Continued cuts to the adult skills budget risk wiping out adult education and training in England within five years, the Association of Colleges (AoC) has warned after research showed 190,000 course places could be lost in 2015/16 alone.

The AoC has published research based on data from its 336 member colleges which points to a bleak future for the FE sector, which has faced adult skills budget cuts of around 35 per cent since 2009 and is now gearing up to deal with the consequences of a further 24 per cent cut in 2015/16.

According to the AoC, adult education and training provision could disappear completely by 2020 if cuts continue at the same rate as they have in recent years, with courses in the health, public services and care sectors expected to be hit hardest by next year’s cuts, with the loss of 40,000 course places expected in those areas alone.

AoC chief executive Martin Doel said: “Adult education and training is effectively being decimated. These cuts could mean an end to the vital courses that provide skilled employees for the workforce such as nurses and social care workers.

“The potential loss of provision threatens the future prospects of the millions of people who may need to retrain as they continue to work beyond retirement age as well as unemployed people who need support to train for a new role.

“Adult education and training in England is too important to be lost, to both individuals and the wider economy.”

Other sector leaders and academics have thrown their weight behind Mr Doel’s comments and welcomed the AoC research, which was based on data submissions from 219 colleges and the AoC’s own estimates of the impact of cuts on its 336 members.

David Hughes, chief executive of the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (Niace), said: “This is a very useful analysis of the learning opportunities which are being lost to people and to the economy. Over one million opportunities have disappeared in funding cuts since 2010 and the AoC rightly sets out that more cuts means even fewer opportunities.

“Our businesses face two big challenges – low productivity and skills shortages, particularly at intermediate levels. And with people facing up to working until a later pension age, we need more re-training, not less.

“The funding cuts will hit people who want to work hard to get on, will hit businesses who want to grow and will hamper economic growth. The next government will need to find new ways to fund learning and skills for people aged 19 and over because the cuts have gone too deep now.

“I have been saying for the last year that we are facing a skills crisis. The cuts to come lead me to the same conclusion as AoC – namely that we should all be telling young people to get their state-funded learning in as quickly as they can, because once they hit 21 there won’t be any support left.”

Professor Ewart Keep, director of Oxford University’s centre on skills, knowledge and organisational performance, said: “The AoC has produced an alarming, but realistic analysis of the current and potential impact of spending trends on adult education.

“In the light of earlier cuts in public post-19 spending – of the order of 35 per cent over recent years – the latest reductions raise the prospect of provision reaching a tipping point, from which subsequent recovery could be very difficult.

“Cumulative cuts of this magnitude are extremely difficult to absorb, and mean that those colleges and other providers who have a strong focus on adult learners may either go out of business or be forced to re-focus their attention on younger pre-19 students.”

University and College Union general secretary Sally Hunt said: “These cuts are a devastating blow to colleges and risk decimating further education. Slashing budgets this harshly could be the final nail in the coffin for many of the courses that help people get back to work.

“Not everyone needs or wants to study an apprenticeship, but colleges are being forced to prioritise them over other kinds of courses. This approach will shut the door to hundreds of thousands of people who want to use adult education as a springboard for improving their skills.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills said: “We fully recognise the important role further education plays in getting people the skills they need to get on.

“That’s why we’ve committed more than £3.9bn in 2015-16 to adult learning and further education, including £770m of apprenticeship funding. We also expect to spend up to £80m on the National Colleges programme.

“While total funding has been reduced, priority has been given the areas where the most impact can be made – apprenticeships, traineeships and support with English and maths.

“Many colleges and training organisations have responded well to the need to find other income streams for skills provision and it is this approach that will help them succeed.”

---

Case study: Dudley College. Principal: Lowell Williams. Ofsted rating: Good (April 2013)

How will the funding cuts for 2015/16 affect your college?

“The problem we will have is that all of our adult provision has been aligned to the needs of the local community, so whatever provision we take out is going to hurt local people.

“For example, we run over 90 short-term employability courses for unemployed local adults who lack basic skills and qualifications, to help them get into a position where they can present themselves for work or further training.

“Those courses will have to be all-but cut out completely in 2015/16 to save around £500,000 of the overall amount that we need to save [more than £1.4m from the SFA budget].

“Up to £500,000 will also have to be saved by cutting the sort of part-time training opportunities that upskill people in existing low-level jobs who want to progress, perhaps by improving their computer or administrative skills, or in other technical areas such as engineering or motor vehicle.

“For example, you might get someone in a low level cleaning job at a care home who wants to become a domiciliary care worker, but they would have to progress through level one to get onto a level two or three apprenticeship.

“We also currently run around 30 skills training programmes for offenders at Featherstone Prison which help offenders progress into work after they are released. These programmes will have to go, which could save up to £400,000.

“We also estimate there will be some 30 posts at risk [through redundancies] comprising managers, lecturers, assessors and administrators.”

What do you expect the situation to be like in 2020?

“Non-apprenticeship adult funding allocations for us at Dudley College have gone from around £7.2m in 2013/14 to a projected £4.8m for 2015/16 and at this rate our adult allocation will have disappeared completely.

“By wiping out funding [for most adult skills courses], the government will be risking recreating an underclass of poorly educated adults. They will effectively be withdrawing the opportunity to train or retrain for the least able.

“It has become a matter of political expediency for all the parties to commit to ringfencing apprenticeship funding, but that won’t help the least able people, who may have left school without five GCSEs or are not able to speak English as their first language. They need help to get into work or to progress up to an apprenticeship.

“The idea that every adult is best served by an apprenticeship, if they don’t go to university, and won’t have any other training needs, is just too simplistic.”

---

 

Case study: Tower Hamlets College. Principal: Gerry McDonald. Ofsted rating: Good (December 2013)

How will the funding cuts for 2015/16 affect your college?

“We will be down by about £1m on our SFA funding, which represents a 14 per cent cut that’s obviously better than the 24 per cent across the sector.

“It’s because we run a lot of protected English and maths provision, 1,041 learners so far this academic year, which cushioned us from worse cuts.

“We will wait and see what happens in the [May 7] general election before making final decisions on where to save money.

“If Labour win and they scrap apprenticeships below level three and rebadge traineeships as something covering all level two courses, then the whole funding landscape is going to change again, so it’s going to be quite interesting.

“It’s likely that we’ll be cutting some courses in 2015/16, but our meetings have only just started looking into that.

“We have already launched a voluntary redundancy round which could mean the loss of around 25 positions, but I can’t guarantee staff that there won’t be further compulsory redundancies.

“There is also likely to be slightly larger class sizes — at the moment we average 17 learners per class and it will be around 18— to help save money.”

What do you expect the situation to be like in 2020?

“I agree with the AoC view that the adult skills budget could be entirely gone aside from apprenticeships and English and maths funding. I expect that other courses will be entirely loan driven.

“If there is any funding on top of that, I wouldn’t expect it to be given out by the Skills Funding Agency, which is bound to become less and less relevant.

“It’s largely the lower level pre-apprenticeship training that colleges are going to be forced to cut back on [in the long-term].

“That’s bad news because a lot of people just don’t have the qualifications or skills as it is to get onto apprenticeships.

“It is going to mean less people going on to apprenticeships and an even bigger skills shortage, which is short-sighted in my view.

“English for Speakers of Other Languages (Esol) qualifications, which we run a lot of [1,184 learners so far this academic year], are also likely to face cutbacks.

“That could have all sorts of dangerous implications in terms of community cohesion.

“I think a [money saving] option for a lot of colleges will also be looking at economies of scale through more mergers. It’s not something we would rule in or out at the moment.”

---

 

Case study: Yeovil College. Principal: John Evans. Ofsted rating: Good (May 2012)

How will the funding cuts for 2015/16 affect your college?

“They will force us to stop running courses that would have been offered to 200 or more learners.

“No decision have been made yet over which courses will have to go, but I know that many of the people who will be affected will either be unemployed or low paid because they are low skilled.

“Yeovil has a reasonably low unemployment rate but a high level of low skill and low paid employees.

“One of our aims as a college has been to support more low-skilled workers into higher skilled jobs.

“It’s going to become increasingly difficult for us to do that because of these cuts.

“We don’t have many 19+ traineeships at the moment, as it was previously focused on 16 to 18-year-olds, but we are going to grow the programme for 19 to 24-year-olds now. It’s certainly worth considering as funding for traineeships is currently protected.

“I wrote to the Education Minister David Laws [on March 2] to express my concern about FE funding cuts and the affect it will have on non-apprenticeship provision and he replied by saying he was concerned.

“I don’t know what difference that will make, but you have to keep beating the drum. I don’t think that most people, even the politicians, understand yet the devastating affect these funding cuts will have on skills training.”

What do you expect the situation to be like in 2020?

“There’s no doubt that we’re a sector under threat. A big part of our budget isn’t ring-fenced, so it’s there to be shot at. We need to protect our funding however we can in order to support the skills development and economical growth of our local areas.

“I have been saying for three or four years now that we are going to reach a point where the FE sector will just be for 16 to 18 provision, apprenticeships and anyone who can afford to pay for other training themselves, as the money won’t come from the government.

“The adult skills role of colleges should be much wider than just providing for apprenticeships.

“I understand that savings have to made, as we’re living in a time of austerity, but the government is sending out a mixed message over adult training.

“It’s pushing adult skills training and retraining on the one hand, but making these funding cuts on the other, but the two do not go hand in hand.”

The government has outlined how its sees the role of a new Centre for Vocational Education Research (CVER) as different to the work of the Education and Training Foundation (ETF).

At a launch event at the London School of Economics (LSE) today Frank Bowley, deputy director of skills policy analysis at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, who was involved in developing CVER said the organisations would play “different roles”.

The CVER will be based at LSE and will conduct research into the benefits of FE and the effectiveness of policies to feed into future policy formulation.

Mr Bowley said its research would not cover the same as the national Vocational Education and Training (VET) Centre currently being developed by the ETF in response to recommendations from the Commission for Adult Vocational Teaching and Learning (CAVTL), published in March 2013.

“The centre has a very different ethos,” he said. “It is there to advance the research knowledge and make this area exciting for PhD students to come in, for people to do research and to get that information for policymaking for the minister.”

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) took to Twitter to echo Mr Bowley’s comments. “This isn’t duplication, it’s distinct and supportive,” the tweet said.

The VET centre on the other hand, said Mr Bowley, would use evidence produced by CVER as well as gathering examples of “best practice” from colleges and communicate them to the sector.

“Hopefully the CVER will aid the ETF, will aid the Vet centre, and they will help the CVER, but I do think they have very different roles and are very different things” he said.

BIS is giving £3m for three years — with an option to extend a further two years with more funding — for a centre to explore the role of vocational education.

Cavtl chair Frank McLoughlin (pictured right), principal of City and Islington College, sat on the panel assessing bids to run the research centre.

He agreed the new centre would not clash with the ETF, saying there were “two dimensions” in improving vocational learning policy.

“The first is the research dimensions, which is what you have here which the CVER and the best practice dimension which we talked about in Cavtl and which ETF are holding the centre of,” he said. “So they are distinct but it is critically important they talk to each other.”

Jenny Williams (pictured below left), ETF director of vocational education and training, said the organisation was looking forward to working with the new centre. “We have distinct but supportive roles,” she told FE Week.

“We have made research a priority. We are committed to working with researchers at the new ctre to supplement the government data sets in order to enrich the data available across the VET system.”

The CVER’s director, Dr Sandra McNally from the LSE, said the centre’s research would initially focus on three key themes.

“First is about what are the returns — the costs and benefits — to different routes in vocational education to individuals and to firms,” she said.

“The second big theme  is how do we improve the quality of provision within vocational education and the third is how do we improve careers information and advice to facilitate people to make good choices for them and a good match for their skills.”

She added: “There are many good researchers in schools and higher education and schools, but we feel the FE sector has been overlooked in terms of research.”

Skills Minister Nick Boles, who attended the launch, agreed.

“It has been striking to me how little evidence we have for all the debates we have,” he said. “As a result of that absence we all grab hold of prejudices, to use the negative term, or instinct to use the positive term.”

He added he was “looking forward” to getting “real, factual answers” from the centre “so that future reforms can be more surely rooted in evidence than perhaps reforms over the last 20 years, which I suspect rely more on instincts or prejudice”.

The search for a successful bidder for the contract to run the centre was headed up by Professor Alison Wolf, recently created Baroness Wolf of Dulwich and King’s College academic, whose 2011 review of vocational education prompted large scale reforms the of FE sector.

Baroness Wolf said: “It is absolutely wonderful that there is now going to be serious research centre which can actually put findings and arguments from findings in the centre of discussion and counterbalance the way we’ve made education policy for far too long.”

Baroness Wolf said one area where she was keen to see further research was the area of independent training providers.

“Only 60 per cent of the adult skills budget goes to colleges, the rest of it goes elsewhere and actually that’s a particular function of this country — it makes it very distinctive but we don’t know if that’s distinctive in a good or bad way,” she said.

“Anything you can do to get more information for that part of the system has to be better than where we are at the moment.”

Tim Chewter, research manager of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said he echoed Baroness Wolf’s comments. “It’s one part of the sector we know very little about,” he said.

“We’ve started a conversation but I’m not sure even the SFA knows the number of providers, where the money goes — there’s certainly some work to do there.”

A wide-ranging government consultation on the future of FE that launched today has prompted sector calls for a rethink on funding cuts.

Business Secretary Vince Cable (pictured above) unveiled the 90-page consultation paper, entitled A dual mandate for adult vocational education, saying the issues it raised “imply important changes for how we think about further education for adults”.

It poses 44 questions looking mainly at the first part of the dual mandate — providing vocational education for the workplace with a focus on higher level professional and technical skills.

“This is an area where England has had a historic weakness and where we continue to lag behind the performance of other developed countries,” he said, adding that “work to reverse these long-term issues” included support for National Colleges as specialist institutions and by introducing high level apprenticeships.

The second part of the mandate, the document says, is to provide second chances for those who have not succeeded in the school system.

The questions cover National Colleges, higher education, specialisation and government intervention FE among others.

With the consultation, which closes on June 16, coming just days after FE providers received their 2015/16 funding allocations, which have been cut by up to 24 per cent having almost been slashed by up to 32 per cent, many in the sector said they wanted an in-depth look at funding.

Martin Doel (pictured right), chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said: “The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills [BIS] is right to highlight the dual role colleges play in delivering both technical and professional education and also education and training for people who didn’t do well at school. But BIS must also remember the other significant role colleges play in preparing 16 to 18-year-olds for the move between school, university and work.

“The questions in this paper also provide a useful checklist of the issues the next Government needs to tackle but they cannot be separated from funding.

“That’s why we want a once in a generation review of education funding to ensure it’s being allocated fairly. In addition, Government should invest in order to allow colleges to restructure, consolidate and to develop new business models in the next few years.”

David Hughes (pictured left), chief executive of the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, said: “We’ve been lacking a unifying vision for learning, skills and employment for some time so I welcome this contribution from Vince Cable to the debate we need. The consultation covers a lot of ground and includes explicit analysis of the challenges we face which support our view that we are facing a skills crisis.

“The crisis is a combination of the need to support better skills achievement while state funding has plummeted. I also welcome some of the thinking and ideas for change, because it is clear that a lot has to change to ensure we have a strong economic recovery.

“We have been calling for an independent commission to be established in the first 100 days of the next Government to help establish a new vision. A commission would be able to set the vision and the ambition, agree the long-term skills needs and establish a new system for funding people to develop and update their skills throughout their careers.

“The commission could engage and involve national and local Government, employers, providers, unions, charities and learners working together to revitalise and revolutionise skills training.”

Dr Mary Bousted (pictured right), general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), said: “We welcome any move to strengthen higher level vocational education, however, given its recent announcement of a 24 per cent cut in funding for adult education, it looks more like this government is seeking to massively cut adult education than expand it.

“If Vince Cable believes FE provides a vital lifeline for the most disadvantaged young adults who lack the basic skills they need for work or modern life, then why is the government planning to dismantle it?”

Andrew Harden (pictured below left), head of FE at the University and College Union, said: “We will be responding to the consultation in full in the coming months and will be making the following key points.

“The consultation identifies a dual mandate for adult vocational educational of which one part is second-chance learners.

“The stark reality now is that thousands of these type of adult learners will face fewer opportunities to get back into education and training as of next year when there is a planned 24 per cent cut to adult education courses outside of apprenticeships, and maths and English.

“While we agree there needs to be a stronger emphasis on higher level vocational qualifications to achieve parity of esteem with academic routes, this will need to be underpinned by investment in professional development opportunities for the vocational workforce, for example, taking part in industrial exchanges and gaining professional qualifications.

“There is a contrast between the apparent ambition for adult vocational education and the reality of what is happening in colleges.”

Dr Lynne Sedgmore CBE (pictured right), executive director of the 157 Group, said: “We have understood for some time now that the future landscape of the sector will be different, and, in many ways, it is good that this document now sets out the very important issues that need to be considered.

“We agree that the focus of the future must be on partnership and relationship building and that the increased engagement of employers in the system is vital to ensuring the future success of our job market.

“It is very positive that this consultation also floats some important ideas around the way in which higher level qualifications could be accredited by colleges themselves, how we might combine local needs with national solutions and how colleges might work together with new institutions to deliver the vision for the future.”

Click here to take part in the consultation.

Norton Radstock College’s proposed merger with City of Bath College will be made official next month in a move that could mean nearly 100 job losses.

They will become Bath College on April 6 following the advice of FE Commissioner Dr David Collins, who visited Norton Radstock College last summer after Ofsted gave it a grade four rating.

He told bosses at the 4,700-learner college that it needed to operate “within a larger partnership” and its subsequent search for a merger partner, as reported in FE Week, resulted in talks with 5,129-learner City of Bath College, which was graded as good by Ofsted in 2013.

The colleges, which are ten miles apart and currently employ a total of 677 staff, are now consulting over staffing after the merger goes ahead, with a possible 91 jobs at risk.

City of Bath College principal Matt Atkinson (pictured above), who will become principal of Bath College, said: “We are thrilled to begin a new era of education under the Bath College name.

“The merger will allow the college, its staff and students to face the future from a position of strength.”

However, he said although no job losses had been finalised “difficult choices” would need to be made.

City of Bath College’s board has proposed a merger strategy that could leave 91 employees in academic and non-teaching support roles facing redundancy — however, according to the college, the merger will create 52 new posts, so fewer than 91 job losses are actually expected.

He said: “It’s important to be honest when merging two colleges and a restructure of staff is essential for the new college’s future growth.

“We have formally entered a period of consultation and we will do all with can to minimise job losses.

“Some redundancies will be unavoidable but we have a good track record of working with the trade unions and we are confident the impact of the merger on jobs will be minimal.

“Therefore although 91 individuals may be put at risk of redundancy we do not envisage 91 individuals losing their jobs.”

The 60-day consultation of staff and stakeholders is due to close by the April 6 merger date.

The restructuring will include closing one of Norton Radstock College’s current sites on St Francis Road, Keynsham, near Bristol, but the new college will continue to operate out of City of Bath’s current City Centre Campus in Avon Street, Bath, and  Norton Radstock’s Somer Valley Campus in South Hill Park, Westfield.

The new college will provide vocational and academic training for more than 3,000 full-time students and around 10,000 part-time students.

A new £3m project aimed at researching new ideas for FE will be based at the London School of Economics (LSE).

Skills Minister Nick Boles will today announce that a new Centre for Vocational Education Research (CVER) will be led by Dr Sandra McNally from the LSE and based at its Centre for Economic Performance.

Plans for the centre, which will be funded by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), were first unveiled in October.

Alongside Dr McNally, the CVER will also involve Dr Steven McIntosh from the University of Sheffield, Dr Stefan Speckesser from the Institute for Employment Studies and Dr Gavan Conlon from London Economics and will investigate, research and analyse potential new ideas for skills provision in England.

Speaking at the launch later this morning, Mr Boles is expected to say: “A skilled workforce, able to meet the needs of employers and industries, is vital to our continued economic growth.

“I’m delighted to be opening the CVER, bringing together experts from universities and colleges to build on our work driving up standards in skills and training. Creating new ideas for skills provision, rooted in analysis and rigorous research, will help the UK create a world-class workforce of the future.”

Dr McNally, the founding director of the centre, said: “While there are many excellent routes available to young people in vocational education, many do not get the high quality education they need to fulfil their own potential and to contribute to economic growth.

“The new centre aspires to become a world-class research hub to generate a step-change in our understanding of the nature, significance and potential contribution of vocational education to individuals and the wider economy.”

The search for a successful bidder for the £3m, three year contract was headed up by Professor Alison Wolf, the newly-created Peer and King’s College academic whose 2011 review of vocational education prompted some of the largest-scale reforms the FE sector has ever seen, including study programmes for 16 to 19-year-olds.

The assessment panel also included City and Islington College principal Frank McLoughlin, LSE director of spatial economics research Henry Overmann, Nuffield Foundation education director Josh Hillman, BIS deputy director for skills policy analysis Frank Bowley and representatives from the Economics and Social Research Council and the Higher Education Funding Council for England.

Baroness Wolf said: “I am absolutely delighted that the government is establishing this centre. It is an opportunity to transform our understanding of vocational education, and its role in society, and to create better education policy at all levels as a result.”

According to the government, the centre aims to advance understanding of the requirements for vocational education, identify the challenges in provision and develop and strengthen the knowledge base to enable “a more agile, relevant and needs-based vocational education sector to become a driving force for economic growth and social mobility”.

In its research, the centre will try to address how vocational education affects prosperity, productivity, profitability and economic growth, how to improve the amount of high quality provision and how the costs and benefits of vocational education influence individuals’ participation decisions.

BIS is funding the project to the tune of £3m for three years — with an option to extend a further two years with more funding.

Potential investors got a sneak peak of what’s going to be on offer at this year’s Skills Show at an awareness raising event today in Central London.

Ross Maloney (pictured), chief executive of Skills Show organisers Find a Future opened the event at Oxo Wharf, looking back at the success of the show, which was held for the third year in a row in November.

“The Skills Show is the UK’s largest skills information event and provides an impressive and incredible platform, and a base from which to support young people, helping them make important choices about their career,” he said.

Mr Maloney pointed to the results of a survey commissioned by Find a Future, asking some of the show’s 75,000 visitors what they thought of the show.

Mr Maloney said: “94 per cent of young people are satisfied with their experience the Skills Show and 86 per cent of adults feel the same.

“Importantly 97 of young people said they were going to take some positive action as a direct result of their experiences at the Skills Show — whether that was about seeking work experience further advice from parents and teachers or undertaking research.”

Ben Blackledge, head of content and experience at Find a Future, told FE Week what the organisation planned to add to this year’s show to make sure young people did actually take that direct action.

“We know people are inspired at the show — when they’re there in the moment they’re really engaged and inspired but the minute they go out it just leaves their heads,  so how can we create a place where they can do it all in one go?” he said.

This year’s show would include a new ‘job shop’ in every sector area.

“So every sector, you go, you’re inspired, and then you can get some careers advice, listen to the spotlight talks and just naturally moving on to taking the next steps,” said Mr Blackledge.

He also shared some more of the improvements the Skills Show team are making “to make sure those three days are as impactful as possible” — such as expanding the resources available to teachers.

“In the last few years the statutory duty to provide careers advice has gone onto schools and so to teachers,” he said.

“So we want to make sure that those people who have got that added as part of their job, are equipped with the right information.”

Find a Future was working with the Careers Development Institute to create resources and a programme of activity to support teachers giving careers advice.

“To create a space within such an inspirational show, where teachers can be upskilled, and equipped to deliver that we think is really important,” said Mr Blackledge.

The team was also looking at how to incorporate the competitions — which will be expanded this year to include squad selection for WorldSkills 2017 in Abu Dhabi as well as the national skills competition finals — into the visitor experience.

“It’s about saying to teachers ‘actually, in the same way you play football on a Saturday morning, and then you got to Wembley and watch England play, that’s like doing competitions in your classroom and then going to see the excellence and delivery of that as part of the show,” said Mr Blackledge.

“There’s also the big issue of how to we treat the offer, of 6,400 square meters of exhibition space, so that it’s accessible?

“We trialled the skills passport last year, where visitors collect stamps from each area to encourage them to explore, and that seemed to work in getting young people out and making connections, so we’ll be expanding that.”

The show will also be moving to from its usual spot in the Birmingham NEC to a larger, different section of the same complex, which Mr Blackledge said would allow the different sections to be better linked together.

“Before we had three big vast spaces but this year it’s going to a corridor, so when you walk in, its narrower but longer,” he said.

“Although it’ll still be 100 metres wide, but it’ll be easier to signpost things to make sure visitors see everything, because there’ll be stuff on your right and your left rather than having things in between you and where you want to be.”

The Skills Show would also be expanding the role volunteers could play in the show, he said, involving college students in activities relevant to their courses to give them work experience — for example retail students offering visitors customer service and performing arts students compering spotlight and showcase events.

“This year we want to make something more meaty for the volunteers — so 500 instead of 800 —doing a bigger role, trying to make sure there’s more benefit for them,” he said.

Chris Darling, head of apprenticeships at Virgin Media, issued at heartfelt plea, from his own experience for employers at the event to get involved.

“When we got involved, I expected would be a great corporate social responsibility policy — tick a box, give them ‘x’ amount of money each year, go and have a look and that’s it,” he said.

“But actually what happened is year on year… we’ve started taking our apprentices to run our stall and actually when you as the employer stand back, there’s something that happens in them.

“The passion you see in young apprentices when they’re talking to other young people about what they do is amazing and the confidence in them — we have a fantastic model here for exposure and confidence building in our apprentices.”

This year’s Skills Show will run from November 19 to 21 at the Birmingham NEC.