DfE set to surrender £60m apprenticeship cash in 2023-24

The Department for Education is set to hand back £60 million of apprenticeship funding to the Treasury in 2023-24, new figures show.

Of the department’s £2.585 billion ring-fenced apprenticeship budget this financial year, £2.525 billion, or 98 per cent, is expected to be spent.

The figures, released this week in the Treasury’s supplementary estimates, would mark a slight drop in the underspend recorded in 2022-23, when £96 million, or four per cent, of England’s ring-fenced apprenticeships budget went unused.

The budget is set to rise to £2.7 billion from 2024-25. However, the disparity in what is distributed by the Treasury for public spending on apprenticeships compared to how much the levy is generating continues to grow.

Latest Treasury figures show £3.170 billion was received from employers who pay the apprenticeship levy between April 2023 and January 2024, with two months’ worth of receipts to come before the end of the financial year. 

A recent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecast predicted that total apprenticeship levy intake to HMRC will reach £3.9 billion in 2023-24.

When DfE’s ring-fenced budget spend on apprenticeships in England is combined with the £500 million-odd that is handed to the devolved nations from the levy, it leaves around £875 million that was generated by the levy, but held onto by the Treasury in 2023-24.

The DfE said final underspend figures for 2023-24 will be released later this year.

A DfE spokesperson added: “The apprenticeship levy has enabled us to increase investment in apprenticeships to £2.7 billion a year by 2024-25 – supporting employers of all sizes and in all sectors offer more apprenticeships. Over the last two years, 98 per cent of the budget was spent helping thousands of businesses take on apprentices.

“Spending on the apprenticeship programme is demand led, offering employers the flexibility to choose which apprenticeships they offer, how many and when. We are making it easier for employers and providers to offer high-quality apprenticeships by simplifying our systems, cutting red tape, and have removed the limit on the number of apprentices SME’s can recruit.”

Multiply underspend revealed

Treasury’s supplementary estimates also show that £14 million of the DfE’s budget for the prime minister’s flagship maths programme Multiply is to be returned to Treasury in 2023-24.

Councils attacked the inflexible funding rules of the maths programme last year after figures revealed that a third of the money allocated went unspent.

The DfE said most of the £14 million surrendered to Treasury, £9 million, was from financial year 2022-23, confirmed when local areas submitted their final statements of grant expenditure and driven by the short delivery timeframe in the first year of Multiply.  

The other £5 million was returned to Treasury from a randomised control trial (RCT) budget, given that “many” trials will not commence until academic year 2024/25 and the time needed to design and mobilise RCTs, according to the DfE.

A DfE spokesperson said: “Multiply has enabled thousands of adults to undertake courses designed to boost number confidence, while giving local areas the flexibility to offer a range of innovative programmes to suit their communities.”

Front bench rivals clash in Colleges Week debate

A Westminster debate about colleges descended into a “party political” row about apprenticeships before an almost empty room this afternoon.

Only five MPs spoke at a debate to mark this year’s Colleges Week in Westminster Hall on Thursday, leaving its proposer Peter Aldous feeling a “shade disappointed” about attendance.

However, a clash flared up between the government’s schools minister Damian Hinds and Labour’s shadow skills minister Seema Malhotra over the opposition party’s proposals on apprenticeships.

Both said they wanted to avoid “party political debate” before engaging in a tetchy back-and-forth on the future of the apprenticeship levy.

Malhotra – the only opposition MP to speak – repeated her party’s pledge to convert the apprenticeship levy into a more flexible “growth and skills levy”, which would allow 50 per cent of funds to be spent on other forms of training, alongside creating a new strategic body, Skills England.

She suggested the schools minister “did not fully understand” her policy, possibly because he had not “engaged with it in detail”.

But Hinds hit back that any “misunderstanding” about Labour’s levy proposal was “because it is not clear” itself.

He said: “I assure the honourable lady that if there is any misunderstanding about the Labour party policy it is not because people have failed to engage with it, it is because it is not clear. One great benefit of the current system is that it is clear.

“I must tell her that the approach of the levy resolves one of the fundamental questions in investing in human capital and training and investment, which is the so-called free rider problem. The levy is precisely to make sure that the whole of the industry has a like-for-like investment in skills and policy. I would urge her not to replace it with a new and unneeded quango.”

Malhotra criticised the government for overseeing falling apprenticeship starts, cutting further education funding and falling engagement with apprenticeships from small and medium-sized businesses.

She said changing levy spending rules would give employers “flexibility” to spend on modular training, which could also reduce the number of apprenticeship drop-outs.

The shadow minister added: “An estimated £3 billion in unspent levy has gone to the Treasury since 2019 that could have been spent on more training opportunities for learning.

“This is not a system that’s working as it needs to be.”

Hinds argued that the opposition’s plans would mean “less money” for apprenticeships and create “a new and unneeded quango”.

Aldous concluded the debate by calling for an urgent review of the apprenticeship levy to resolve “teething difficulties” before the next general election.

He also urged the government to “level the playing field” for colleges by fixing the pay gap with school teachers and exempting colleges from paying VAT.

AELP reveals new board members as vice-chair stands down

Sue Pittock and Chris Claydon have been elected to serve on the Association of Employment and Learning Providers’ board.

The appointments of Pittock, who leads Remit Training, and Claydon (pictured right), who runs JTL Training, were announced following the trade body’s annual general meeting this afternoon.

It was also announced that AELP vice-chair Rob Foulston (pictured left) will be standing down from the board following Pittock’s appointment.

Foulston is owner of Remit and even though has been on the board since 2018 in his capacity as a college chair of governors, AELP’s updated constitution prevents two people from representing the same organisation on the board “directly or indirectly”.

An AELP spokesperson said arrangements to fill the vice-chair vacancy will be announced “in due course and we hope Rob will be able to continue to support us in an advisory capacity in future”.

This will be Pittock’s second time on the AELP board, having previously served from 2017 to 2019.

Pittock, who was made an OBE last year, will represent medium-sized training providers that have 1,001 to 4,999 learners.

Claydon, who became JTL chief in February 2023, will represent large providers with 5,000 learners or more.

Both will serve a four-year term on the AELP board. 

Ben Rowland, AELP chief executive, said: “I’m delighted that we will have two new members joining the AELP board imminently. Both Sue and Chris have a huge amount of experience and will give us some fresh impetus at a crucial time for the skills sector. I would like to thank Rob in particular for his work on the board, and his support for me as I continue to get my feet under the AELP table. 

“The AGM is also a time to set out my priorities for the year. These will be to create a vibrant and compelling membership experience while delivering tangible impact on government decisions, and I am looking forward to working closely with the AELP board and staff to help deliver that for our members.”

AELP chair Nichola Hay added: “I want to give a huge welcome to our new board members Sue Pittock and Chris Claydon. With Sue and Chris joining the board, I am sure AELP can do even more to represent its members across the skills sector. I would also like to pay tribute to Rob Foulston who will be stepping down from the board. He’s been an invaluable source of support as both a board member and as AELP’s vice-chair.”

How to take our support for Ukraine’s learners to the front line

Last Saturday marked two years since the conflict in Ukraine began. While media attention has waned, the FE sector can be proud of its ongoing response for Ukrainian learners, here and at home.

As of last June, 179,500 people had arrived in the UK on one of the Ukraine visa schemes. That’s a significant number of people looking for a new life, and while they hope it’s only temporary, they bring with them valuable skills and ambitions, and a need to carry on their education, or their career.

The language barrier

Colleges have increased their teaching English as a second language provision to meet the resulting increase in demand. This isn’t just vital for those trying to access jobs but more broadly for day-to-day life.

At Newcastle College, part of NCG, we launched new classes designed specifically for Ukrainian refugees in June 2022, focused on employability and English language skills. These classes have allowed students to get the skills they need at the time that’s right for them, often supporting them to progress onto a college course which leads to employment.

A port in the storm

It’s not just the language barrier that is a challenge. It is hard for us to imagine some of the challenges that refugees continue to face, such as cultural events like Bonfire Night, where the sound of fireworks can be triggering for those who have fled a war-torn home.

Creating a learning space which feels safe has been a focus for many colleges. There are now 19 ‘Colleges of Sanctuary’ in the UK – a network of staff, teachers and students working together to make education inclusive and empowering.

Across our group, we are working to become Colleges of Sanctuary. Our colleges are also proud supporters of local efforts to establish more cities as a ‘City of Sanctuary’, a programme which engages with city stakeholders to welcome refugees and people seeking asylum, and to offer sanctuary to those fleeing violence and persecution.

Through NCG’s Our Community is Your Community programme, we have also continued to support refugees in our colleges’ local communities, to overcome the barriers of starting over in a new location and a new culture. Focusing on building social bonds and connections, employability, refugee entrepreneurship, and health and wellbeing, the programme helps newcomers navigate challenges such as automated telephone systems, setting up accounts and paying bills, or filling in forms to access support.

An ongoing commitment

Many colleges responded to the initial invasion of Ukraine by setting up donation points to collect essentials via organisations like our local Polish Centres and the Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal from the Disaster Emergency Committee. This is something that we, along with many others in the sector, continue to do because we know the people who remain in Ukraine need food and medical supplies more than ever.

But while our strength as a sector is built on community and values, our raison d’etre is education. And why should war be allowed to stop that? One of the initiatives we are proudest to support – and you can too – is the Ukraine Twinning Initiative.

We are twinned with the Ukraine college Kryvyi Rih, to which we provide practical assistance and resources. This includes a donation of 25 laptops from our IT supplier to support its remote learning offer. Kryvyi Rih is in an area targeted by recent airstrikes and regularly experiences loss of power and water. While the conflict has prevented students and staff from attending the college, our partnership aims to support remote learning and ensure that the college community can continue to access education and training.

In addition, colleagues at Newcastle College continue to deliver regular professional development sessions to staff at the Kryvyi Rih college, providing access to new teaching resources, updates on practical techniques and an opportunity for colleagues to keep up-to-date with industry skills. Our ESOL department have held weekly English classes with those students, and we’re now exploring plans to teach joint classes to Ukrainian students.

It’s a partnership that has been valuable to our college as well as theirs, and while we hope to see a resolution to the conflict soon, we also hope to continue our partnership with our new Ukrainian colleagues beyond this crisis.

Ofsted’s focus on employment blinkers it to the importance of wellbeing

Having recently left the Department for Education, I am now amazed every morning at the speed Windows logs in when you don’t have to get through a VPN designed to check civil servants are suitably proximate to a Pret a Manger and not staring into their fridges at home. But I used to take a mitigating moment of pride seeing the one bit of the DfE corporate background still peeking out through all the files I’d saved chaotically to my desktop: “Put learners and children first.”

It’s the calling that unites everyone who works with young people, and since moving to the National Youth Agency and talking every day to youth workers across the country, I’ve felt at home because – just like FE teachers – what they want to talk about are the young people they work with, the innovative ways they are engaging them and what more they wish they could be doing.

No teacher or youth worker ever found themselves in their underpaid vocations because they wanted to do the bidding of imagined ‘employers’, yet somehow the sensible awareness of employability as one aspect of education and progression has become an excessive focus of how we evaluate the experience of FE.

I’ve started counting mentions of employability, employers, employment etc in Ofsted inspection reports. The average in the last ten FE college inspections (as of early February) was fourteen mentions per report. In contrast, mentions of student wellbeing averaged less than once per report. Whimsically, I even looked for mentions of students’ happiness. Bravo to North Hertfordshire College for achieving the lone mention of happiness across ten recent inspections.

The 2022 introduction of the local skills statement in college Ofsted reports formalised the industrialist grip on college curricula. The unspoken inconsistency is that school sixth forms are subject to no such requirement. Most inspections of schools with sixth forms don’t mention employers at all. The overbearing need to have line of sight between classroom and income-tax contribution only applies when thinking about other people’s children.

FE misses out on being celebrated for its excellent work

This means FE misses out on a chance to be celebrated for the excellent work it does in supporting student mental health and wellbeing, and that its direct link to employability is overlooked. We know that anxiety and depression increase young people’s chances of not engaging with employment. No matter how well you align your curriculum with local skills needs, it’s not going to make a difference if your attendance is through the floor.

Finding a happier balance between employability and wellbeing in Ofsted reporting doesn’t require major changes to inspection. It just requires better use of the existing personal development judgment, which lags so far behind the skills statement in terms of word count that it has almost disappeared.

The inspection handbook notes that personal outcomes may not emerge until much further on in young people’s lives, so directs inspectors to look at quality and intent. This sounds great, but then a series of prescriptive bullet points about British Values and sex education lead to many reports reading as, “learners are taught about radicalisation and sexual consent: job done.”

The approach to personal development would do well to draw from the professional practices of youth work, where similarly the ‘outcome’ cannot be prescribed.  The process of youth work is centred on the young person and their needs, rather than a dictated syllabus. The NYA’s National Youth Work Curriculum is built around the cornerstones of Education, Empowerment, Equality, and Participation.

Rather than asking whether radicalisation has been taught, “tick”, ask whether the young people have influence over issues that concern them and are engaging with democratic processes.

Rather than ask if healthy relationships have been taught, “tick”, look for the signs of respect in the connections young people are making.

That would offer far more opportunity for the things I love best about FE to get the credit they deserve: exemplary student voice, fierce tolerance and incredible diversity of learning.

At our core we want to put learners first. Of course seeking employers’ views is important – and that shouldn’t be limited to just colleges – but let’s elevate the voices of our young people and ask them, “Are you happy?”

Managing difficult conversations around LGBT+ issues

We are privileged to live in a time when there is so much acceptance of LGBT+ people in FE and in society more broadly. However, there is a long way to go, and we can never take that acceptance for granted – something we are inclined to do especially with young people, who we assume are somehow generationally inclusive.

This means we still have to have those difficult conversations with them about LGBT+ issues. And a risk associated with that is of assuming that all of our colleagues are equally prepared to do so.

To help with both of these, here are three questions I am regularly faced with, and some ideas about how to answer them if you are asked.

Why do we even need LGBT+ history month?

This event plays two important roles: It takes place in February to mark the anniversary of the end of section 28, and it acts as an impetus to make visible and to celebrate LGBT+ people and their impact on society.

Sadly, this question still often arises among our learners. In part, that’s because they don’t know the historical (and ongoing) levels of inequity that affect the LGBT+ community. The question can take different forms, such as “why don’t we have a straight history month?”, “why is it pushed in our faces?”, “it’s against my religion”.

More so than awareness, the aim of the month is to create cohesion. To that end, our aim as teachers isn’t simply to encourage tolerance but to foster respect. I’ve never been bothered about gaining acceptance or changing the hearts and minds of society (though it’s a bonus if it happens). I just want others to respect my right to be who I want to be, live how I want to live and express myself freely.

As teachers, our best tool for fostering respect is knowledge. Why don’t’ we have a straight history month? Because we have 12. Why is it pushed in our faces? So that it will never again be brushed under the carpet. It’s against my religion! Respect is a precept of every major faith.

Can someone be Muslim and gay?

This is a question I have been inundated with since I entered the profession. As an openly gay Pakistani Muslim I have researched Islam’s stance on same-sex relationships. There are many schools of thought and individual interpretations, but the short answer is yes, but not easily.

The general Islamic consensus is that same-sex relationships are a sin. The next logical question is then: how can you be both? Well, according to Islam, all of humanity sins in one form or another and to varying degrees. Sinners should not judge other sinners.

The three major sexual sins in Islam are homosexuality, fornication and adultery. Yet only homosexuality is widely frowned upon and only the LGBT+ community is vehemently persecuted. This makes the issue one of culture more than religion.

So how do we successfully articulate this response? The answer is you don’t. We can educate and we can draw attention to gay Muslims. But identity is a highly personal business, and it is not our job to influence how young people navigate these complex issues. I encourage any learner from any background asking this question to simply do their homework.

What about my freedom of speech?

A common refrain of those who try to justify using derogatory language about the LGBT+ community or individuals, the answer here is a simple one: Using homophobic language to abuse someone is illegal. Sexuality and gender are protected characteristics under the Equalities Act 2010, and punishment under the law has lasting consequences. Hate crimes go on your record, must be declared to future employers and stay with you forever.

Some might ask why, if British values promote tolerance, they can’t express their beliefs in public. This might be a good moment to introduce Karl Popper’s paradox of tolerance.

“But it’s just words,” or “it’s just a joke,” some will protest. No. They are words with social, emotional and psychological effects that cannot be understated. Victims often suffer long after experiencing homophobic language or behaviours. They can lead to depression, anxiety and PTSD.

As with our first question, the impetus here is not to change beliefs but to educate and, where necessary, to sanction.

Driving apprenticeships success requires someone new at the wheel

I am at risk of offering platitudes by stating employers play a crucial role in the success of apprenticeships. Their ability to be either custodian or antagonist of quality is profound. When we talk about their role, the emphasis often sways towards the policy expectation that places them in the ‘driving seat’ of programme design. Yet in my experience, employers (except those with their own contract) are at their most impactful when sitting in the training provider’s passenger seat during programme delivery.

Research from The St Martin’s Group backs up the outcome of low involvement. Unsurprisingly, it shows the most common reason apprentices cite for leaving their programme as lack of employer support.

‘Support’ manifests in different ways: giving apprentices time off the job to learn, actively participating in progress reviews, challenging training provider practices when left wanting, noticing when apprentices are overwhelmed or demotivated, encouraging achievement of functional skills, giving formative feedback, and appreciating why careers guidance really isavaluable part of an apprenticeship. 

Ensuring this jigsaw pieces together requires a relationship between employer and provider that is multifaceted and dynamic. It’s more like rally driving than F1: it needs a driver and a co-pilot in the car – and employers make better co-pilots.

Successfully managing this relationship demands the dedication and expertise of delivery staff, whose responsibilities extend beyond just their apprentices. It is not uncommon for their duties to include guiding a line manager on providing constructive feedback or confidently holding them accountable when they fail to meet the needs of their apprentice.

Leaders who cultivate these skills within their teams understand the pivotal role they play in the success of an apprenticeship. This is because the employer’s commitment, which is crucial if we are to reduce withdrawals or delays beyond the planned end date, needs much more than just a signature at the outset.

Employer commitment needs much more than a signature at the outset

As an SME ourselves, we have noticed a shift in expectation and demand on our time. We respond to this in accordance with our values and will continue to do so, but it would be wrong to understate the effort it takes by us and the providers we work with each year to make it work in practice.

Whatever comes for FE on the other side of an election, the direction of travel for active employer participation is unlikely to be reversed and nor should it. We have experienced first-hand the significant impact our team has on developing T Level placement students and are proud of the role we play in creating meaningful apprenticeships.

Yet in truth, we have experienced mixed fortunes when it comes to the effectiveness of how well we partner with providers, with challenges on both sides. What we have noticed is the Ofsted grade has not always been a useful proxy for our experience and I am left curious as to why that is the case.

‘Employers’ are referred to just once in the inspection framework under the ‘quality of education’ aspect, highlighted under ‘Intent’. Further detail appears under the apprenticeship section but I am unconvinced that this is keeping up with a sector where employers are increasingly integral to implementation.

My aim here is not to create more work for providers; rather, it is to ensure there is regulatory recognition for the effort needed to build and manage complex relationships with diverse employers beyond the design stage.

Ofsted is a powerful voice in a system that struggles to access the funding to match the political narrative that technical education is Very Important. It is a voice that I hope can demonstrate through its thematic research that if we want FE to be successful, there are hidden costs and capabilities involved. And I hope it is a voice that will be heard by new ministers from the outset of their tenure, because big turns in the road will need to be navigated, and that’s best done with our eyes wide open.

Labour’s levy plans could collapse under election scrutiny

The Labour party has created for itself a potentially serious election wedge issue on apprenticeships which will get aired on the doorsteps in red wall seats unless it has a rethink.

At the Annual Apprenticeship Conference (AAC), shadow skills minister Seema Malhotra doubled down on Labour’s proposed ‘growth and skills levy’ in spite of concerns it will “destabilise” apprenticeships. This follows government ministers claiming that the proposals would halve the number of apprenticeships and would take us “back to square one” – a Conservative attack line that appears to be central to their approach to other wedge issues during the election campaign.

An ongoing lack of transparency over apprenticeship levy funding means that it is difficult to judge impartially. But it won’t be difficult for the proposal’s opponents to make a convincing case that reserving ‘at least half’ of the levy for apprenticeships will translate into a halving of our 337,000 annual programme starts.

Bearing in mind that levy receipts and the apprenticeship programme budgets across the UK’s four nations are not the same thing, several key factors need to be taken into account. These include whether the devolved nations will still receive their respective share of the £3.7 billion pot according to the traditional Barnett formula and whether the Treasury under Labour would maintain its habit of top-slicing the levy by approximately £500 million each year to spend on other priorities. Currently, this results in the DfE being allocated an apprenticeship programme budget of £2.7 billion to manage for England.  

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said recently that it will be good to have someone in charge of the Treasury who can do maths. So, leaving aside for a moment devolved nation allocations and top slices, let’s do some maths of our own based on Labour’s proposals.

Half of the £3.7 billion levy receipts is £1.85 billion which might be reserved for apprenticeships. This is considerably less than the 98 per cent of the £2.7 billion apprenticeship budget which has been spent on apprenticeships annually in England over the past two years. In fact, it would mean almost a billion pounds less being allocated to the programme each year.

Levy underspends were an outcome of the pandemic

This implies either significant cuts to apprenticeship starts under Labour unless the treasury agrees to a larger levy to keep the same annual apprenticeship budget before the receipts can be used for other skills programmes. It also assumes that the shadow education team has reached an agreement with the shadow treasury team that they will end the top-slicing, but has it? Given the widely predicted doomsday scenarios for public expenditure after the election, a new chancellor might decide that the money is still required elsewhere.

For Labour, the alarm bells must start ringing every time Seema Malhotra refers, as she did at the AAC, to £3 billion of unspent levy money since 2017 as if the money were still available to fund Labour’s wider skills levy. But the levy underspends were simply an outcome of the Covid pandemic when the lockdowns prevented employers from recruiting apprentices. In 2019, the National Audit Office predicted an overspend of the apprenticeship budget, and in the two years following the pandemic, the underspends rapidly disappeared.

Ms Malhotra also talked again about the large levy-paying employers who complain that they cannot spend all of their entitlement on apprenticeships. But the levy was designed for this probability in order to fund SMEs’ apprenticeships. And when asked, she wouldn’t repeat her predecessor’s promise that apprenticeships for smaller firms would be protected by a ring-fenced budget.

Labour is reportedly “bombproofing” its election manifesto against Conservative attacks. Therefore, it should follow the recent example of the Australian Labor government of committing to a thorough review of apprenticeships with a view to reform but without any predetermined outcomes such as widening the levy’s scope.

This summer, 60 years after they were cut, passenger services will resume on the Newcastle to Ashington railway with the Mayor of North Tyne saying this week that young apprentices will now be able to travel to take up opportunities on the programme. It would be ironic if the actions of a Labour government were to limit the number of opportunities available.

This election year, Colleges Week is more important than ever

We started Colleges Week in 2018 to raise the profile of colleges, celebrate their successes and impact and to engage more politicians, employers and stakeholders with the work they do. At the time we believed it could help us engage more people in power to really understand and respect colleges, and from that we hoped we would start to see more funding and better policies.

Seven years on, with a general election looming and politicians’ respect and understanding more important than ever, it seems like a good time to take stock of whether it has achieved those ambitions.

There’s no doubt about it: Colleges Week has allowed staff, students and governors to show their pride in their college. Every year we see an explosion on social media of people using their creativity to celebrate the impact going to college has had on their lives, their life chances and their confidence and abilities. If that was all we had achieved it would be enough, but there is a lot more.

Colleges Week has proved to be a great vehicle for engaging partners, stakeholders and politicians. Some of them will be longstanding supporters, but the week offers new opportunities to bring people into college for the first time. It’s incredible how many people in positions of power – politicians, officials, employers, journalists – have never been inside a college, and it is telling that their most common response after visiting is to be amazed at what they see and experience. Secretly I think many never realised how good they are: how impressive the staff, how motivated the students, how up-to-date the facilities and how exciting the learning culture is.

All of that exposure has helped raise the profile of colleges. Back in 2018, colleges were viewed in Whitehall as a problem and as poor performers. In 2016, for instance, then-Ofsted chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw boldly told a parliamentary committee that he would ‘prefer all 16- to 19-year-olds to be educated in schools’ rather than in colleges which were ‘inadequate at best’.

A group of new MPs will want to understand and engage

That he had no evidence for the statement and had rarely visited colleges didn’t matter; his prejudice was a common one in the corridors of power. Colleges Week has helped to change that. The understanding is better and the respect improved – not enough on either count, but very different to where we were.

Now, don’t misinterpret me; I’m not saying the change is all down to Colleges Week. That is clearly not true, but the week is the pinnacle of a lot of hard work throughout the year by colleges, by AoC and by a range of important partners to engage, inform, enthuse and bring people on side. The week matters because all sorts of people are happy about celebrating the successes of students who have such great things to say about their college experiences, and who so often inspire with their stories.

The week has also coincided with the growing confidence among college leaders about their part in society, in education, in places, in the labour market and about the need for them to promote their college and build partnerships locally. That confidence is helped every year when we all see the weight and breadth of support colleges have from across the political spectrum and from all of the stakeholders that matter in every place.

By celebrating all that they do, it’s become clearer that colleges truly are anchor institutions, as vital to their communities and economies as they are to students and their prospects. That confidence matters, because it is infectious, and it attracts people leading other organisations to want to engage.

So, Colleges Week has been successful, and I hope it will go on showcasing a set of anchor institutions which have struggled to be noticed in the past. This election year gives every college the chance to engage with parliamentary and mayoral candidates, forging relationships with people likely to be in power for the next five years or more. A group of new MPs in Westminster will want to understand and engage with the anchor institutions on their patch and be seen to do that in the local media. Colleges Week is the perfect time to make sure they really do #LoveOurColleges.