sector has become accustomed to, the FE Commissioner’s recent letter was particularly noteworthy.

I only knew the October 30 letter existed through an FE Week tweet on November 10. Yet its main wisdom, apart from that large class sizes are more efficient, is that FE colleges spend too much money on individual marketing rather than taking a collective approach.

We can all learn and benefit from the more successful college brands.

Following the commissioner’s practice it seems we should all post on a Department for Business, Innovation and Skills website and hope the press pick the message up.

The effectiveness and efficiency of marketing or, more specifically, publicity are an area of regular soul searching at Westminster Kingsway.

We sit at the centre of London and maintain a comprehensive offer for local students by attracting others from all 32 London boroughs and beyond.

We were a regional specialist centre for hospitality long before it was fashionable. However, young people not in education, employment or training (Neet) escaping postcode wars and A-level students wanting to feel close to prestige universities travel considerable distances to us.

Maintaining this wide reach requires buying in the most expensive advertising market in the country.

We use the Evening Standard and commercial radio, albeit sparingly, because it is more cost-effective than the alternative network of local outlets.

Our strategy has helped us grow 16 to 18 numbers by 50 per cent in six years, hit almost all our funding targets and maintain financial reserves which provide some hope of continuing survival. Oh yes, and we have an average class size around 19.

Nobody wants to spend large sums on marketing and everybody believes they are an expert in marketing.

Course marketing is always guaranteed to generate lively debate at meetings of teaching staff. Westminster Kingsway has a small team of well-regarded marketing professionals who regularly contribute to sector events and win awards.

My prejudice is that most of our students initially select us following word of mouth recommendations. However, our research is clear that these tentative decisions are reinforced through publicity be it open days, school liaison or radio adverts.

More than ever, FE is required to create its own markets. We have been at the forefront in reducing Neet numbers and widening access to higher education.

We must now encourage more people in to science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) subjects, apprenticeships and routes to employment.

Even the government acknowledges the ‘Green Cross Code Man / Clunk Click / AIDS iceberg’ approach to advertising no longer works. Today brands and identities matter.

The successful promotion of a brand increases sales across competitors as well as for the brand itself. Where would tablet computing be without the IPad?

We know that FE itself lacks that strong identity but we can all learn and benefit from the more successful college brands. The challenge I now pose our marketing team is to understand how to promote Westminster Kingsway to employers as successfully as they have done to 17-year-olds.

Last month’s survey of FE marketing activities by Carthy Communications found an average spend of 1.8 per cent of turnover, a drop in the ocean compared with the cuts we are suffering, or even the public sector ‘rule of thumb’ of 3 per cent.

In the private service sector a spend closer to 10 per cent is common.

My biggest beef with the commissioner is his willingness to pick a soft target when the issues we face are so much greater.

Like many others, Westminster Kingsway has seized the challenge to develop a commercial mindset and adopted business strategies to succeed in a difficult market place with uncertain trading conditions.

Am I the only one to detect a nudge away from this back to an old-fashioned, public-sector view of deferential colleges? As the Mad Hatter said: ‘Why is it you’re always too small or too tall?’

Changes to the handling of physical currency, paper-based invoicing and unpaid fees could just be key to financial survival as FE colleges look for savings in every area of business, explains Holger Bollman.

The government has taken every opportunity to affirm and reaffirm its overriding economic goal — to eliminate the nation’s budgetary deficit.

Whether this is a worthy or unworthy cause is ultimately a matter of opinion, but as those working in FE know all too well, that it has caused some collateral damage is not.

There are certain areas in which FE colleges can make significant savings without compromising academic integrity

In 2015, FE colleges have to contend with some brutal realities. They face a 20 per cent decrease to overall spending, and the Skills Funding Agency has stated that, in-year, public sector financing will diminish by 3.9 per cent.

Already, the damage has been felt in educational institutions across the country, and as the Conservatives are only a few months into a five-year parliament, there is every possibility that there will be more to come.

Barring a sudden and inexplicable change of heart, the only option available is to adapt to these new circumstances. Happily enough, there are certain areas in which FE colleges can make significant savings without compromising academic integrity.

Firstly, physical currency. In the UK, using cash for payments is no longer the norm — not only is ‘plastic’ ubiquitous, but with the advent of contactless technology and increasingly seamless authentication methods, it’s more convenient to use than ever.

Despite this, cash offices are still prominent in FE colleges throughout the country, and even in smaller organisations, they can still accumulate around £1m per year.

Handling this cash always proves burdensome in the extreme. Firstly, it has to be counted more than once to ensure there are no discrepancies — and if the cash is present in quantities exceeding a certain amount you’ll often need at least two staff members available to avoid any potential loss. And the money needs to be protected — this involves either investing in on-site safes (which need to be monitored), or organising secure collections.

It’s a time and labour-intensive process, but it can be avoided. If you remove your college’s cash office and instead take payments online you could save up to £30,000 per year.

Secondly, paper-based invoicing. Paper invoices are a pain for educational institutions in many different respects. They always require a substantial amount of effort to process.

In many cases, time expended in their pursuit can exceed the value of money owed in the first place; it’s estimated that the average paper invoice costs £37 to pursue, so when it comes to lower-value transactions, colleges are almost always losing money.

Because they cannot charge students for these administration costs, paper invoices put colleges in an uncomfortable position — they can either enjoy the insignificant victory of recouping these minor debts, or not pursue them at all — and therefore encourage this behaviour (and possible further losses). By ditching paper invoices in favour of real-time online payments, colleges will save time and money. It’s as simple as that.

Third, unpaid fees. While these minor sums are certainly an inconvenience, they pale in comparison to the cost of outstanding debt on graduation. This is something of an epidemic across further and higher education. It is rarely purposeful — students tend to compartmentalise their time in education, and once they move on, they tend to move on in all respects.

That said, whether it occurs because of forgetfulness or intentional non-payment, it causes problems for FE colleges. Again they are presented with an awkward choice — to assume a giant administrative burden chasing debtors, or to allow them to default. There are ways to automate both the process of payment and its pursuit — and FE colleges would be well-advised to take advantage of them.

The current political climate means that financial pressure will be a part of colleges’ reality for at least the next few years. But where they may not be able to influence policy, they can influence processes.

By increasing efficiency (whether that comes in the form of reducing paper invoices, getting rid of cash payments or automating debt collection), FE colleges are not just mitigating the damage of cuts that have already happened — they’re insuring themselves against the cuts of the future.

The Department for Education’s new panel tasked with looking at a new framework for technical and professional education needs to look at domestic evidence of past attempts to revise the system, says Charlotte Bosworth.

Shortly after the election in 2010, the government asked Professor Alison Wolf to lead a review of vocational education for 14 to 19-year-olds.

The 27 recommendations that came from that report led to the review and revision of funding and accountability regimes and changes to qualifications.

There has been so much change that employers would need to work hard to keep up

Fast forward to 2015 and following another election a further review of vocational qualifications is announced.

Any external commentator would probably assume that the previous review didn’t work. When the reality is the reform agenda hasn’t matured enough for us to know its relative success or failure.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) as a country we have a number of attempts to revise vocational education to look back on.

There is something to be said for relative stability in educational systems, the often-cited German vocational system has in fact changed very little over the course of the last two (or even more) decades, whereas our own system has been subject to much reform.

One of the difficulties of explaining the education system to anyone who is not immersed in it is that there has been so much change that employers would need to work hard to keep up.

This has been exacerbated by a lack of consistency around names and types of qualifications so employers do not know what the right choice is for them.

In ‘Avoiding the same old mistakes’ the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) warned about the tendency for reforms in England to focus ‘excessively’ on qualifications rather than on the wider system. This is something the review panel needs to consider.

In the recent past, attempts to develop a new system of composite qualifications that blended general and vocational education, the 14-19 diploma, have left scars on those of us who were involved.

Not just in terms of the loss of time and significant investment that was wasted on developments for programmes that were only available for a limited amount of time, but also the wasted enthusiasm of employers and the lost promise to the young people. But I could cite other examples, NVQs, GNVQs — the list goes on.

I have before called for a more comprehensive review than this one. I think we need a once-in-a-lifetime review of the whole education and skills system and clarity on which institutions deliver what.

A review of only one side risks creating imbalance in the system and perpetuating the disparity of understanding of the different pathways that already exist.

While there is much to learn from international comparisons, we must look at the history and context for those reforms and successes, rather than a snapshot of how they are currently constructed. At a seminar run by the Cambridge Assessment Network recently, Tim Oates, group research director of Cambridge Assessment, and Gabriel Heller-Sahlgren, founding director of the Centre for the Study of Market Reform of Education, spoke about the research they did into the sudden rise of Finland to the top of PISA tables.

Their analysis into the time-lag effect and taking a historical view of Finland’s education system and cultural development shows the potential pit-falls of ‘education tourism’.

When Finland’s success in the PISA results came about, visitors came to see what about the system in Finland was producing such exceptional results. But the immediate perception was to forget the time-lag effect.

The esteemed panel completing this review will no doubt look for evidence and analysis in order to make their recommendations.

We hope that they look broadly, deeply and with historical and cultural sensitivity to ensure that, even though this review is not as broad in scope as we have called for, it does become an once-in-a-lifetime review we don’t have to revisit after another election.

It might be a busy few days at Association of Colleges (AoC) conference, but that is set to continue with an extensive programme of reforms hitting the sector, as Graham Hasting-Evans explains. 

Many will be focused on their post-16 area reviews or looking forward to their ‘turn’ with apprehension.

FE Commissioner Dr David Collins has already revealed early findings from the first wave of these reviews.

Speaking at this year’s Higher and Further Education Show following he said during the next 18 months he and a team of advisers would be travelling the country “endeavouring and encouraging marriages, federations and divorces between colleges to try and set up a sustainable FE sector”.

But this is not the only major policy change happening. Arguably we have change overload.

Let’s start with funding — always a good place to begin.

For many, funding will be seen as the major and immediate challenge — but that is only the start

Budgets are being cut. Everyone is expecting the November 25 autumn statement will tell us how bad it will be.

There is also likely to be a major shift in the funding mechanism. We are expecting this to probably include a de-centralisation of whatever is left of the Adult Skills Budget and a move to funding on the basis of outcome performance statistics. In other words a lot less money cut up differently.

Local Enterprise Partnerships (Leps) have a place in all of this but not all the country has a Lep in place and many are still trying to work out what they should be doing and how to do it.

For many, funding will be seen as the major and immediate challenge — but that is only the start.

The whole focus for the curriculum will be changing. There will be more focus on improving English and maths, through GCSEs and an upgrading of Functional Skills (reform of Functional Skills is likely to happen in 2016).

There will be an increase in professional and technical courses and qualifications from now; and there will be courses and qualifications aimed at getting people into a job in a certain sector as well as into a specific job role or apprenticeship.

There will be a ramping up of the apprenticeship numbers to achieve the 3m target; and root and branch reform of apprenticeships with the ‘old’ SASE frameworks frozen and all ‘new’ apprenticeships modelled on the Trailblazer approach complete for delivery by September 2017.

There will be changes to the funding of apprenticeships from this year as a transition to the introduction of full employer funding through the new planned HMRC-administered levy from September 2017; and major changes on how apprentices are regulated and governed by Government and employers.

There will also be replacement of the QCF with the RQF by Ofqual; new EU procurement rules with the AoC initiative already underway; and support for the unemployed and those with learning difficulties.

All of which is a very ambitious programme of change for 2016-17 and much of these policy changes lack the necessary detail.

There is a complete lack of clarity over how much of this will work, despite the fact that much of the change is due to happen over the next nine to ten months.

People are also questioning how the current Trailblazer process can ramp up from some 400 apprenticeship registrations against the 50 completed Trailblazer standards to 3m in this Parliament. The concern is it will only be achieved by cutting the quality which is in direct conflict with the objective of the reforms.

And all of this policy change is happening as the area reviews and fundamental restructuring of provision is being carried out leaving the area review teams facing some challenge.

They have to first review the present provision against current known demands. Then (using perhaps a crystal ball) they have to decide what will be the impact of all the policy changes in their area, many of which are still not clear.

Mr Hasting-Evans is due to chair a one-hour AoC conference fringe session, Delivering innovative routes to employment with Local Enterprise Partnerships, on Thursday (November 19) from 9am.