Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of shirking accountability after Downing Street admitted his “bold new target” for two-thirds of young people to enter higher-level learning has no deadline.
The prime minister this week used his party conference speech to “scrap” Tony Blair’s target of getting 50 per cent of young adults into higher education, declaring this goal was “not right for our time”.
Starmer announced a new aim that includes apprenticeships after stating further education would be a “defining mission of this Labour government”.
Downing Street later confirmed the PM’s aim was for two-thirds of young people to be “participating in higher-level learning – academic, technical or apprenticeships – by age 25, up from 50 per cent today”.
It added a “sub-target” will ensure “at least 10 per cent of young people pursue higher technical education or apprenticeships by age 25 by 2040, a near doubling of today’s figure”.
But FE Week has now been told the 2040 sub-target date does not apply to the main two-thirds goal.
It was reported that Blair’s target, announced in 1999, had a deadline of 2010, and it was reportedly achieved in 2019.
Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, said not setting a deadline for Starmer’s target meant it was “not a target”.
“If there’s no date for people to work towards, then it’s just a vague aspiration,” he said. “That seems rather unwise, given that one common criticism of this government is that it has a tendency to make commitments but not see them through.
“For the prime minister to make a speech with a big new commitment in it and for that to fall apart the moment he gets back to London reminds me of an episode of Yes, Prime Minister.”
How far are we from the ‘target’?
Government data for participation in HE by age 25 is only available up to 2022-23, which relates to people who were 15 years old in 2012-13.
It shows 49 per cent of the 573,000-strong 2012-13 cohort entered some form of higher education, which covers all level 4+ qualifications including academic degrees and work-based learning such as apprenticeships.
This was an increase of 10.2 percentage points on the 2001-02 cohort.
Around 5 per cent of the 2012-13 cohort of 15-year-olds took a higher technical qualification or apprenticeship.
If Starmer’s sub target – 10 per cent of young adults pursuing higher technical education or apprenticeships – is met, this suggests the government is aiming to increase current academic higher education participation by around 13 percentage points to 57 per cent.
Tom Richmond, an education policy analyst and former adviser to DfE ministers, said Starmer’s target seemed “ambitious” but it was “frustrating” that it focused on participation instead of completions.
He said: “Given that there has only been a 10-percentage point increase in level 4+ participation over the past decade – almost all of which was driven by more students starting undergraduate degrees – an additional 17 percentage point increase from this point forward looks hugely ambitious.
“That the target only focuses on participation, not completions, is also frustrating as the apprenticeship dropout rate remains stubbornly high.”
Hillman added he would “caution against” having 2040 as any sort of target date for Starmer’s technical education and apprenticeships sub-target.
“There will be three general elections – at least – between now and then, so it would be a date guaranteed to mean no accountability. There are good reasons why educational institutions tend to plan on a five-to-seven-year time horizon,” he said.
It will be today’s 10-year-olds, currently in either year 5 or 6 in primary school, who will be aged 25 in 2040 and judged for whether the sub-target was reached.
We’ve been here before
Multiple ministers have distanced their governments from Blair’s 50 per cent target since 2010.
WonkHE pointed out that the coalition government’s business secretary Vince Cable told the House of Commons in 2010: “We must not perpetuate the idea, encouraged by the pursuit of a misguided 50 per cent participation target, that the only valued option for an 18-year-old is a three-year academic course at university. Vocational training, including apprenticeships, can be just as valuable as a degree, if not more so.”
PM David Cameron said in 2012: “By making apprenticeships a gold standard option for ambitious young people, we are sending a message that technical excellence is as highly valued as academic prowess.”
And education secretary Gavin Williamson said in 2020: “When Tony Blair uttered that 50 per cent target for university attendance, he cast aside the other 50 per cent. It was a target for the sake of a target, not with a purpose.
“As education secretary, I will stand for the forgotten 50 per cent. From now on, our mantra must be further education, further education, further education.”
‘A welcome reset’
Ben Rowland, CEO of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said Starmer’s announcement was a “welcome and major reset of what aspiration should mean for young people”.
He added: “It could be transformative, for young people, for their families, for teachers and for employers. But delivering it will require a step change every bit as significant in how the skills system engages employers: we need those employers already involved to ramp up what they do, and many of those employers who are not yet involved to get involved for the first time. Otherwise it is just empty words.”
Mary Curnock Cook, education expert and former CEO of UCAS, said that together with maintenance grants, the lifelong learning entitlement and the “shift” to higher education including apprenticeships rather than just “university”, Starmer’s target signalled a fuller embrace of the recommendations of the Augar Review from 2019.
“If there is a settlement for universities in the forthcoming skills white paper, it will surely come with some level 4 and 5 strings attached,” she added.
“Perhaps we’ll finally see the foundations of a properly integrated tertiary education system where people can access a frictionless journey using multiple providers, levels, and credit, learning in the flow of life and work.”
Plans for new “V Level” qualifications to sit alongside A-levels and T Levels are being drawn up, FE Week can reveal.
Multiple sources confirmed ministers are poised to set out plans for a new suite of vocational qualifications in the upcoming white paper on post-16 education and skills.
It follows nearly a decade of heated debates over vocational and technical options for school leavers, which saw the introduction of “gold-standard” T Levels in 2020 and the phased removal of applied general qualifications (AGQs), like BTECs, to direct students towards T Levels.
Ministers from the previous Conservative government and current Labour government have been lobbied heavily by colleges to maintain a third route for students that combines practical skills with academic learning.
Campaigners from the Protect Student Choice campaign, spearheaded by the Sixth Form Colleges Association, warned scrapping AGQs would create a “qualifications gap” for tens of thousands of students for whom a T Level either wasn’t suitable or available.
Popular AGQs like BTECs in subjects such as health and social care, applied science and IT are due to be scrapped in 2026, with “highly regarded” AGQs in business and engineering set to follow in 2027.
There were over 277,000 students studying an AGQ last year compared to 41,500 T Level students. Protect Student Choice said removing those AGQ courses “risks reversing the recent progress made in widening access to higher education and could lead to an increase in the number of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET)”.
Minister hints
Earlier this year, the government’s independent curriculum and assessment review, chaired by Becky Francis, said it would consider “what level 3 qualifications may need to exist alongside T Levels to ensure a simpler, high-quality offer that serves the needs of all learners”.
The review’s interim report said it was “clear” that T Levels “are not suitable as the only technical/vocational pathway” due to “many factors, including the high bar individual providers may choose to set for entry, the design of the programme, and the relatively low number of young people at age 16 who are confident about their likely career destination”.
Francis’s final report is due to publish in the coming weeks, and is expected to inform upcoming white papers on schools and post-16 education.
Skills minister Jacqui Smith hinted at an announcement during the Labour Party conference this week.
Asked by FE Week if defunding plans were set in stone for 2026 and 2027, she said: “I’ve been completely clear that I think T Levels have got an important role to play. A-levels have got an important role to play. We have the need then for a third route in the middle.
“We’ll have more to say about that, and I think that will provide the sort of choice for those wanting to protect something they’ve got at the moment.”
Multiple sources told FE Week that V Levels would form the “third route” but details on the size of the qualifications, content, assessment and funding are yet to emerge.
The Department for Education declined requests for comment.
V-A-T plan
According to a government source, V Levels will be pitched as “sector-specific” qualifications next to T Levels, which are “occupationally-specific”.
They added: “But what we don’t want to see is a subsidiary route. We want everything to be of the same sort of quality provision, even if the assessment strategy is different, even if the content is different.”
Level 3 reform has been one of the most contested areas of education policy since the 2016 Sainsbury Review called for a streamlined system of A-levels and technical qualifications.
T Levels were introduced by the last government in 2020 and continued to be championed by Labour ministers. Developing and rolling out the qualifications to date has cost around £1.8 billion, but T Levels have been criticised due to high numbers of dropouts and over-optimistic student forecasts.
Another source told FE Week: “Schools, colleges and teachers are desperate for some certainty on post-16 level 3 options. There is some coherence to an A-level, T Level and V Level menu, but we’ll have to see what the V Level offer will be; how it differs from a T Level and how it will be better than the current offer of level 3 alternatives.”
On the V, A and T options, one college leader quipped: “More VAT in FE, just what we didn’t want.”
Viral claims that Euan Blair’s apprenticeship provider will receive a £100 billion contract to create the government’s new digital ID app have been debunked.
Social media users were sent into a frenzy this week over rumours that Multiverse, England’s largest revenue-generating apprenticeship provider, had been selected to develop an app for the government’s proposed digital ID scheme.
The misinformation was shared online, creating conspiracies that Euan Blair, son of former prime minister Tony Blair, had been awarded the contract due to his family connections.
The flurry of online chatter came after Tony Blair’s organisation, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, backed the idea for a digital ID that proves the identity, age and residency for all UK citizens and legal residents.
Commenters began to buzz online about Multiverse’s connection to the proposed scheme, garnering over a million views and tens of thousands of reposts.
“No wonder Tony Blair wants Digital IDs… when his son is the owner of the company that’ll be paid £100 billion to develop and monitor them,” one X user said.
X user post spreading rumours of Multiverse/digital ID scheme
The training provider shot down the rumours.
“Just to reassure, we are remaining a training provider, not an app provider, even for £100 billion…” a Multiverse spokesperson quipped to FE Week.
Multiverse mainly delivers tech-related apprenticeships from levels 3 to 6.
FE Week revealed last week that Multiverse overtook Kaplan as the country’s largest revenue-generating apprenticeship provider for the first time, earning £58.9 million from apprenticeship training between April 2023 and March 2024.
Fact-checking website Full Fact published a report earlier this week debunking the digital ID myths.
The proposed digital ID scheme is being run by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and is due to undergo public consultation later this year.
When an FE commissioner’s report in April laid bare the extent of the governance failures at Weston College, its chair, Andrew Leighton-Price, was “shocked” by most of its findings.
The report revealed how £2.5 million of concealed payments had been made to its principal, Paul Phillips, between 2017 and 2023, with some of its governors being unaware of the extent of his pay package.
When confronted with the report’s findings, Leighton-Price, who was Weston’s chair from 2019 to 2024 and previously worked in IT and accounting, said he believed governance “probably hasn’t kept up with the demands of the modern FE college”.
Many might agree with him.
Ex-Weston College chair Andrew Leighton-Price
Governing boards are expected to hold their executive teams to account for the educational performance and financial health of their college. But lately, evidence of governance failures is prompting calls for more to be done to professionalise the sector.
Since the Weston scandal erupted, colleges have received increased correspondence from the FE commissioner and the Department for Education (DfE), hammering home the importance of good governance.
When Burnley College, which claimed to be “number one” in the country for 16-19 achievement, was found by Ofsted to have “misled” by inflating its data this year, the watchdog noted how its governors had “limited experience of the further education and skills sector”.
“For too long, those responsible for leading and governing Burnley College did not question exceptionally high achievement rates or ensure that internal policies and processes were robust enough to manage the risk of inaccurate achievement data,” it said.
Limited expectations
But some believe there are limits to what can be expected from unpaid volunteers, and that the DfE should make it easier for colleges to pay their chairs.
Shelagh Legrave
A post-16 white paper expected from the government will introduce more accountability through new “regional improvement teams”. It is unclear where they will sit alongside Ofsted, DfE financial oversight, the apprenticeship accountability framework, local skills improvement plans and college accountability statements.
The theory goes that colleges offering renumeration could recruit better-qualified chair applicants who could be held more accountable for the decisions their boards make.
FE commissioner Shelagh Legrave is in favour of renumerating chairs. Speaking in a personal capacity, she said chairing can involve a “significant contribution of time”, particularly if that college is “large” or “in difficulty”.
“Excellent governance is a key component of an outstanding student experience and delivery of a college’s mission. Chairs give voluntarily substantial amounts of time to college boards. I am in favour of allowing colleges to pay their chairs an honorarium.”
Which colleges are paying chairs
As exempt charities, colleges must seek permission from the Charity Commission if they want to pay their chairs.
But the commission will only consider allowing a college to do so under certain conditions: if the college is undergoing “significant change”, such as a merger involving additional workload; if they are unable to recruit an unpaid chair and are seen as failing; or if the role is considered highly demanding because of the college’s “size and complexity” and recruitment attempts have failed.
At least 14 colleges and college groups have paid their chairs since 2016, our research revealed. Of 166 colleges and college groups that responded to our freedom of information request, nine previously paid their chair (including eight since 2021) while five are currently doing so.
Other colleges have sought permission to pay their chairs but have been refused.
In 2023-24, the Charity Commission declined one application, “advised” two and approved four. Last year, it declined two, advised two and approved three.
‘Painful’ process
Governance expert Ian Valvona, who has chaired multiple colleges, pointed out that the application process involves “quite a lot of paperwork”, and the commission does not “nod them through”.
Ian Valvona
Some colleges pay consultants to “make the argument for them”.
“You can get these cases through, but you have to really invest in it,” he added.
Paul Aristides, partner at executive search firm Anderson Quigley, is aware that “a number of colleges have considered or are considering paying their chairs for the first time but have not taken this forward with the Charity Commission”.
One director of governance told FE Week that their college group had agreed to renumeration, but the “painful” application process, which involves answering around 30 questions, is “designed for you not to get through the process” which feels “terribly unfair”.
“Finally, you get to the end if you haven’t lost the will to live and get this automatic response that somebody will get back to you in 12 weeks.”
The director believes it is “shocking” that, as organisations with multi-million pound turnovers, colleges are “placed in the hands of unpaid volunteers to oversee”.
“My chair does an awful lot. It just kills me that we are not paying these people for this amazing work they are doing.”
Valvona believes that with FE colleges becoming “more complex” in the last 15 years, as “large, complicated businesses, you want someone as chair who isn’t in that community volunteerism space, who is held to account for the work they put in.”
City of Portsmouth College chair Rob Nitsch
But not everyone agrees. Rob Nitsch, chair of City of Portsmouth College, is “very wary” of a “paid-for approach”, having “seen this turn relationships to the transactional and away from the vocational”.
He believes this is “not the time to be advocating for financial resource for governors”.
“Rather, I think there should be more work on the governor offer to make it more attractive, to increase the sense of reward and to make more of the civic responsibility that goes with it.”
Similarly, Hull College’s chair Rob Lawson does not believe that “paying people – from a seemingly ever-decreasing pot – would necessarily raise standards or increase the pool of potential chairs”.
Other sectors
The higher education sector is also facing calls to pay chairs. A 2023 paper for The Committee of University Chairs found that “more questions are being raised about the long-term suitability of the volunteer governance model for higher education institutions”.
In 2019, seven universities were paying their governing body chairs between£15,000 and £25,000 per year. Two also paid committee chairs up to £7,500, a report for the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) found.
The University of Derby, which also operates FE provision, currently pays its chair £13,000 a year, because the “time commitment” and “complexity” of FE and HE business was “significant and worthy of remuneration”.
Outside of education, paying governors (or trustees) is more commonplace. All NHS trusts and many housing associations pay their governors, with chairs earning between around £20,000 and £40,000 a year.
Hull College chair Rob Lawson
The last time the government reviewed FE governance, in 2013, then-skills minister Matt Hancock decided against paying college governors. His review claimed that if the NHS remuneration strategy was introduced to FE, this could cost a college nearly £200,000 a year (assuming that 13-15 business governors were paid per college) which “could place a huge financial burden on many colleges”.
FE Week understands that DfE officials edged closer to getting ministers to agree to pay chairs just before Covid. But there now appears to be little appetite among cash-strapped ministers for it.
“The DfE has not been particularly supportive of remunerated chairs or board members in FE,” said Aristides.
Although he believes there is an “ever-growing case for chairs to be paid” given the “increase in accountability, complexity and time commitment” of these roles, Aristides concedes that it is a “divisive” topic and “a look that jars with a sector often struggling financially”.
Similarly, one chair to whom FE Week spoke said there was a “stigma attached” to paying a chair and colleges do not want to “feel like an outlier in the sector”. “But if you want to get people who roll their sleeves up and lean into an organisation, and not just sit back with ‘strategy awaydays’ and delegating write-ups to their CEO, then you need to pay them,” they added.
Payments in challenging circumstances
Colleges placed in intervention are often expected to appoint and pay a new, DfE-approved chair, who is typically someone with departmental connections.
But not all such chairmanships end happily.
In 2019, after Brooklands College was stung by an apprenticeship subcontracting scandal that left it reeling with a £25 million debt to the Education and Skills Funding Agency, the FE commissioner parachuted in Andrew Baird, a national leader of governance and chair of Orbital South Colleges, to aid its recovery mission.
Baird was paid £15,000 a year to help the college draw up plans to bring it out of the red. But the payments stopped in November 2022 when he resigned from both his chair roles, after sharing a meme about Rishi Sunak in a WhatsApp group that some considered racist.
Sometimes, complex challenges emerge that chairs (whether paid or not) struggle to deal with.
United Colleges Group was given approval to remunerate its chair, Tony Johnston, £10,000 a year between October 2020 and July 2024, citing part of the reason as being “property development at the College of North West London [CNWL]”.
The group initially made plans to sell off its campuses in Willesden and Wembley and build a new college in Wembley Park shortly after it formed in a merger between CNWL and City of Westminster College in 2017.
But the plans, which involved demolishing the Willesden campus to build over 1,600 homes, did not get planning approval until December 2024. When FE Week called last week, the campus was still accepting enrolments for students this year. We were told the new site would not be completed until at least 2029.
“The design, planning and approval process for a project of this scale is necessarily complex and lengthy, with the construction phase now scheduled to begin in quarter three of academic year 2025/26,” the group said in a statement.
The group was rated as ‘requires improvement’ during the entire period their chair was being paid, although it was upgraded to ‘good’ in December 2024
When Croydon College was under intervention after being found ‘inadequate’ in 2023, it was “mandated” a chair – former DfE director Valvona – who was paid £350 a day on the basis of working one day a week.
He led a turnaround strategy that saw the college move to ‘good’ in October 2024. But the college decided not to seek approval to continue paying their chair, despite having to go out to recruitment twice before appointing current chair Val Shawcross.
Similarly, Hull College renumerated Lesley Davies, its DfE-appointed chair of goverors, £28,416 from January 2021 to August 2022 when it was under intervention, but its current chair, Rob Lawson, is not renumerated.
Valvona believes that, if a college is coming out of government intervention and no longer pays a chair, this “sends a signal to the person coming in, which is, ‘we’re not really expecting you to operate in the same way as your predecessor’”.
Giving something back?
Ex-West Nottinghamshire College chair Sean Lyons
West Nottinghamshire College was in dire need of a governance overhaul in January 2019 after being rocked by an expenses scandal and forced to accept a £2.1 million ESFA bailout.
The college paid its chair, experienced business executive Sean Lyons, £60,000 over four years to work on a turnaround plan.
Lyons has just received an honorary doctorate from Nottingham Trent University for the work he did with the college, and for work he has undertaken as group chair of Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Trust.
He said he would not have accepted the college role had it not been remunerated.
“You’re more likely to attract the right experience if you are prepared to [pay], because these things don’t go without personal risk and reputation risk.”
He believes that, as well as remunerating the corporation chair, it should be “entirely reasonable” to pay the chairs of sub-committees, including the audit, finance and performance committees.
He would expect kickback from “mandarins” to this idea, anticipating “a whole cascade of knock-on effects”, but believes it is “naïve” to think that “public service should mean doing everything pro bono”.
“I hate the phrase, ‘giving something back’. It’s not what motivates me. What drives me is problems that need to be solved.”
How much pay?
FE Week’s FOI revealed chairs post-Covid being paid between £10,000 and £25,000 a year, with the top amount paid by EKC Group to their chair, management consultant Charles Buchanon and MidKent College to its former chair Martin Cook.
LTE Group of education and skills providers (which includes The Manchester College and UCEN Manchester) last year paid its 11 governors £51,453 and eight co-optees £21,548, not including expenses, although it is unclear how much each was paid individually.
In comparison, Skills England remunerates its board members up to £15,000 a year for a time commitment of 20 days a year.
Scottish colleges can pay their chairs up to a maximum amount set by Scottish ministers of £27,560.
Lyons sees the amount he was paid (£12,000 a year) as “a pittance”, and “pitiful in comparison to the turnover of most colleges”. But it was important for him out of “principle, more than anything else”.
In comparison, his other employer, Hull NHS Trust, spent £212,000 on remunerating its non-executive directors in 2022-23.
Lyons is “pretty sure” he could pick up other remunerated chair roles. “So why would I consider a chair job in a further education college with all the risks around that, without remuneration?”
Chair recruitment challenges
Dame sally dicketts
Valvona believes that chair remuneration “generates a more competitive market”, attracting “different ages and diverse backgrounds”.
South Essex College explained that it has been paying its chair (former Activate Learning CEO Dame Sally Dicketts) £20,000 a year since September 2024, after “an unremunerated role hindered recruitment in the past”.
And, following the failure of South Hampshire College Group’s recruitment campaign last year, the FE commissioner agreed to “support” SHCG’s payment request.
Last month it started paying former government director of skills Stephen Marston £15,050 a year for a three-year term.
Its CEO Andrew Kaye said Marston’s appointment means that SHCG is now “very well-placed” to respond to the government’s industrial strategy, Skills England’s recommendations and “any implications arising from a new post-16 education and skills strategy”.
SHCG also put the payments down to “recognition of the size and scale of the role for a merged college group”.
Loughborough College has been paying its chair since 2021-22 and officially merged with SMB Group this year, forming Loughborough College Group.
Current chair Stephen Smith is paid £12,000 a year due to “the need to steer the organisation through the anticipated merger process, and historic difficulties in recruiting a chair,” the college said.
Valvona believes that paying chairs means that, when “failure” does happen, “the government can hold people to account because they are paid”. It also becomes “easier to ask [them] to stand down”.
But governance professional Perry Perrot, who is external verifier for the Institute of Directors’ governance qualifications, warned that “payment alone does not guarantee quality or integrity”. He believes “there is a risk of creating a race to the bottom, where remuneration becomes subjective and potentially inflated”.
“Boards should have the flexibility to offer controlled and transparent rewards where retention of high-quality leadership is essential, but this must be underpinned by robust safeguards.”
These safeguards should include “clear KPIs, annual 360-degree reviews, term limits and oversight by an independent audit committee”.
A few years ago, I read a short but incisive opinion piece in this publication by Jill Whittaker (executive chair of HIT Training) that left me asking: Why does our sector still accept achievement rate over pass rate as the norm?
Every year, the Department for Education (DfE) releases its apprenticeship achievement rate tables, and the sector reacts like it is results day for grown‑ups. The “winners” get applause, the “losers” get a little cosier with their quality team, and Ofsted sharpens its inspection pencil.
But here is the awkward truth: achievement rate is not the flawless measure of quality that we pretend it is.
For years, this single composite figure has been treated as our gold standard. It appears in performance tables, drives inspection narratives and shapes public perception. Governors scrutinise it, providers defend it, and Ofsted uses it as a primary judgment tool (whatever they say!).
It fails, however, to isolate the question that matters most to parents, learners, and employers alike: How good is the teaching, training and assessment the apprentice receives?
Flaw in the metric
Achievement rate blends two things – retention and pass rate – into one number. That means it is influenced not only by the quality of delivery, but also by whether apprentices remain on the programme until the end.
Retention is shaped by a host of factors outside a provider’s control, including redundancy, relocation, caring responsibilities, ill health, or shifts in business priorities.
A provider can deliver outstanding training and offer excellent pastoral support, then still see its achievement rate dragged down by circumstances entirely beyond its control and unrelated to quality.
Why pass rate is fairer
Pass rate – the proportion of apprentices who reach their end-point assessment and pass – is a far clearer and fairer indicator of quality. It focuses on what happens when apprentices are themselves engaged, supported and given the opportunity to demonstrate their competence.
A high pass rate points to:
Effective curriculum planning
Skilled teachers, trainers and assessors
Robust preparation for end-point assessment
Strong employer engagement
It reflects what providers can directly influence, which is the learning experience and the outcomes it produces.
Retention still matters, but it is not the headline
Of course, we want apprentices to stay the course. But retention is a multi-stakeholder challenge, shaped as much by employer commitment, job security and challenging and escalating economic conditions as by training quality. Folding it into the headline measure risks penalising providers who take on the most challenging and often the most rewarding work.
The unintended consequence is that providers may feel pressured to protect the metric rather than the mission. That can mean avoiding high-risk sectors, steering employers away from demanding standards, or recruiting only “safe-bet” apprentices.
None of this serves the wider purpose of apprenticeships, which is to open doors and develop skills across the local and national economies.
A better signal to the sector
Making pass rate the primary measure would send a clear message that what matters most is the quality of training, learning and assessment for those who complete. Achievement rate, retention, progression and destinations should obviously still be tracked, but we must stop pretending that a single composite number can capture the full story of apprenticeship quality.
Apprenticeships are about opportunity, transformation and the belief that skills training can change lives and strengthen industries. If we continue to judge providers primarily on achievement rate, we risk punishing those who serve the apprentices and employers who need us most.
Pass rate is not perfect, but it is the clearest, fairest and most direct measure of what apprenticeship providers do best, which is enabling apprentices to succeed when given the chance. We know what great delivery looks like; now let’s make sure the measure matches the mission.
It is time to put quality front and centre, and for Ofsted to lead that change.
It is conventional to think three things about machinery of government changes.
Firstly, that they represent seismic shifts because they bring in at least some new ministers and facilitate new policy linkages that were harder to make cross-Whitehall. Secondly, and contradictorily, that they are superficial, because the same civil servants remain in post and anyone who has watched Yes, Minister knows where the real power lies. And thirdly, that they cause disruption. Even if the officials stay the same, they are busy navigating new intranet homepages, attending departmental values workshops and figuring out where their new desk is.
All these things will be at play this time to some extent. The art lies in working out whether this is a desk-shuffling change or a more fundamental one.
One way to do that is to look at a fourth, under-appreciated aspect: the difference in culture between departments. They are not all operating in the same way.
They all have different policymaking instincts, analytical heuristics and delivery experiences which subtly but meaningfully shape a policy area; the spirit that makes a department what it is. Over time that can have more influence than individual ministers or officials.
Skills policy has long been nomadic, passed between departments, from education to business, science and innovation, and now employment. Each change brought a subtle shift in policy approach.
For example, post-Richard apprenticeship reforms were conceived in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), in an employer-focused environment, but then delivered by the Department for Education (DfE), where instincts were for more traditionally regulated education programmes. Over time, this cultural mismatch led to a drift away from Doug Richard’s original reforms, for example in recent changes to assessment.
Will it be the same this time round?
“Yes, but…” Yes, there will be some small but perceptible shifts, informed by the DWP way of thinking:
The DWP will be used to thinking at a system or individual level – the overall labour market or the individual jobseeker – but less comfortable at the level of the institution (college, provider, awarding organisation).
It will be used to a system where delivery sits with civil servants all the way down to the jobcentre adviser or is outsourced through significant welfare-to-work schemes, rather than a front line of tutors and assessors they do not employ.
It will have a different approach to arm’s length bodies. How will the DWP understand Skills England and its cross-Whitehall remit; and how will it manage what will be the department’s only executive agency?
But… there is also a macro-change in how the government thinks about skills here. It is obvious that a shift to the DWP means increased focus on employment and growth; and a strengthening of the link between skills and jobs.
That is healthy and positive. But anyone who has spent time working on skills policy this millennium will have spent time debating with the DWP over whether people just need to get a job, any job; or whether it is beneficial to provide training so they can get, stay and progress in a better job.
Played out between departments, that debate never really comes to a head: government interventions continue to deliver a little from column A, a little from column B. But that policy contest is likely now to resolve in favour of a jobs-first approach.
Does that mean more shorter, work-focused training? What does it mean for foundation apprenticeships? Will the welfare-to-work juggernauts consume everything in their path?
That is the significant change here. This shift in ethos will transcend ministerial churn and civil service personnel and probably mean more in delivery terms than a recalibrating of what employers “being in the driving seat” of apprenticeship reform means.
None of these changes will happen overnight. Officials need time to adjust, not just to new desks, but to a new policymaking and delivery culture. And over time that culture will change skills policy in lots of small ways, as it has at previous transition points.
But I think this could go bigger than that. By rehousing adult skills and employment in the same department, this could be one of the most consequential and interesting changes in the machinery of government since 1997.
AI has become impossible to ignore. From lesson planning to client communications, it is reshaping how we work and live.
Yet in FE, many staff and students are still unsure how to approach it. Some worry that it is too technical, others fear it will take away jobs.
My experience at Barnsley College has shown me the opposite – AI can boost confidence, free up time and prepare learners for the world of work.
The demand for AI knowledge is growing rapidly. A recent survey of UK technology leaders found that more than half now face an AI skills shortage. At the same time, government research shows that millions of adults still lack the basic digital skills needed for work. If we fail to address both gaps, our learners will lose.
This is why we created an “Introduction to AI” course, a programme that makes AI accessible to people without a computing background. Our message was clear: AI is not just for coders, it’s for everyone!
We used Gateway Qualifications’ Level 2 Digital and IT Skills Certificate as the foundation and created a 12-week programme that balanced theory with practice. Learners worked through an “explore, experiment, explain, apply” model.
The learners’ project brief was simple: imagine you are the administrator of a new company, and you must create a suite of documents which the business will use daily. Using AI, learners produced job description templates, payroll spreadsheets and client communications. They refined these drafts, logged their process and presented the results.
What mattered was not the AI output but the learning journey.
To build confidence we introduced two models of prompt engineering; the PREP method (prepare, role, example, parameters) which helped with simple prompts, and the CREATE method (character, request, example, additions, type of output, extras) which supported more advanced tasks. These frameworks gave learners a way to communicate effectively with AI rather than treating it like a search engine.
AI impact on learners and staff
Last year we delivered four cohorts with more than 40 completers. The outcomes are encouraging.
One parent set up a GCSE maths tutor for her son using AI, which he now uses weekly for revision.
A business development colleague halved the time needed to prepare presentations for clients.
ESOL learners used AI for translation and to improve their CVs.
Many described AI as “like having a personal assistant for smaller tasks once it is set up”.
The wider lesson is that AI can support both technical and soft skills. Learners leave with a tangible portfolio and, just as importantly, with confidence in their ability to use digital tools.
We have learned several lessons that may be useful to other colleges.
First, flexibility is essential. We used Gateway Qualifications’ project-based units, which meant we could adapt the course to each group’s needs and local employer demand.
Second, learning had to be hands-on. AI cannot be taught through lectures alone. Learners need to experiment, fail, and try again.
Third, quality assurance requires a focus on process. We do not mark AI outputs directly, instead we assess the evidence of how learners planned, tested and reflected. This keeps standards rigorous and avoids the trap of students simply submitting machine-generated work.
Finally, misconceptions have to be addressed directly. AI is not going away, and it is not a threat to every job. But somebody with AI skills on their CV will always be more competitive than somebody without them.
Where next?
Barnsley College is expanding AI provision to more levels and age groups. We will continue to monitor how learners apply their new skills in work and further study. Most importantly, we want to share our practice with other providers so that no one has to start from scratch.
AI should be treated as a new frontier of digital literacy. Just as colleges once had to ensure that learners could use word processing or spreadsheets, we now need to ensure that they can use AI responsibly and effectively.
My advice to other FE providers is to start small – but start soon. The sooner we normalise AI as a tool, the better prepared our learners will be for the future of work.
Across the UK, the careers system is under pressure. Almost a million young people are currently not in education, employment or training (NEET). At the same time, employers continue to warn of shortages in key skills, particularly in growth industries.
The gap between opportunity and aspiration is widening and it risks leaving too many young people without a clear route into work and a career.
One reason for this gap is the way careers information reaches young people. We have known for a long time that the traditional model of a one-off guidance session or careers “lessons” pigeon-holed into the timetable is not fit for purpose.
Many students still struggle to name a career they want to pursue and, when they can, choices often cluster around a small set of familiar roles. The wide variety of jobs available in the modern economy, from emerging digital roles to careers in sport, physical activity and wellbeing, can remain largely hidden.
Recent research by Ravensbourne University London highlights the scale of the problem. It found that only a small proportion of 16 to 21-year-olds see traditional careers guidance – such as careers events or a careers advisor at their school or college – as their primary source of advice. Instead, many are turning to family or social media, which may feel more accessible but rarely shows the full picture of available opportunities.
The same report highlighted that traditional careers guidance is currently a confusing experience for young people as they do not feel equipped with enough information to make informed decisions about their career; less than a third (31 per cent) of respondents felt they had received helpful careers guidance through traditional methods, while 58 per cent said they did not understand the route from education into industry using careers information, advice and guidance (CIAG).
What young people say they value most are experiences that feel authentic: work placements, internships, employer encounters that show them what a job actually looks like.
Mentoring and visible role models are equally important. If young people cannot see people like themselves succeeding in a particular role, it becomes much harder to imagine that career as a realistic option.
In sectors such as sport and physical activity, which has a higher proportion of young people as part of its workforce than most, new initiatives are helping to bridge this divide. CIMSPA has developed a careers hub which maps out the range of jobs available and the professional standards that underpin them.
By working with the Department for Work and Pensions, young people and jobseekers are also supported to access placements and employer connections that reduce the risk of becoming NEET. These approaches show what can be achieved when careers information is joined up with real-world opportunity.
Social media will continue to play a role in how young people think about the world of work, but it cannot be the only influence. Behind the figure of a popular influencer lies a network of roles, from videographers to marketers and data analysts, just as behind the visible fitness instructor lies a whole ecosystem of careers in leadership, health, community engagement and facility management. Helping young people to understand these wider opportunities is crucial if we are to broaden their aspirations.
The crisis in the number of NEETs should be a wake-up call. It signals that too many young people are missing the guidance, experiences and encouragement that connect potential with opportunity.
If careers support can evolve to provide clearer information, more workplace encounters and stronger role models, then young people will be better placed to build futures that are not only sustainable for them, but vital for the health of our economy and society.
A skilled and motivated workforce matters in every profession. But in education, professional development (PD) is not just about career progression or boosting organisational performance.
When it is well designed and delivered, PD is one of the most powerful tools we have with which to address a major challenge facing our system: giving every learner the best possible chance to succeed.
At the EEF, our work is all about encouraging evidence-informed approaches to teaching and learning, and tackling the education inequalities that persist across England. We have worked with schools for over a decade and are now strengthening our focus on the 16-19 education sector so that every learner – at every stage of education – has the opportunity to thrive.
This includes initiatives such as our new Evidence Partnership, which will support colleges to embed evidence use across the sector, and our guidance on effective PD.
For those working in 16-19 education settings, the stakes can feel especially high: teachers are working with students to secure the qualifications that open doors to their futures. High-quality PD is not a “nice to have” – it is essential.
Building a culture, not just a programme
Delivering PD which makes a difference is about much more than putting on training sessions. It is about building a culture where teachers feel engaged, valued and supported to keep improving.
That means creating space for collaboration, making PD relevant to the day-to-day realities of teaching, and continually adapting based on reflection and feedback.
But, in the busy reality of FE and sixth-form life, balancing timetables, accountability and multiple priorities, PD risks being sidelined. So how do we keep it strategic and impactful?
A case study from Cornwall
Truro and Penwith College is one of the founding members of the EEF’s new Evidence Partnership for the 16-19 sector.
leaders at the college recognised that their traditional, top-down approach to PD was not landing. Among wider challenges around teacher retention and workload, there was a pressing need to rebuild trust and make PD more collaborative and inclusive within the college.
Their response was to create “education exchange” forums: voluntary spaces for reflective discussion, feedback and staff-led input into PD priorities. Decisions about what to focus on are now shaped not only by learner outcomes, lesson observations and research evidence, but also by what teachers themselves identify as most useful.
The college also shifted away from lecture-style training towards smaller, discussion-based sessions that encourage peer learning, while also encouraging clear progression towards their targeted outcomes. Representatives from across the college also now help to translate PD into everyday practice within teams.
Staff reported feeling re-energised and more invested in professional learning. The process is still evolving – effective PD always is – but the culture is shifting. A shared mission to improve teaching and give learners the best chance in life is uniting the community.
Engagement with teachers – and how this informs responses to professional development – will naturally vary across individual settings. Truro and Penwith College provides one example of how this can be achieved but, for other settings, this may be different based on their unique context.
How to improve your setting’s PD offer
For leaders wondering how to strengthen their own PD offer, there is now free tailored guidance to help. We have published a new resource specifically for FE and sixth form colleges, school-based sixth forms and other 16-19 providers.
Based on a review of sector practice led by a team from Sheffield Hallam University and hundreds of research studies, the guidance offers clear, practical steps to make PD more effective, whether you are just starting out or refining what is already in place. It is organised around three recommendations:
Build a culture of continuous professional development.
Use the KEEP framework to plan, design and deliver professional development (Knowledge, Engagement, Execution, Practice).
Carefully consider evidence-informed content.
It is designed to be a genuine support in making PD a lever for real change.
