Election 2024: Apprenticeships top of education priority list

Increasing the number of apprenticeships is the joint most important education issue for voters in the lead-up to the election, a new poll suggests.

But there is limited backing for the apprenticeship policies put forward by both main parties.

And while a third of voters believe the quality of FE colleges has got worse since 2010, investing more in colleges ranked almost last.

The poll, carried out by Public First, was taken from a nationally representative group of 2,011 adults.

It found that boosting the number of all-age apprenticeships ranked top of the priority list when it comes to education, joint with Labour’s pledge to hire 6,500 more teachers – both scoring a net positive score of 30 per cent.

However, the Conservatives’ plan to remove funding for “low quality” degrees to pay for 100,000 more apprenticeships by 2029 scored just 5 per cent.

Labour’s plan to widen the apprenticeship levy to fund other forms of training also proved to be low on the priority list, scoring -5 per cent.

Click to enlarge

Simply increasing the number of apprenticeships was particularly popular among swing voters, beating recruitment of teachers to first place with 39 per cent popularity.

Of the spending priorities for post-18 education, offering more apprenticeships was top of the list, with 44 per cent support.

Abolishing single-phrase Ofsted judgments in favour of a report card achieved a score of -9%, while the Advanced British Standard sat at -6 per cent.

Public First said it used a technique called ‘MaxDiff’ to ask respondents to compare a randomly chosen pair of policies, without telling them which party they came from, to create ranked lists that show which are “relatively popular”.

When asked which public services the government should spend more money on, apprenticeships came 11th out of 20, with only one in ten voters placing it in their top three spending areas. Top of the list was the NHS, while schools placed seventh.

Further education colleges and adult learning was the least popular out of the list of areas the group wanted to see more money spent on, with only 4 per cent prioritising it.

The poll also asked respondents to say whether they thought the quality of different types of education setting had increased or decreased since the Conservatives came to power.

About a third of respondents said they thought the quality of further education colleges has got somewhat or much worse, with only 15 per cent feeling they had got better.

Meg Price, senior policy manager at Public First, said: “Despite apprenticeships themselves being hugely popular, especially with key voters, changes to apprenticeship policy and FE funding is not a top priority for most. 

“This comes as no surprise given the broader challenges facing the country – such as NHS waiting times and the cost of living – as well as the higher profile of challenges facing the education sector more broadly such as the teacher recruitment and retention crisis.

“Despite FE funding not being seen as a priority, aspects of the FE offer, like training and courses for working-age adults, was declared a priority by 31 per cent of people.”

City of Wolverhampton College announces new principal after financial turnaround

A college that was recently freed from government intervention after 12 years is set to change principal.

City of Wolverhampton College’s deputy principal Louise Fall will take over from Mal Cowgill, who has led the organisation for the last six years, this summer.

The news comes shortly after the college exited the longest-running intervention in the sector. It was taken off the FE Commissioner’s list of colleges with a financial notice to improve in April after a record-breaking 12 years.

Mal Cowgill

Fall, who has worked at the college since 2014, said she is “absolutely delighted” to be appointed principal and promised to continue developing courses and apprenticeships that meet local demand.

Cowgill said he is “confident” about handing the reins to Fall after working alongside her for a number of years.

He originally joined the college as interim principal in 2018, taking over from Claire Boliver, before being handed the role permanently.

The college was under the longest-running financial notice to improve, first imposed in 2012, before the intervention was withdrawn.

Key to this was a long outstanding £10.7 million loan from Barclay’s bank that the college struggled to repay.

The Department for Education has now taken on £6.1 million of the debt, with the remainder to be paid off through the future sale of City of Wolverhampton College’s Paget Road base for housing.

But the Paget Road sale, originally agreed in 2016, did not go through due to delays in the planning and construction of a new £61 million campus home for the college – City Learning Quarter – being built by City of Wolverhampton Council.

Louise Fall

However, the most recent accounts for 2022/23 show the college had an overall deficit of £931,000, down from £2.4 million the previous year.

Mike Hastings, chair of the college, said: “The board of governors is very pleased to have appointed Louise Fall as our new principal and chief executive. Louise has been a key member of our leadership team since 2014 and an integral part of our ongoing college developments. We look forward to continuing to work with her on delivering our vision of outstanding student experience and success for all.”

Specialist arts college strikes the right chord with Ofsted ‘outstanding’

A specialist arts college for learners with special educational needs and disabilities that was founded by musician Sir Richard Stilgoe has been rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted.

Orpheus Centre trains and supports about 60 people aged 18 to 25 with conditions such as Down Syndrome, autism and communication needs to live “independent and fulfilling lives” through an arts-focused curriculum.

In a grade one report published today, inspectors said the college has a “highly ambitious” project-based curriculum of training in arts, creativity, and enterprise alongside personal development.

Ofsted raised the centre’s overall effectiveness rating from ‘good’ to ‘outstanding’ for the first time, noting the quality of teaching and progress learners make.

“Learners develop, practise and master creative, technical and academic skills successfully to prepare them for their future working lives,” inspectors said.

They added that from the start of their time at the centre, learners “thrive due to the exceptionally well-planned and implemented transition activities that prepare them well to move from school to college”.

Orpheus principal Chloe Smith said: “This recognition is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the staff, students, supporters and our entire college community.

“Our mission has always been to empower the students to achieve their full potential, and this outstanding rating confirms that we are succeeding in our goals.”

A key focus of the centre – which boasts a theatre, art studio, sensory room and recording studio – is to ready learners for their “future working lives”.

Activities to help them do this include staged performances, exposure to associated roles such as catering and administration, gaining qualifications and careers guidance.

Outstanding progress

Inspectors praised the “outstanding progress” learners make through tailored activities that incorporate core skills such as English, maths and employability.

They also praised leaders and trustees for their ongoing quality evaluation and challenge from “exceptionally experienced and specialist trustees”.

The Orpheus Centre, which is run by a charity, was founded in 1997 by songwriter and musician Sir Richard Stilgoe.

Stilgoe is best known for his work on the Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals Cats, Starlight Express and Phantom of the Opera.

Based at his former family home, the centre has 21 purpose-built flats for learners to live on site.

The centre’s new rating marks a significant improvement for the centre since Ofsted rated it ‘requires improvements’ in 2016 and 2014, and ‘inadequate’ in 2007.

A spokesperson for the college told FE Week it has worked to achieve disability confident leader status and about a third of its staff are disabled.

Chief executive Rachel Black said: “With these brilliant young people, we are working to influence society to remove the obstacles in their paths so that they can plan for a brighter future.

“We want to grow to welcome even more learning disabled students in the future and rise to the challenge of welcoming more diverse cohorts in the years to come.”

Conservatives manifesto 2024: The FE pledges

The Conservatives have pledged to create 100,000 more apprenticeships and introduce an ‘Advanced British Standard’ if it wins the election.

The party launched its manifesto this morning which also commits to introducing a national service for 18-year-olds funded by eventually scrapping the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.

Costings show the Conservatives’ apprenticeship pledge will cost £886 million while the national service plan will cost £1 billion by 2029.

All the pledges have been previously announced. Here’s what the manifesto said for FE and skills:

100k extra apprentices by 2029

Last month the prime minister Rishi Sunak promised 100,000 more apprenticeships in England every year by the end of the next parliament. 

The policy would see annual apprenticeship starts rise to around 440,000 from 2029, paid for by shutting down “underperforming” university courses.

The Conservatives said they would top up the apprenticeships budget to fund those places with cash that would otherwise have gone on student loan subsidies for an estimated 13 per cent of students who would see their courses shut down by a newly emboldened Office for Students.

Today’s manifesto said: “We will fund this by changing the law to close university courses in England with the worst outcomes for their students. Courses that have excessive drop-out rates or leave students worse off than had they not gone to university will be prevented from recruiting students by the universities regulator. This will protect students from being missold and the taxpayer from having to pay where the graduate can’t.”

UKSPF to make way for national service

The manifesto said the Conservatives would extend the UK Shared Prosperity Fund – worth £2.6 billion between 2022 and 2025 – for three years at the next spending review, before “using this funding to support UK- wide national service”. 

UKSPF currently funds free adult maths courses through the “multiply” scheme among other adult education programmes aimed at the country’s most deprived areas.

The Conservatives claim the “reinvented” national service will give young people “valuable life skills and build a stronger national culture” and will be compulsory, so it “becomes a rite of passage for every 18-year-old”.

Young people will be given a choice, between civic and military service.

Civic service will be the equivalent of one weekend a month (25 days a year) volunteering in the community, alongside work or study, for a year. Roles could include special constable, NHS responder or RNLI volunteer.

Military service will involve a year-long full-time placement in the armed forces or cyber defence. This placement will be “competitive and paid, so our armed forces recruit and train the brightest and the best”.

A “Royal Commission”, backed by £2.5 billion in the final year of parliament and a new National Service Act, will be established to design the modernised national service. 

ABS still the plan

The prime minister has also vowed to “transform” 16 to 19 education by introducing the Advanced British Standards, “enabling young people to receive a broader education and removing the artificial divide between academic and technical learning”.

An ABS would involve giving young people more time in the classroom, learning more subjects, including English and maths to 18. It would spell the end of T Levels and A-levels.

Click here for everything you need to know about how the ABS is expected to work.

Other policies

  • Introduce the lifelong learning entitlement from 2025, “giving adults the support they need to train, retrain and upskill flexibly throughout their working lives”. FE Week reported a delay to the scheme in April
  • The Conservatives also pledged to “expand” adult skills programmes, such as skills bootcamps which “meet skills shortages”
  • From this September, new teachers in priority areas and key STEM and technical subjects will receive bonuses of up to £30,000 tax-free over five years. The payments are to be extended to eligible teachers in further education colleges
  • Coverage of mental health support teams will also be expanded from from 50 per cent to 100 per cent of schools and colleges in England by 2030
  • In what appeared to be a reference to the government’s flexi-job apprenticeships scheme, the manifesto said: “We believe apprenticeships are a key pipeline of talent into our world-leading creative industries. We will work with industry to deliver a dedicated flexible coordination service so that everyone who wants to work in the film, TV, gaming and music sectors can work on live productions whilst benefiting from at least 12 months of secure training”
  • And by 2030, every part of England “that wants one” will have a devolution deal. The Conservatives will offer ‘level 4’ devolution powers – which includes adult skills funding – to areas in England with a devolution deal and a directly elected leader, starting with the Tees Valley

Lib Dems manifesto 2024: The FE pledges

The Liberal Democrats will consider exempting colleges from VAT, the party has said in its manifesto that reiterates pledges to give every adult at least £5,000 towards training and widening the apprenticeship levy.

The manifesto confirmed several other policies already outlined by the party, such as increasing college funding per pupil above the yearly rate of inflation and creating a new ‘lifelong skills grant’ – previously dubbed a ‘skills wallet’ – for every adult.

Its only new pledge for FE appeared to be a “review” of further education funding to see whether colleges could be exempted from VAT, which would benefit them by an estimated £200 million per year.

The party has said its higher education and lifelong learning policies will cost an extra £1.5 billion by 2028.

‘For a Fair Deal’

Speaking this morning, Lib Dems leader Ed Davey said the ‘For a Fair Deal’ manifesto will ensure every child goes “good school” and has “real opportunities” to fulfil their potential.

The manifesto pledges to fix the “skills and recruitment crisis” by investing in education and training, increasing the availability of apprenticeships and “strengthening” careers advice.

The lifelong skills grant is a Lib Dem pledge that dates back to 2019 under the name “skills wallets”, of making grants worth £10,000 available to every adult to spend on education and training over thirty years.

However, the party has now halved this grant to £5,000, with an aim to increase it to £10,000 “when the public finances allow”.

Increase college funding

Increasing college funding rates per pupil “above inflation” each year is another continued pledge, alongside a tutoring guarantee for every disadvantaged pupil and a ‘young people’s premium’ for disadvantaged learners aged 16 to 18.

Details are limited of how much they party would invest in replacing and repairing “crumbling” college buildings.

On the apprenticeships, the party continues to take the same line as Labour in pledging to replace the “broken” levy with a “broader and more flexible” skills and training levy.

The Lib Dems claim that scrapping the lower apprenticeship rate and guaranteeing all apprentices are paid “at least” the national minimum wage would help boost the take up of the roles.

However, further details of how the party would encourage businesses to “invest in training” remain unclear.

The party also plans to reform Ofsted inspections and end single-word judgements, as well as pledging to “urgently” establish a commission on broadening the curriculum and making qualifications at 16 and 18 “fit for the 21stcentury”.

It said: “This will draw on best practice such as the International Baccalaureate and ensure children learn core skills such as critical thinking, verbal reasoning and creativity.”

Here’s a roundup of the Lib Dem’s pledges on skills and further education:

  • Replace the apprenticeship levy with a broader and more flexible skills and training levy
  • Scrap the lower apprentice rate and ensure they are paid at least the National Minimum Wage
  • Create Lifelong Skills Grants of at least £5,000 for adults to spend on education and training throughout their lives
  • Develop National Colleges as centres of expertise in high-level vocational skills of expertise for key sectors, such as renewable energy
  • Expand vocational training such as foundation degrees, higher national diplomas and higher national certificates to solve skills gaps
  • Increase school and college funding per pupil above the rate of inflation every year
  • Invest in new buildings and clear the backlog of repairs
  • Introduce a ‘Tutoring Guarantee’ for every disadvantaged pupil who needs extra support
  • Review further education funding, including the option of exempting colleges from VAT
  • Introduce a Young People’s Premium, extending Pupil Premium funding to disadvantaged young people aged 16-18
  • An industrial strategy that focuses on skills the UK economy will need such as renewables, digital and bioscience
  • Tackle the productivity crisis by encouraging businesses to invest in training, take up digital technologies and become more energy efficient
  • Reform Ofsted inspections and end single-word judgements to give parents get a “clear picture” of the strengths and weaknesses of each school, and schools get the guidance and support they need to improve
  • Establish a commission to broaden the curriculum and “make qualifications at 16 and 18 fit for the 21st century”, drawing on “best practice such as the International Baccalaureate” and ensuring children learn “core skills such as critical thinking, verbal reasoning and creativity”

How the new Adult Social Care Certificate will support local skills needs

While we’re in the middle of an election campaign, you could be forgiven for missing the launch of the new Adult Social Care Certificate.

A result of the Skills for Care commissioning by the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC), the ambition is to support people to not only remain in the social care workforce but build a rewarding and fulfilling career.

It also offers an opportunity for increased collaboration between training providers and local employers and greater community support for some of the most vulnerable people.

Who is it for?

Adult social care depends on the dedication of millions providing care. But the sector is facing a severe recruitment and retention crisis.

There are more people working in adult social care than the NHS – 1.54 million on average compared to 1.3 million – and the sector’s predicted to grow by almost half a million jobs by 2035. Nevertheless, it faces an average turnover rate of 28.5 per cent per year.

Primarily aimed at those who enter without a qualification, the new Care Certificate is for people currently working in social care without professional certification. According to Skills for Care, this represents more than half (54 per cent) of the workforce.

The DHSC’s ambition is for everyone who works in care to feel valued and recognised. They want to build a workforce of the right size with the right skills to meet the growing need for care and support. This is a difficult ask that’s made more challenging with the news that the original £53.91m for 37,000 fully-funded places has been postponed due to the election.

While I’m disappointed and hope the next government picks this up urgently following July’s outcome, we’ve launched the qualification as we firmly believe that the Adult Care Certificate is a valuable tool in helping to raise standards and professional outcomes.

What will the impact be?

Social care is served by an aging workforce, meaning a pipeline of talent is crucial to maintaining a pool of skilled staff. It’s essential that quality training pathways such as the Care Certificate, which is aimed at those aged 19 and over, encourage younger people into the sector.

Unless they have direct experience of care, it will continue to be unfamiliar to younger workers. Skills for Care reported that only a quarter of the current workforce is aged 25 or under.

A lack of opportunities for progression is also a common criticism, but the new Care Certificate will allow people to explore different types of roles. With training providers and their facilities enhancing delivery, there will be far greater opportunities for professional development.

For example, as well as a package of free resources to support delivery, NCFE is offering an additional funded qualification alongside the Care Certificate, creating opportunities to specialise in areas such as dementia support, end-of-life care or assisting people with learning disabilities.

The new qualification, along with the additional specialist training areas, also brings opportunities for Local Skills Improvement Plans to provide a clear focus on social care requirements, delivered through community partnerships.

Looking ahead

I urge the next government, whoever it may be, to revisit the funding promises as soon as it’s in place. This qualification is not only a much-needed investment in our social care workforce, it’s an investment in the care of the entire nation.

Social care needs more recognition as a professional career, and carers themselves must feel empowered to deliver high-quality care and develop and progress in their careers.

Through recognising skills, more people will be able to visualise a role that is both rewarding in its nature but, crucially, also delivers on providing progression opportunities and the building blocks of a successful career.

We recognise the need to make sure we’re equipping individuals with the knowledge and skills they need to work with some of society’s most vulnerable people. But it’s much more than certification; it’s about empowering our carers to understand the profound impact they have on society.

How to shift attitudes and market higher technical qualifications effectively

Fifteen years ago, at a meeting about recruiting students to higher technical courses, I heard one college director bemoan, to sympathetic nods, that her biggest problem was ‘the attitude of our own level 3 tutors’.  

Those tutors were encouraging students who might progress on to higher education at the college to enrol elsewhere, she explained, because ‘they think their teaching deserves a better result than college HE’.

Last month, at events organised by the Association of Colleges and the Gatsby Foundation, I spoke about the work of my company in researching higher technical education markets.

Judging by comments from attendees, the problem persists.

Recruitment to non-degree higher education is notoriously difficult. For institutions bridging the gap between A Level, BTEC and level 4, if tutors actively advise their students to avoid progressing, it becomes Sisyphean.

While local higher technical provision might not be right for the majority of level 3 students in a college, sixth form or independent provider (who typically are looking for a residential experience away from home), the minority for whom it might be right make up a considerable potential market.

This phenomenon of dissuasion is a cultural and leadership failure. If the problem is one of poor quality among higher-level courses, that needs be addressed. Likewise, if it is one of prejudice or ignorance.

So it is good news that the Department for Education intends to update its toolkits for providers of Higher Technical Qualifications (HTQ) to include materials targeting tutors.

Our own research into HTQs highlights various other challenges facing these kinds of programmes, while uncovering some solutions.

According to critics, HTQs are ‘just another acronym’ in a crowded qualifications market. They suffer from low awareness among potential students and their influencers. 

Dissuasion is a cultural and leadership failure

I think this misses the point. The plethora of (in particular, ‘non-prescribed’) provision at levels 4 and 5 means that some kind of organising conceit is required. HTQs are as good as any other.

This does not mean that this or future governments are likely to pour money into their branding or marketing like they have done with apprenticeships. That’s fantasy.

But it does mean that providers have the opportunity to package their qualifications in a manner that we know from the literature and our own research appeals to the target market: as occupational standards that will help get you a job or improve your career.

Another major challenge that higher technical education recruiters face is the diversity of the target market.

The good news here is that there is an abundance of publicly available evidence to help institutions unpick that complexity.

These include a library of studies and surveys commissioned by DfE. For example, the 2022 Technical Education Leavers Survey features new research on the motivators, influences and barriers of level 4 and 5 students.

Given that the majority of these students are aged over 24, it’s also useful to understand the attitudes and behaviours of adults more generally. For that, the Learning and Work Institute’s ‘Adult Participation in Learning’ study provides very useful insight.

It is clear from its results that convenience is a crucial factor in decision-making for adults thinking about non-leisure learning at higher level, in particular those with childcaring responsibilities.

Which is one reason why higher technical education providers should spotlight timetabling, travel connections and crèche facilities in their marketing.

They also need to understand which types of learners prefer different modes of delivery. In crude summary, the lower the level, the higher the preference for face-to-face learning. Which means that there can be a vibrant market for blended delivery at levels 4 and 5.

Our research, alongside the literature, is also very clear that search engine optimisation is important for all types of provision because of the primacy of online search among target markets.

Recent developments in artificial intelligence allow providers to become much more proficient at labelling courses and using key words that match the search terms used by potential students.

There is much more to consider, including the appeal of modularisation among employers, school liaison using level 4 tutors and adult recruitment through community centre partnerships, but the thoughts I have set out here are a good place to start.

The election will bring change – but will it bring respect?

In the midst of preparations for the first English exam on 22 May, my phone pinged with a message from a colleague: “general election July 4th then…”.

English and maths exams are the pinnacle of our year, but nothing quite trumps the excitement of an election, especially one that we expected to wait a bit longer for.

I don’t become nervous about change any longer. Having worked in further education for many years, I have seen the shifting sands and waves of new policy washing over the old (and often, not so old).

The prospect of change brings hope, but I wonder: are we ever going to escape the perpetual cycle of change, and is it conducive to creating a strong, stable offer for our students?

After 14 years with the Conservative party at the helm, we have seen and endured a lot. Under Gove, my own children have become expert fact-learners, primed for their future examinations. They know so much, and are prepared well to regurgitate on the day.

But what of the most disadvantaged young people, who we know are likely to come into further education looking for a new direction? And what of those young people who can’t quite ingest the fact-heavy curriculum they have been fed? What might a new government mean for them?

At present, when they come to our colleges, they sit through further years of preparing for high-stakes exams in English and maths, paired with a vocational course of choice.

They can climb the vocational ladder up to T Levels, and some do, but these qualifications are so challenging that without a stronger academic grounding, our students struggle. I have seen BTECs discontinued without an appropriate T-Level to replace them in time – and where BTECs have gone, many teachers have mourned the loss of a course that their students enjoyed.

These courses should have been reviewed and improved, not thrown away. This ruthless mentality which the sector has been subjected to does nothing to provide stability. These fraught changes mark the end of the line for some of our future tradespeople and aspiring vocational professionals as they have no path forward.

A new government needs to take pride in us

Whatever the new government looks like, it has to prioritise routes forward and out of deprivation for our disadvantaged young people.

During their 14-year tenure, the Conservatives have successfully reclassified the further education sector to align us with our primary and secondary counterparts and increased the funding we receive.

Yet we are far from thriving, and this has me questioning whether any of the policy changes have actually helped the most at-risk students. And do policy makers really understand who we are as a sector?

The changes to the Condition of Funding has had us all scrambling for English and maths teachers frantically, and wondering how to even begin timetabling for it.

Colleagues across the sector who have painstakingly timetabled resit classes within study programmes will have shared my despair as we read through the new weekly mandate of three hours in English and four of maths a week.

This was further confirmation that our current government doesn’t really ‘get us’ at all, when the nuts and bolts of our study programmes have now suddenly changed size and shape.

That feeling is particularly isolating when you pair it with our sectors understandable ‘poor relative’ complex.

A new administration (of whatever shade) needs to take the time to get to know us, because there is a lot more to post-16 education than A Levels. We are diverse, and we are wonderfully creative – we have had to be, to survive what has felt until only recently like ex-communication from the education sector.

A new government needs to take pride in us, and truly value what we do as a sector if we are to benefit from sustainable, meaningful change that truly improves life chances. They need to help us to reach our potential, so we can help our students reach theirs.

This election has roused me from my exam-haze. Change is coming one way or another, but it needs to be well-considered change that gives the sector a chance to have their say.

It’s time for stability. It’s time for a better deal for further education.

Why would anyone question the benefits of more teaching time for resits?

It is extraordinary to me to hear educators question the relationship between teaching time and outcomes. I first encountered it when working on the Department for Education’s review of ‘Time in Schools’ in 2021. Boris Johnson later used the doubters’ arguments to justify not investing sufficiently in education recovery. More recently, the setting of minimum teaching hours for GCSE resits has rekindled the debate.

The thing that’s extraordinary is that I can’t imagine any other sector or industry disputing the benefit of their core activity. Are GPs suggesting that shorter patient appointments would be better? Are there police who believe that time on the streets detracts from important back-office admin? Is McDonalds provoking a public debate about whether we eat too many cheeseburgers?

And although I deeply admire the societal value of all three of those callings, neither doctors, nor police, nor any number of ‘Have a nice days’ can open up the world and opportunity for young people like teaching can.

I could point to the abundant academic evidence on the benefit of increased teaching time, such as Battistin and Meroni 2016, or Bellei 2009, or Huebener 2017, or Kikuchi 2014, or Lavy 2015 & 2020, or Rivkin and Shiman 2015.

In a few of those cases it was only a sub-group who benefitted, such as economically-disadvantaged students or women, but that is perhaps why it hasn’t moved the Treasury to pick up its cheque book.

But it doesn’t matter, because the sad truth is that we already don’t get enough time.

“Our 16-19 year-olds spend less time in classrooms than their international peers”. Those aren’t my words. That’s from Gillian Keegan’s foreword to the Advanced British Standard proposals.

Study programmes in England are not funded for adequate teaching hours to equal the experience internationally. Failing to make the case for more hours fails our young people.

There was a small step forward in 2022 with the additional forty hours in study programmes for maths. Then, if I may say so myself, a rather progressive move was announced in 2023 to reform the English and maths premium.

Failing to make the case for more hours fails young people

Previously, that little-known pot of funding was mostly benefiting school sixth forms while FE did the heavy lifting on resits. Now it will add a cash boost to FE coffers, in recognition for doing an inspiring job of the most important policy in education.

I have seen some rubbishing of the new funding because it is perceived as coming with new asks from “busy officials” in Whitehall. But they are not really new. Most of us had three hours with our resit students before Covid, and the extra hour for maths was funded two years ago.

Officials were indeed busy. And what they were busy doing was listening to teachers and students in the minority of outlier providers, desperate because the one hour per week or less they have timetabled doesn’t give anyone a fighting chance.

The case for linking new funding to some minimum expectations seems more than reasonable when you put learners first.

Anyway, there’s a relatively quick way to prove the case. Two things happen in 2025/26: The headline performance measure for English and maths finally returns after its Gavin Williamson hiatus, and the DfE will start collecting data on English and maths hours in study programmes.

By the end of 2026, we can prove once and for all whether more teaching hours makes a difference.

(I’ve actually always wondered why DfE doesn’t do this for study programmes generally. They already know which colleges offer the expected 640 hours versus the minimum 580. It would take about thirty seconds to run some analysis of that against outcomes.)

Right now, we are heading into an election where only one party has plans to increase contact time for 16- to 19-year-olds, and the bookmakers are pretty confident they’re not going to win.

We need the next government to invest in FE, so let’s please start shouting about what a great investment it is.