Latest news from FE Week

‘Judge me on what happens in September’ says Ofsted chief

Sir Martyn Oliver has said he should be judged on updated Ofsted reforms due to be released in September, admitting he only put out “foundations” of a plan originally because the sector demanded “urgent” reform.

The chief inspector has been widely criticised for the rushed nature of plans for new report cards and a new inspection framework.

It also emerged recently Ofsted won’t respond to its own consultation until September, giving leaders just weeks to digest the proposals before inspections resume in November – despite a previous pledge from the inspectorate that providers would get a full term’s notice.

Speaking at the Festival of Education this morning, Oliver was asked how his aim of rebuilding trust with the sector was going.

He said it had “gone to a certain level”, but added that “until we publish the document, there is nothing anyone else can do. And that is a difficult, difficult state.”

On the report card plans, Oliver said Ofsted “could have taken another one or two more years, but that wasn’t what the system was saying.

“The system was saying Ofsted needed urgent and quick reform. And so I chose to put something out that I knew would be just the beginnings, just the foundations.”

‘People will understand better in September’

He pointed to the watchdog’s testing of the proposals.

“I think we’ve done something like 234 test visits in the period between publishing that document and where we are today, and the amount of work that we’ve done to listen to teachers, to shape and to change. We’re taking that time to just get it absolutely right.

“And I think in September, some of the things that I originally set out to achieve, when I get a chance to explain them, I think people will understand better, and hopefully it will begin to rebuild that trust.”

Ofsted had originally pledged to give education settings a notice period “equivalent to one term between the publication of our post-consultation response and inspection materials and the start of education inspections”.

But with its firm plans now not coming until September, leaders have warned they will have just weeks to prepare for the new regime. Angry education union leaders wrote to education secretary Bridget Phillipson last week calling for new-style inspections to be introduced at the start of the 2026-27 academic year.

Oliver said he was “sorry” for the lack of notice, but said Ofsted had “never ever” paused inspection during development of a new framework before, as it will between September and November.

Would he as a leader be happy with just a few weeks’ notice?

“Well, it depends on what you see, what comes out from what I’m about to produce in September, which…I’m still at the state of finalising. And I can’t really go into until that point, but I think in September, judge me by what comes out and what you read then at that point.”

Combined authority pauses adult skills contracts after legal challenge

A new combined authority has paused the awarding of procured adult skills funding contracts after a provider launched a legal challenge over an alleged botched tender, FE Week understands.

The East Midlands County Combined Authority (EMCCA) has taken control of adult education for its region for the first time this year, with delivery set to start next month.

It put £7.8 million – down from an expected £10 million – out to tender in March. Winners were notified on June 13, but only £6.5 million was allocated.

One of the losing bidders – CT Skills Ltd – has now lawyered up to challenge the outcome.

A message from EMCCA sent to bidders, seen by FE Week, said: “We would like to inform you that EMCCA has received notification that a claim form has been submitted in relation to this procurement process.

“As a result, we are currently unable to proceed with the award at this time. We will provide further updates as soon as more information becomes available.”

The grounds of the legal claim are not yet known. CT Skills said it could not comment as legal proceedings are ongoing.

FE Week understands multiple providers complained that feedback from markers did not match their bids.

An East Midlands Combined County Authority spokesperson, said: “The total value of the adult skills fund contract is £4.36 million, and the free courses for jobs contract is valued at £2.14 million.

“We are currently in the process of awarding contracts for the adult skills fund through the crown commercial service dynamic purchasing system. As this process is ongoing, we are unable to comment on individual applications at this time.”

EMCCA’s tender first put £5.56 million of ASF up for grabs, with maximum contracts of £650,000, plus £2.15 million for free courses for jobs.

It is unclear why the combined authority did not allocate the full amount.

EMCCA also grant funds ASF to 16 providers – mostly colleges and councils – to the tune of £45 million. Grant funded contracts are not affected by the tender pause.

This isn’t the first controversial adult education tender from a new combined authority. Last year, West Yorkshire cancelled its procurement for 2024/25, 22 days after contracts were due to start.

This was due to “substantial challenges” over the “validity” procurement scoring that led to a re-evaluation of bids earlier in the year.

Burnley College inflated achievement rates, Ofsted reveals

A college that boasted to be the “number one” in the country for achievement rates “misled” students and parents by inflating their data, a critical Ofsted report has revealed, a day after the long-serving principal quit.

Inspectors slammed leaders and governors for “too long” not questioning “exceptionally high” achievement rates, after finding that Burnley college had submitted inaccurate individualised learner records (ILRs).

This deceived the local community about how well learners achieved.

The report, which downgraded the college to a ‘requires improvement’ rating, comes just a day after FE Week revealed that principal Karen Buchanan officially resigned from her post.

Buchanan mysteriously disappeared from the college for “personal reasons” just before Ofsted came knocking back in March. Inspectors revisited the college in June.

Karen Buchanan resigned as principal yesterday

The college later suspended Buchanan pending an investigation, but refused to reveal the nature of the probe.

Burnley College claimed on its website that it is the “number one” college in England for 16 to 18 achievement rates on the government’s most recently published achievement rates table in March 2024, and claimed to have held the position since 2018.

In an extraordinarily worded report by the watchdog today, Burnley College was rated ‘good’ in five out of eight areas, ‘outstanding’ in two areas and ‘requires improvement’ for its leadership and management, triggering an overall grade three rating. The college achieved a grade two rating at its last full inspection in 2021.

Inspectors noted that some leaders and governors had very recently “proactively” reported concerns of inaccurate data to the Department for Education and the FE Commissioner.

The report said: “Inaccurate individualised learner records were submitted by the provider which inflated the qualification achievement rates for young learners on level 3 vocational and A-level courses. This misled key stakeholders, such as learners, parents and the local community about how well learners achieved.”

Although governors have “extensive” professional expertise, the watchdog criticised them for having limited FE experience.

Ofsted also said governors and leaders did not have “robust enough” internal policies and processes to manage the risk of inaccurate achievement data.

“For too long, those responsible for leading and governing Burnley College did not question exceptionally high achievement rates”, the report stated.

Inspectors recommended the college “strengthen” the governing board with people with FE experience.

At the time of Buchanan’s suspension, the college appointed deputy principal Kate Wallace as interim principal.

Buchanan began working at Burnley College in 1986 as a part-time lecturer and became deputy principal in 2011 before leading the college in 2018.

DfE told FE Week it is working closely with the college chair of governors and are in ongoing dialogue with the college as its investigation progresses.

The FE Commissioner is also providing the college with National Leader of FE support for the interim principal. DfE will review the position once the investigation has concluded.

A Burnley college spokesperson said: “The college acknowledges Ofsted’s findings and has already been reviewing its practices to ensure that anomalies are identified and investigated as quickly and effectively as possible and welcomes Ofsted’s input on such steps.”

Strong skills contributions and curriculum

Ofsted inspected the college between March 11 and 14 and then again between June 4 to 5.

With nearly 6,400 students enrolled at the time of inspection, inspectors praised learners’ diligent attitude to their education and teachers’ high expectations of learners.

The report said that most learners and apprentices have good attendance, bar a few courses where attendance remains “too low”.

Ofsted said most young learners achieve their qualifications and move on to higher education or employment.

Adult learners achieve “very well” and most apprentices achieve their apprenticeship, but only a “small” proportion achieve merit or distinction grades.

The inspection team also rated the college for making a “strong” contribution to meeting local skills needs.

The report also applauded the college for planning ambitious curriculums but pointed out that the level three curriculum for young learners has not been ambitious enough.

But inspectors said in previous years, “too many” young learners were “incorrectly dropped down to one-year courses when they did not complete their two-year course. They did not gain the qualifications they set out to achieve”.

They added that leaders have recently reorganised and planned the curriculums to mitigate this and get more learners to complete their full two-year level 3 course.

Burnley College’s spokesperson said: “Ofsted’s inspection has found that the college has improved or maintained its ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ performance in almost all areas.

“We are particularly proud that Ofsted has rated the college ‘outstanding’ for personal development of learners, and ‘outstanding’ for adult learning programmes as well.”

They added: “The college continues to be committed to all learners and stakeholders in achieving their goals.”

Oliver Ryan, the local MP said the report was “really concerning” and was supporting Burnley College through its “journey of change”.

He told FE Week: “Clearly, what’s happened is really concerning and worrying, for students, staff, parents and for me. I’m in regular contact with the college’s leadership, and I’m reassured that following this episode, and learning from the ongoing investigation, the leadership team have implemented the most robust of processes and plans to make Burnley College the best, most transparent, most effective, most reputable, community-focused place it can be.

“Burnley College and their staff do a lot of good, for students and our local community.”

The Great British skills mismatch

Britain now boasts the most educated workforce in its history, with 33.8 per cent of individuals aged 16 or older holding a level 4 certificate or higher according to the 2021 Census, up from 27.2 per cent in 2011. This educational improvement, however, hides regional imbalances and a skills mismatch. London leads with 46.7 per cent of its population holding higher qualifications, while the North-East lags behind at 28.6 per cent – an 18.1 percentage point difference. This contrast highlights the uneven distribution of education and opportunity across the country, giving the impression of two nations with divergent prospects for productivity, employment and social mobility.

The expansion of higher education has revealed inefficiencies in the labour market, particularly regarding over-qualification and skills mismatches. While firms struggle with shortages in technical and vocational skills, a growing number of young people are entering occupations that do not require a degree. A 2024 OECD study found that 37 per cent of UK graduates are over-qualified, the highest proportion among member countries. This paradox reflects inefficiencies in the allocation of education and skills resources, raising a crucial question: how can the UK better align education with real-world job demands?

The consequences of this misalignment are considerable. Workers in mismatched occupations often experience wage penalties, lower job satisfaction and higher turnover. Young people are especially vulnerable, frequently accepting non-graduate jobs to avoid unemployment. More troubling, this misalignment may be why young people cannot find a job in the first place, leading to prolonged job searches and potential disengagement from the labour market.

Over-qualification reflects not only lost individual potential but also a broader economic inefficiency. Higher education loses value if graduates cannot apply their skills, ultimately harming productivity and innovation. Regionally, this problem is amplified. In places such as Newcastle, for example, universities produce many graduates, yet the region has the lowest proportion of high-skill jobs in the UK. The result: talent leaves, deepening inequality.

The Productivity Agenda rightly challenges the assumption that more degrees mean greater productivity. This supply-side ignores the skills employers are looking for, particularly given regional variations and accelerating technological change. A balanced system is required, one where academic and vocational pathways receive equal investment and recognition. As technology reshapes work, apprenticeships and technical education can better respond to changing employer demands, especially when traditional education struggles to adapt.

Britain must also embrace continuous upskilling. Short courses and flexible education programmes are viable alternatives for retraining without full-time study. Simultaneously, the government should incentivise firms to invest in training, perhaps through tax benefits, since companies often hesitate if employees might leave. Reducing training costs increases the chance firms will invest in, and retain, skilled staff.

Any effective strategy must account for place. Decades of underinvestment in regional education and infrastructure have deepened inequalities in employment, skills and opportunities. Addressing these disparities requires sustained investment in transport networks, digital connectivity and local development to connect people with opportunity in underserved areas.

Investment must also go beyond traditional universities. FE colleges, technical institutes, and adult learning centres in areas with low educational attainment and high economic inactivity, such as Blackpool, Grimsby or Southend can serve as crucial hubs, especially if they collaborate with local employers to tailor programmes to regional needs.

Economic regeneration and educational reform must proceed in tandem. Encouraging firms to locate outside London and the South-East can stimulate local demand for skilled workers. When young people observe thriving industries at home, they are more likely to remain local rather than feeling compelled to migrate for economic opportunities.

Finally, devolving more education planning to local authorities would allow for more responsive and targeted approaches. Local leaders, working with regional bodies and employers, often have a better understanding of their area’s economic dynamics than central government.

The economics of skills is not just about supply and demand in abstract markets; it is about the institutions that shape human potential and national prosperity. Perhaps the most urgent skill Britain needs is the ability to rethink our approach to skills altogether. Only then can it address its skills paradox and build an economy that works better for everyone.

From blind hiring to flexible work: How FE can fix workplace exclusion

Workplace culture has changed almost beyond recognition in the past decade. However, for a significant chunk of the population the workplace still remains inaccessible. Research from London Metropolitan University’s Met Lab in partnership with Haringey Council has revealed that some communities in Haringey have an employment rate 30 per cent lower than average.

The existence of such a gaping disparity in 2025 is alarming and highlights the need to close employment gaps between communities.

FE providers have an integral role in this process. As the link which joins employers with their future employees, they’re perfectly placed to connect the dots between the two. Institutions can ensure they’re equipping students with the skills their future employers are looking for and encourage firms to make workplaces as accessible as possible, by hiring people with diverse skillsets and backgrounds.

Structural changes are the most effective way to close the gap long term. Here are some of the most effective and straightforward changes FE providers and employers can implement.

Implement blind recruitment processes

Removing identifying information during the initial stages of recruitment and selection processes can increase interview rates for underrepresented groups by up to 30 per cent. By implementing blind recruitment, HE providers and employers can directly address unconscious bias in the early stages of recruitment.

This approach ensures that candidate evaluation is based purely on skills, qualifications and potential, and creates a more equitable screening process from the beginning of the recruitment process.

Develop robust flexible working arrangements

The research highlights the challenges disproportionately faced by diverse communities, including caregiving responsibilities, cultural considerations, and economic constraints. Implementing robust flexible working and studying arrangements such as flexible hours, job sharing, part-time opportunities, and supportive policies that recognise the differing requirements of diverse communities can make upskilling and working feasible for people with other responsibilities. These people would otherwise be unable to obtain the skills they need to enter the workforce.

Diversity auditing

There are huge representation gaps at all levels of the workforce evidenced in the research, but they’re by far the worst at the most senior levels, with leadership roles remaining predominantly white and male.

Organisations should undertake comprehensive diversity audits which go beyond simple headcounts; they should analyse recruitment processes and workplace culture too. Employers and education providers should set specific, measurable targets, with regular progress reporting in order to close the representation gaps.

Investing in inclusive leadership training

The report demonstrates that unconscious bias remains a significant barrier to employment equity in Haringey and more widely, with managers lacking the tools to recognise and mitigate their own biases. Employers should look to implement mandatory comprehensive leadership training focusing on cultural competency, understanding systemic barriers and developing active strategies for inclusive management. They should also provide practical tools to create supportive, equitable work environments that recognise and value diverse talents.

Closing the employment gap and making the workforce more diverse are a net positive for FE providers, employers and their future employees. By making the workplace more inclusive and upskilling workers, we get more people into high skilled work, a more dynamic FE system and a strong pipeline of skilled workers with fresh perspectives and ideas for employers to make the most of.

There’s so much untapped potential among people who want to be in work – creating a more inclusive workplace and closing the employment gap is the way to unlock it.

We need to learn lessons from Weston debacle before we move on

Is Weston old news? Lots of people in the sector hope that the governance failures at Weston College, which allowed the “concealment” of £2.5 million in undeclared payments to England’s highest-paid former principal Sir Paul Phillips, have been put to rest, but it may not be the case.

There are likely to be more details about the specific case and a renewed focus on the health of colleges in this country.

While Weston undoubtedly damaged the sector’s reputation, it has also prompted a lot of constructive reflection and sector conversations about good governance.

So here are four lessons that I think follow on from Weston.

Weston has driven a new focus on compliance

Conversations around compliance will never be as interesting as conversations around, for example, culture. However, as a board, you should be checking that you are compliant with (not exhaustively) the Association of Colleges’ (AoC’s) FE code of good governance; what the FE Commissioner has recently issued on this subject as well as the Treasury’s guidance on senior pay. All this is reasonably straightforward and incredibly important. Post-Weston you should be getting alongside your director of governance and assuring yourself and your board that you are compliant.

Weston is an outlier. Probably…

A second lesson from Weston is how well I think government worked swiftly with colleges and organisations such as the AoC to calibrate a response. It feels helpful and proportionate… so far. I wrote earlier this year about how I believe FE could, in fact, be a model for good governance practice in other sectors such as schools and universities. I stand by that, despite Weston. However, the uncomfortable truth remains that we can’t be sure.

I find that anyone well connected in FE is always able to talk about an organisation, maybe even two, that they think are in trouble in some way. Yes, it’s often gossip. Not harder edged evidence like audit, Ofsted or perhaps an external governance review, or even a diagnostic conducted by the Further Education Commissioner (FEC) team. It doesn’t mean the gossip is always wrong though. Who might have known what was going on in Burnley?

This feels very uncomfortable and I suspect it will be exercising the Department for Education (DfE).

For ten years now, children’s social care intervention and improvement out of DfE has focused on the challenge of getting upstream of failure. Officials have tried to systematically gather together their relationships with directors of children’s services to get a fix on those local authority children’s social care services that are “wobbling” and might fail. They then seek ways of approaching those local authorities to broker in improvement support.

I wonder whether DfE policy and delivery around FE intervention will head in a similar direction.

Weston will drive the further professionalisation of governance. Probably…

On its most narrow reading you could describe Weston as a failure of governance related to senior post holder (SPH) remuneration. It’s right, however, that government and representative organisations have followed up with an emphasis on effective practice beyond just compliance related to senior pay.

For example, I completely support the FEC focus on the importance of the “triumvirate” group of chair, chief executive and director of governance, which I am promoting in a free Rockborn webinar on 9 July – as well as the focus on effective appraisal processes for SPHs, both of which I’ve introduced at Croydon College across the past 18 months.

However, whereas previously government was all over sector operational governance and our (chief) executives, with ever more complex funding regimes and their associated regulatory oversight, you can now feel that government is really beginning to focus on corporate governance as well.

In one sense that’s good for the profile of governance in FE. And it could mean positive change. But it might also entail a lot of new guidance and government activism coming down the line.

This could be a significant undertaking for chairs to get their heads around. I can see that it could begin to stretch the goodwill and credulity of a cadre of largely unpaid volunteers when the reputational and other consequences for failure are so obviously high.

I therefore think the case for the further and continued professionalisation of FE governance post-Weston, including the payment of chairs, has become irresistible.

A wake-up call

I do understand why many people in our sector want Weston in the rearview mirror. It is pretty shocking.

I think the better way to approach Weston, however, is to sit up and really take notice of it on your boards and use it to drive future improvement. To the credit of government and the FEC I think that is exactly how it has been approached on behalf of the sector.

So while Weston may not be old news, surprisingly it may still turn out to be good news!

Is education policy ‘TIP’ing into a trauma-informed trap?

At the Social Mobility Commission, we’ve consistently highlighted two issues holding back progress: policy churn and poor quality “evidence” guiding practice.

We are not alone in recognising this. Professor Frank Dobbin has written extensively about how widely accepted equalities initiatives often lack evidence and can even backfire. Education faces a similar challenge.

‘Deschooling’ disaster

A clear example is Knowsley’s secondary schools rebuilding programme in 2005. Backed by £157 million from Building Schools for the Future, education leaders opted for a radical redesign of the school environment to boost outcomes. Eleven Merseyside schools were replaced by seven new ones featuring no classrooms, open-plan learning zones, project-based learning, one-to-one supervision and teachers rebranded as “progress leaders”. Perhaps predictably, it failed. Chaos ensued, learning suffered. And Knowsley remained bottom of the GCSE ‘league table’.

Trauma-informed practice (TIP) is another educational approach being implemented without sufficient supporting evidence. While advocates cite fewer suspensions, improved teacher confidence and modest academic or attendance gains, most studies are small, qualitative and descriptive.

TIP troubles

TIP is often introduced alongside other whole school or college reforms, making it hard to isolate its true impact. Few long-term, peer reviewed evaluations or randomised control trials exist – hence the need for caution.

Being open-minded about new ideas is vital, but healthy scepticism is just as important and an uncritical embrace of TIP ideas may prove counterproductive. “Trauma informed” is so loosely defined that it can mean almost anything. If all behaviour is seen as trauma-driven, then behaviour management is compromised. This overlooks a simple truth: some people find it fun to break the rules – and teenagers like to test boundaries.

TIP also lacks an underlying theory of learning and fails to recognise that learning together in larger groups requires shared norms. Otherwise, teaching, learning and assessment – along with safety and wellbeing – become unmanageable.

Knowsley’s “deschooling” architects obviously had good intentions. But radical reform without due care and risk management meant they delivered an expensive failure that was paid for by taxpayers and, ultimately, by local families. Pupils from those schools are now aged 31 to 36. Today, 26.2 per cent of Knowsley’s adults have no qualifications (compared with 18.2 per cent nationally). And only 23.8 per cent have a degree level qualification (compared with 33.8 per cent for England and Wales).

Underperformance

The UK faces a serious problem of underperformance at school. We urgently need a solid, evidence-based consensus on how to tackle it. But this is something both simpler and more complex than it first appears.

Some places, such as London, have made substantial progress. Twenty years ago it was the laggard, and now it leads. Yet others remain stuck. Local authority data shows the same places – tending to be in post-industrial and coastal towns – consistently at the bottom.

Our Innovation Generation report argued that addressing this geographical unevenness should be a national priority. London’s success is attributed to many things, but it owes much to the foundations of consistent behaviour management and strong pedagogy, which have too often been ignored or poorly implemented elsewhere.

There’s also a tendency to believe that schools and colleges should be able to solve every societal problem, which underpins approaches such as “deschooling” and TIP. When results disappoint, we redesign the system to make it more accommodating. But in doing so, we often confuse the baby with the bathwater – and rarely improve outcomes.

Back to basics

Fundamentally we all learn in similar ways. So, while context matters, solutions which aren’t focused on the basics of behaviour and pedagogy are unlikely to work.

That does not mean, however, that these are sufficient on their own. London’s social mobility gains also stem from factors outside school and college. Family, community, neighbourhood, cultural aspiration and visible economic opportunities almost certainly play a role.

If we can better understand the factors that are present in places with strong outcomes, we can see more clearly what is missing in those that struggle.

I’ll explore this further in due course, but one thing is very clear. The solution will almost certainly not involve faddish, unproven approaches – especially when the risks of failure fall squarely on those who need the most help.

Jeremy Kerswell, Plumpton College principal and Landex chair

As head of a land-based college that has doubled in size, Jeremy Kerswell is attracting students from outside rural communities

And yet, Jeremy Kerswell is surprisingly reluctant to be photographed in his wellies. He fears that doing so might evoke a farming stereotype that is “the antithesis” of the image he wants for his land-based college, which he has “pulled up into the modern age into a very progressive, forward-thinking organisation” in his ten years as principal.

In that time, Plumpton has doubled in size, and Kerswell believes it has had the fastest-growing commercial portfolio of any college in the country.

Perception matters for Kerswell. He similarly believes that the Latin motif decorating a grand doorway that reads “labor omnia vincit” (hard work conquers all) evokes an old mentality of “you go to Plumpton if you’ve got big hands and a strong back” which is “not what this place or the farming industry needs”.

Instead, his college has been “showcasing a different story, working more with employers and schools to target a different audience”. Less than half its students now come from a rural background.

Plumpton’s students are today operating robotic milkers, analysing grape juice sugars in the college’s homegrown sparkling wine, and providing hydrotherapy to dogs. Plans are in place to incorporate data analytics into many of its courses.

It was a very different story when Kerswell arrived in 2015, when the college was “probably on the cusp of Ofsted ‘inadequate’ and a merger through an area review”.

At least six other land-based colleges have succumbed to mergers so far this century, and another (Hadlow in Kent) went into administration. There are only 11 independent land-based colleges left in England, and Plumpton is the only one in the South-East.

Plumpton College’s Latin motto above a grand doorway

Plumper provision

Kerswell credits “flipping hard work” and a “relentless drive to move into industries facing massive skills gaps” for the fact that Plumpton’s turnover has risen from £15.6 million to a predicted £31 million next year, 25 per cent of which is commercial income.

This means that Kerswell’s biggest challenge is keeping up with the pace of demand. Despite spending £30 million on capital projects, including a new agrifood centre and vet studies centre, he admits that “over four days a week you can’t get a classroom or a parking space” on campus.

In Kerswell’s 28-year career in education, he has never had to turn away students. But some of his courses for next year are already full, and being over-subscribed makes it harder to be fully inclusive. “If you’re over-subscribed, even the most inclusive of us – and I am – would be selective, and you’re going to pick not always based on academic attainment but on attitude and readiness to learn.”

Meercats, emus and a church

There is no shortage of animals about on campus. A menacing-looking snake is being hand-fed a mouse (thankfully through gauntlet gloves and large forceps) inside the animal centre, and new enclosures for meercats, lemurs and otters are being built ready for September.

Land-based colleges are the envy of the rest of the FE sector for their idyllic settings, and Plumpton, which turns 100 next year, is certainly no exception, with its main buildings looking out on to the rolling hills of the South Downs.

From classrooms, students can glimpse emus and donkeys, and a 12th century church that houses one of the oldest bell towers in the country.

It opens to the community once a week, with students “drifting in and having the sorts of conversations with people that you have with your grandparents”.

Kerswell prides himself on keeping his college in tiptop condition; he never seems to switch off from litter patrol.

“To teach people about horticulture, our grounds have got to be presented to the higher standards…when we’re making wine, the wine’s got to be flipping brilliant. That lifting of the bar isn’t just about pedagogy,” he says.

A 250-year-old walled garden that Plumpton’s horticultural students helped restore and now manage in nearby Stanmer Park has become an exemplar of the college’s high standards, and “done more for our brand than anything else”.

In four years, One Garden Brighton has had a million visitors and helped Plumpton secure a 70 per cent increase in 16- to 24-year-olds studying horticulture “bucking all the national trends” for the “very misunderstood” horticultural sector, which is generally seen as something “your grandparents did”.

But it is a “huge responsibility” for Plumpton as custodian of 2,000 acres of land, some of which covers a site of special scientific interest. Mishaps do happen. In 2020, the college was fined £50,000 after management failings caused slurry to pollute a nearby stream.

Kerswell admits it was “one of those career moments that you want to bury deep”.

“The bit that hurt was that it had been happening for years and years. It’s happened once on my watch, and I got years’ worth of hate,” he says, “but for every complaint that doesn’t hit your high notes, there’s an opportunity to learn.”

Jeremy Kerswell with a timeline of Plumpton College

Landex role

In addition to his role at Plumpton, Kerswell is chair of Landex – Land Based Colleges Aspiring to Excellence – which has nearly 40 members. And Kerswell believes there has “never been a more important time” for their sector, as it sits at the crux of the “three big global challenges” – food security, environmental sustainability and health.

But with so many other land-based colleges having merged with their local general FE colleges or college groups in recent years, Kerswell fears some land-based provision is being “marginalised”.

There are “not many examples” of merged land-based colleges where they are still “able to meet the strategic needs of the sector and community around them as effectively as they perhaps should” he says.

Whereas Plumpton’s strategic plan is informed by the land-based sector it serves, that is “not the case where land-based is a small faculty in a much bigger organisation”, he says, adding: “It’s very easy for that [designated specialist funding that land-based provision receives] to get lost and therefore not be spent in the right way.”

Kerswell sees Landex’s role as being to “ensure we’re protecting that investment”.

One of Plumpton College’s newer buildings

Kerswell wants to see more recognition in funding allocations for the capital costs of providing residential accommodation and travel, given land-based colleges’ rural locations.

And there is an opportunity for Landex to “far better promote the green skills agenda for environmental sustainability, as all too often conversations are about retrofitting and construction”. He points to how planning law changes mean every planning application needs to demonstrate how it will benefit biodiversity, which “requires a skill set that doesn’t exist in planning authorities at the moment”.

A surge of interest in environmental and sustainability issues is enabling Plumpton to “attract students that wouldn’t otherwise come here”, but jobs in environmental management are so abundant now that Kerswell says: “We could have twice as many students, and they would all still get jobs.”

But Landex’s lobbying role is complicated by the fact that land-based colleges are caught between the Department for Education (DfE) and the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs in their remit, which “have no relationship whatsoever”.

The plan is for Landex to get Skills England’s new CEOs out visiting a land-based college soon, so they “recognise the value of what we’re doing”.

A dog treadmill in Plumpton’s new veterinary provision

Fundings highs and lows

Kerswell is also concerned about the ability of colleges like his that are “responding to national skills needs” to access borrowing for capital projects.

When it became clear that Plumpton’s veterinary nursing provision was outgrowing its facility, it applied to become part of an institute of technology to access funding for new provision and planned on borrowing £2.5 million from lenders to make up a shortfall.

But then reclassification happened, delaying the project by 18 months as Plumpton worked on convincing the DfE to lend it the money instead. Because “we don’t give up”, the new facility finally opened two months ago, complete with kennel blocks, consultation rooms, and a hydro pool for dogs. In its mock-up veterinary practice, students can dissect eerily life-like £3,000 dog dummies with removable organs.

But the building is not quite finished (“because DfE played a hard game” on funding), with more rooms being added next year. The investment has had an impact on Plumpton’s financial health, with last year’s accounts stating that it was “disappointing to end the year in a deficit position”.

But there have been funding windfalls lately too; Plumpton got a “quite surprising” 30 to 40 per cent of more money for free courses for jobs than it had been expecting and made a “real success” out of level 3 courses in horticulture, land management and agriculture, with its two intakes a year having both been oversubscribed.

Jeremy Kerswell with one of Plumpton’s £3,000 dummy dogs

Politics and partnerships

Kerswell never realised before becoming principal (having previous been assistant principal at Bridgwater College) just how immersed in politics the role would be. But he seems to relish that side of the job.

Plumpton was, Kerswell believes, “a bit too complacent, cozy, nostalgic and paternalistic” when he arrived, and he was not surprised when it was rated as ‘requiring improvement’ six months later.

He took the helm just as Sussex was named in the first wave of area reviews and believes that “had we not moved so quickly in driving change”, Plumpton would “definitely” have been merged with East Sussex College of Chichester College Group.

Wine, wellies and robots

When Kerswell arrived at Plumpton, it was already producing large quantities of wine, but much of that was then consumed by its staff and students. Kerswell decided to turn the process into a commercial endeavour instead.

Next year, the college is expecting to sell £250,000 of wine, with the aim of becoming profitable over the next three years. But with the UK’s wine industry still in a fledgling state, there is a tension between wanting to demonstrate the quality of their wine and “not wanting to compete with industry”.

Kerswell says although the quality of English wine is good, there are issues with yield and productivity that affect prices and present a risk to the industry.

Plumpton is being supported by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to plant a new vineyard with a “level of automation and data analytics that we think will be the first of its kind globally”, to find ways of driving up productivity.

“When you add in all the robots, we should be able to demonstrate a different way of doing things,” he says.

Clutching my complimentary bottle of Plumpton wine that Kerswell hands me, we enter Plumpton’s “biosecurity centre” (where hands are washed and wellies are donned) before entering the college’s farm. With a “huge number” of animal diseases now circulating in Europe, hygiene is paramount.

The college’s robot feeder, which is meant to be pushing the cows’ feed towards them to ensure a constant supply, has “wandered off”. Luckily, the robotic milker lacks the ability to go walkabout and there is a steady line of cows waiting for it to milk them.

Kerswell argues that the robots create “different jobs with different skill sets”, rather than taking jobs away from farms. “They still need a stock person with husbandry skills, but farmers aren’t necessarily getting up at 4am and milking cows. They might be getting up at 6am and analysing the data that the robots are generating on each cow’s fertility, health and productivity.”

Data analytics is being embedded into many of Plumpton’s courses, and technologically advanced facilities havehelped it to triple its agriculture student numbers in three years.

The college has still retained its traditional milking parlour, so its students can learn both systems.

“We’re here to enable the community farming industry to come in and learn from what we do,” says Kerswell. “The future of global food production is about getting that right balance between feeding the world and saving the planet. Right at the heart of that has to be highly productive feeding systems, which is about individualized animal performance informed by data, enhanced by robotics.”

Plumpton’s new conference facility also provides a place for those currently working in the land-based industries undergoing a “once in a generation change” an opportunity to debate the issues facing them, including “tax, sustainability, productivity and uptake of technology and skills”.

Kerswell says some of them feel “in crisis”, and “ a lot” are “burying their heads in the sands”.

“We’re playing that pivotal role and bringing them together to talk about it.”

‘Significant disadvantage gap’ in GCSE resits revealed

Disadvantaged students fall behind by a fifth of a grade in English and one eighth of a grade in maths compared with their better-off peers when resitting GCSEs, new research shows.

Analysis by the Education Policy Institute also suggests that colleges that enter larger cohorts for resits in the quick-turnaround November series achieve lower progress on average.

And the think tank found a “cluster of top-performing institutions” in the north west of England that outperform the rest of the country when it comes to resit results, while the south west is the worst-performing region.

Ministers have been warned that “significant disparities in GCSE resit success” require “targeted reforms”, such as new “proficiency tests” for English and maths.

The research comes ahead of Becky Francis’ curriculum and assessment review final report, where English and maths resits are expected to be a central feature.

David Robinson, the EPI’s director for post-16 and skills said: “Re-examining the policy in light of the new evidence we have uncovered should enable policymakers to take more informed, targeted decisions about the future of resits.

“The benefits of securing core numeracy and literacy skills are obvious, but so too is the impact on motivation for students who feel trapped on the resit treadmill.”

‘A negative cycle of failure’

Since 2014, students who do not gain a grade 4 in English and maths at school – roughly a third of all learners – have been forced to continue to study these subjects post-16.

The policy has divided the education sector, with some claiming it creates a negative cycle of failure and has been difficult to implement given staffing and funding constraints. Others have pointed to the success the policy has had in raising attainment of English and maths by the age of 25.

Pass rates do however remain low. In the 2024 summer series, 17.4 per cent of students resitting GCSE maths achieved a grade 4, while 20.9 per cent did so in English.

Today’s EPI report, funded by Pearson, used DfE administrative records as well as the National Pupil Database and Individualised Learner Record to conduct the analysis.

The study included students who started in 2015-16, 2016-17 and 2021-22 as these are the three most recent cohorts of students whose 16 to 19 education did not take place during the Covid-19 pandemic.

EPI found a “significant disadvantage gap” in resit outcomes. On average, disadvantaged students receive 0.2 grades less than non-disadvantaged students in English and 0.13 grades less in maths, the report said.

Researchers also found that female students make “slightly more” progress in English, whilst male students make “substantially better” progress in maths, by almost a quarter of a grade.

GCSEs better than FSQs

Students who need to resit English and maths can be entered for GCSEs, level 2 functional skills qualifications (FSQs), or “stepping-stone qualifications” – usually entry-level or level 1 FSQs.

EPI found that students who initially enrol on a GCSE achieve better progress on average over their 16 to 19 study than learners on the two other options, by almost half a grade.

Anne Murdoch, senior adviser in college leadership at the Association of School and College Leaders, said this “very valuable piece of research” shows it is “time for a fundamental rethink in how we assess English and maths”.

She called for “new proficiency tests” to be developed for literacy and numeracy that “demonstrate to future employers or educators that students meet a set of pre-determined standards, while giving every young person the dignity of a qualification”.

Murdoch added. “Crucially, these tests could be taken when the student is ready, rather than being dictated by the existing resit cycles.”

November resits: good or bad?

EPI also looked into a rise in the use of November resits, which take place just months after a student was told they did not pass. Those selected for this series are usually the most likely to pass among students who scored a grade 3 at school.

Researchers found that on average, students that enter for a November resit achieve 0.60 grades higher in both maths and English.

However, colleges and schools who enter more students onto November resits “see worse results over the entirety of their 16 to 19 study”, according to EPI.

It said: “Entering every student onto a November resit (compared with no students) lowers the average individual resit outcomes by 0.26 to 0.30 grades. This suggests that taking a blanket approach to November may harm students’ overall attainment.”

North west is strongest performer

EPI also found a “significant cluster of top-performing institutions in the north west of England”.

In maths, students in the north west make 0.10 more grades progress than the average, whilst in English they make 0.11 more grades. The lowest performing region in English is the south west – 0.10 grades less than average, and in maths it is Yorkshire and the Humber – 0.06 grades less progress.

In other regions, the report said the north east does “relatively well” across both subjects and the south east “does well” in English particularly.

The south west, west midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber “do relatively worse” across both English and maths, while London “tends to fall in the middle of the distribution, alongside the east of England and the east midlands”.

EPI said it is difficult to determine why the north west performs best from the data, but from a roundtable discussion it heard there is a “large network of English and maths teachers in colleges in the north west that regularly meet to share their experiences and best practice”.

Reform accountability measures

The think tank reiterated its previous call for a 16 to 19 student premium to help address educational inequalities and widening gaps between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged students.

It also wants government to consider reforming the 16 to 19 accountability measure for English and maths progress by “incorporating wider key stage 4 attainment”.

EPI said the research results show that prior attainment in other key stage 4 subjects “strongly predicts” resit performance, particularly for English. Accounting for this prior attainment in the English and maths progress measure “would improve the measure’s ability to capture institutional effectiveness in delivering resits”.

Colin Booth, chief executive of Luminate Education Group, which delivers over 4,000 GCSE English and maths resits each year, said: “Revealing the extent to which disadvantaged students are negatively impacted relative to their more affluent peers, this report should embolden policymakers in their efforts to reform the current post-16 resit environment.

“In the short-term, reducing the assessment burden and streamlining content could go some way to alleviating the pressure on learners. In the long-term however, it’s clear the creation of tailored English and maths GCSE qualifications, that are specifically designed for and only available to post-16 students studying vocational qualifications, is long overdue.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “This government has inherited a system with baked-in inequalities, but we’re determined to narrow the attainment gaps identified in this report and break down barriers to opportunity through our Plan for Change.

“That’s why we are requiring providers to teach students for a minimum number of hours, additional funding is given to support students with lower prior attainment and we provide fully-funded professional development options for English and maths teachers at level 2 and below.

“We will consider the concerns raised in this report as part of the government’s response to the curriculum and assessment review.”