Meredith White outlines how the Network for Black and Asian Professionals (NBAP) helped her, and just what the FE sector is losing with its closure.

I was introduced to the Network for Black Professionals (NBP) some time ago by my manager who at the time, through NBP, was mentoring staff aspiring to be senior managers.

I was very much impressed with its work. Seeing the efforts of the NBP, I thought, this work should be replicated across all public sector organisations.

Over the years, I have seen many BME [black and minority ethnic] staff benefit greatly from the culture of support and initiative that the NBP alongside the support of FE colleges have provided. For this reason I have continued to keenly encourage colleagues to engage with the NBP.

I was disappointed to learn of the closure of the NBP [this year renamed Network for Black and Asian Professionals] — it has been a voice for BME working in the FE sector for the past 18 years.

The strength of the NBP is its distinctiveness within the educational sector in striving to facilitate the development and progression of BME staff.

Its work supports the benefits and cultural diversity and support succession planning for BME staff has now come to an end.

So what does this mean for the FE sector? Outside of the working environment, it is often difficult to find sources and avenues go gain access to mentoring and guidance from managers and senior managers; or training that comes with little or no financial spend without organisations such as the NBP.

In the current climate of austerity, resources continue to be reduced and priorities shifted, it is unlikely FE organisations will have the time and resources to replicate or sustain the work done by the NBP

Without the NBP being available to turn to, I wonder whether we can expect to see a shift of dependency onto the organisations to further develop and continue initiatives in line with the aspirations of the NBP.

However in the current climate of austerity, resources continue to be reduced and priorities shifted, it is unlikely FE organisations will have the time and resources to replicate or sustain the work done by the NBP.

Positively, FE colleges have actively supported the addressing of issues that surround BME progression within FE, an area that still has much work to be done.

While colleges try to recruit and manage the best talent, it is great to see that colleges such as Westminster Kingsway College continue to maintain dialogue with the recruitment and development of BME staff.

FE serves a diverse set of learners, and as such it is important that this diversity is reflected in its workforce.

Diversity can bring a sense of cohesion to FE colleges, not only is this positive for the sector, but great for our learners whom have and will continue to choose FE to support them through their chosen career paths.

The NBP set itself the task to address the under-representation of BAME managers, senior staffs and principals in the FE sector. Much has come to fruition.

Many FE colleges supported the initiative and we can now talk at length about the increase in BME middle, senior and principle positions.

Further, the value of the long term partnerships formed and self-confidence individuals gained, is invaluable.

It is important that this work is continued within the sector without placing the full burden on organisations. Developing these initiatives requires time, money and expertise. We therefore need to start the conversation, probably even a campaign to continue the focused energies of the NBP.

That the NBP will no longer be part of the FE sector due to being another collateral damage of funding cuts, is highly disappointing and should not be accepted.

It is vitally important that FE shows it is responding to the Government’s reform agenda, says Gemma Gathercole.

As the FE sector gathers for this year’s AoC Conference, I suspect the majority head to Birmingham with a sense of foreboding ahead of the spending review announcements and autumn statement that will follow next week.

Although no pronouncements have been given at the conference, there is a sense of a direction of travel.

But as we gathered in Birmingham last year, there was uncertainty then too.

At that time, we were looking at a hard to predict election, which could have led to any number of different scenarios of majority or coalition government.

In May, we got a decisive outcome, a majority Conservative government. From their manifesto, we could all understand the likely implications for FE.

In his speech to conference, Skills Minster Nick Boles, reiterated that FE will not be insulated from further spending cuts although he didn’t go so far as to pre-announce what is likely to come next week.

We need to demonstrate the sector’s ‘distance travelled’ to stop another review from starting in the future with the same objectives

However, if you look at the key topics he touched on, we may get a clearer picture of what’s ahead.

His key themes were apprenticeships, loans and the area reviews.

He urged more colleges to offer apprenticeships and to structure programmes to support young people to progress into apprenticeships.

The fundamental question about how to encourage more employers to take on young people remains unanswered.

On loans, in what was perhaps a simple mis-speak, or could have been an early indication, he spoke of advanced learning loans and missed the 24+ element of the name.

On area reviews, the focus was squarely on fewer, larger colleges, which would be stronger institutions.

There was very little unchartered ground here for us to understand what the future holds, as the majority of the speech content had been trialled over recent weeks.

Alison Wolf’s themes of English exceptionalism and what we do wrong provided some challenge to the government’s agenda, particularly on how the government will pay for 3m apprenticeship starts.

I hope that Alison uses her views to good effect in the review panel that was announced in recent weeks to look at the technical and professional system.

Furthermore, news from an AoC Conference workshop session run with the Skills Funding Agency that from April 2017 there will be no more allocations for apprenticeships, brings sharply into focus the impact of the ongoing reforms.

The timescale for delivery is incredibly fast and will require a step change in how the sector approaches employer engagement for apprenticeships.

In relation to English and maths, I’ve often talked about the old saying ‘if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got’.

I think there’s a broader lesson here.

Both FE and the awarding body community have been asked to go through a minefield of reforms over the last five years. And more reform is destined ahead.

In a recent article for this paper, OCR director of skills and employment Charlotte Bosworth called for a once in a lifetime review of the whole education and skills system. It’s obviously a view I share.

Rather than focusing on the concerns we all have about the future, we can seize this as an opportunity.

We can review our structures, our programmes, our qualifications in line with the policies and review already announced, but we must seize the opportunity to demonstrate the changes we are and will be making.

We need to demonstrate the sector’s ‘distance travelled’ to stop another review from starting in the future with the same objectives.

We must demonstrate that we’ve changed our provision, so it doesn’t look like we’re doing what we’ve always done.

Now might be the time for us to stop hiding the wiring about what we all do so that employers, civil servants and government as a whole can see the impact that can be made.

There can be little doubt that public funding for FE will fall by a lot. The question is where.

Further education in England is on the brink of the greatest transformation it has seen in a generation.

The die was cast in May when the Conservatives were returned to office after the election on a manifesto setting out, explicitly, an intention to prioritise elimination of the budget deficit through further austerity. Almost immediately the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the Department for Education (DfE) made in-year cuts of £900m and when plans for the spending review were published in July, all departments were asked to model two scenarios, to save 25 per cent of their budget and 40 per cent.

Although Chancellor George Osborne will use the lower of these figures, it is scant consolation since FE is squeezed within both funding departments: A combination of rising school rolls and a promise to protect per-pupil spending on school children to Year 11 means the DfE 16 to 19 budget is even more vulnerable while, in BIS, defenders of 19+ skills funding are in competition with advocates for science, research and higher education.

Things are worsened by the paucity of people in the Treasury elite and the increasingly shrunken ranks of BIS mandarins who have direct experience of FE. Neither appreciate nor value its complexity and diversity. Things are compounded by the absence of powerful ministerial champions able to defend the sector. HE matters like part-time and overseas students simply attract more attraction as policy challenges.

With the Comprehensive Spending review moving ever nearer (on November 25), Alastair Thomson considers Chancellor George Osborne’s FE cuts options.

There can be little doubt that public funding for FE will fall by a lot. The question is where.

In the case of DfE 16 to 19 budgets, it is worth watching what happens to policies which sometimes saw efficient use of public money take second place to ideological dogma and political expediency.

A canary in this particular coal mine will be popular but increasingly hard-pressed sixth form colleges are given any kind of relief (on VAT or more widely) or whether they are left to an inexorable decline while small sixth-forms proliferate.

Within BIS budgets the biggest decisions will be around apprenticeships and loans but how the smaller budgets fare may give important signals about broader government priorities.

In 2010, community learning defied expectations and was preserved uncut and ring-fenced. This time it may simply be swept away, although any mention of ESOL or basic literacy/numeracy might be seen as recognition that FE promotes community cohesion and social inclusion as well as skills. Similarly offender learning budgets will give an important clue about whether Justice Secretary Michael Gove has convinced his party of the importance of prison education.

Looking at the bigger picture, a judgement will have been taken about when the expansion of advanced learning loans (whether by dropping the age threshold or including level two provision), becomes more expensive than it is worth. The fact that either would result in a decline in numbers which could destabilise whole institutions may be seen simply as collateral damage.

At the centre of government’s vision though are apprenticeships and colleges are increasingly exhorted to secure a greater share of this funding stream. Here the intention of the spending review to introduce a payroll levy on large employers has been well-signalled. This will generate cash but whether it will stimulate the offer of new apprenticeship places and a culture of business investment in training among smaller enterprises is less apparent.

The spending review looks increasingly likely to precipitate a wholesale re-engineering of the FE sector.

Shrinking the overall funding envelope and focusing it more on apprenticeships risks decimating the volume and range of other college courses. In some cases this will result in whole institutions becoming financially unsustainable

At this point area reviews (described memorably as turkeys being asked to vote for Christmas and pay for their own stuffing too), will provide the mechanism for shrinking the sector and re-orienting it to serve the needs of fewer learners in narrower ways.