Universities don’t bid a final farewell to their students — the world of higher education alumni bodies is a well-populated one that brings its own rewards. It’s about time FE colleges jumped on board, says Iain Mackinnon.

Why would a college bother to make links with its alumni? Professional fundraisers in universities sometimes contrast their sharp focus with what they see as the rather woolly alternative of ‘friend-raising’, as though the only reason to connect with former students is to take money off them.

I suspect that mentality has held us back a bit in colleges, but I now see encouraging signs of action from colleges which have realised that alumni offer them far more than a rather hazy glimpse of modest donations.

Take Sheffield College, for example. It features a number of former students in an excellent promotional video using their enthusiasm for their old college to attract new students.

Or Leeds College of Music — now part of the Leeds College Group — which has dozens of pen portraits on its website of former students now well-launched on their careers, to inspire and inform current students.

Or Moulton College — Northamptonshire’s land-based college — which connects recent alumni and current students through a structured mentoring programme.

What connects them is a focus on recent alumni, and on immediate benefits to current students.

In my own college, I have drawn attention to Dora Rudolf who joined us to learn English, went on to do a cabin crew course, and has now landed a job with Emirates.

I want her to come back to inspire and excite the next group of cabin crew students (and to pass on tips about the latest practice to her tutors), and I’d love her to go into an Esol class, too, to show students that it is realistic to aim for a good job after the course.

At long last it does look like colleges are finding ways to convert what has long been strong latent interest into action”

And, if we keep up the relationship, I hope Dora will open the door for work experience places with Emirates, and for her, or a colleague, to advise us on our curriculum.

But when I surveyed the scene two years ago, I found very little alumni activity in colleges.

Beyond a few examples in Scotland (which is always worth a look for English colleges seeking inspiration), and some sixth form colleges building on old boys’ and old girls’ associations, the greatest activity was in residential colleges, both those serving students with special needs, and land-based colleges.

We now have two organisations offering professionally packaged alumni solutions to colleges, other colleges getting going with their own home-grown initiatives, and a workshop on alumni relations at next month’s Association of Colleges (AoC) conference for communications professionals.

To say the issue is ‘taking FE by storm’ would be going too far, but at long last it does look like colleges are finding ways to convert what has long been strong latent interest into action.

Think Alumni exhibited at last year’s AoC annual conference and has signed up a dozen or so colleges, from New College Nottingham to East Kent, by offering them a ready-made package. Visit www.thinkalumni.com for more details.

And Future First is a charity originally set up to reconnect recent former students with their old schools, so they get the same kind of face-to-face advice on careers that pupils at private schools get. The need is identical in colleges, so I’m pleased that it has now extended its work to include us. Visit www.futurefirst.org.uk for more details.

Further useful resources can be found through the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (www.case.org), Giving To Colleges (www.givingtocolleges.org) and the FE Fundraising and Alumni (www.jiscmail.ac.uk/FEFUNDRAISINGANDALUMNI) discussion group.

To a great extent this is unchartered territory for Britain’s colleges. I have been trying to understand what we can learn from universities and from US community colleges, who are slightly ahead of us.

We have a lot to learn, but we are in the learning business and there is a growing college community of interest to learn from. The prize for our students is great if we get this right.

So why would a college bother to make links with its alumni? To help its current students, of course.

Iain Mackinnon is a governor of Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College. He will be chairing a session on ‘Developing successful alumni relations’ at the AoC Communications Conference on Wednesday, March 20.

Former House of Commons Education Select Committee specialist Ben Nicholls is head of policy at London’s Newham College. He writes exclusively for FE Week, every month.

Last year, I was lucky enough to visit Singapore for a few days with MPs. Once we’d got used to the temperature, and established that smoking and gum-chewing weren’t great ideas, we had an enjoyable and hectic week visiting schools, colleges and government agencies.

A highlight of the visit was the Institute of Technical Education, which provides high-quality technical and vocational education in a range of areas, from catering to computing.

Everywhere you looked, brilliant lecturers were offering innovative and engaging teaching to motivated students, in top-class facilities.

On the flight home, in between episodes of vintage sit-coms, I wondered why I’d never seen provision like that in England. Now that I’ve been working in the FE sector for two months, I realise that such provision — from the brilliant lecturers to the motivated students — is all around. The difference is that in Singapore everyone talks about it.

Readers of FE Week don’t need a new arrival to the sector to tell them how amazing provision can be, but perhaps it bears repeating.

Much has been made of Sir Michael Wilshaw’s first report as Ofsted chief inspector, where he argued that the learning and skills sector was not improving, but the same Sir Michael agreed before the Commons Education Committee recently, that this was a “phenomenally important” sector — and the report itself acknowledged “many good, outstanding and sometimes genuinely world class providers”.

He suggested that some colleges and principals felt “neglected”, and called for the Government to “shine a spotlight”.

I couldn’t agree more. There’s clearly lots of amazing provision, and the sector does get less attention — from government, the media, etc — than schools and universities. And yet, as any lighting technician would know, it’s hard to shine a spotlight on a stage where the actors, however talented, are reluctant to come out from behind the curtains.

It’s sad that it took a trip to the Far East for me to realise just how special the sector is”

A quick look through old reports confirms what I suspected — during my two-and-a-bit years with the education committee, only a handful of written submissions came from FE colleges, despite a number of inquiries. Busy principals and other staff lack the time to contribute to every consultation in what can sometimes feel like a never-ending succession from the Westminster-Whitehall village, but surely we should do everything in our own power to move away from the ‘Cinderella’ image talked about by Sir Michael?

The same is true of the defensive reaction by some to the Ofsted report itself. While understandable, it is by being proactive and positive about what FE offers to so many people, and to society more widely, that greater political clout will come, rather than supporting the status quo and batting back any criticism (however unreasonable).

I feel proud and privileged to have joined the FE sector at what could be a hugely exciting time, and I am in awe of the amazing work the colleges I’ve already come across are doing, and want to do.

It’s sad, though, that it took a trip to the Far East for me to realise — despite working in education policy — just how special the sector is.

Part of this problem lies outside our own doors, and the fact that FE sits between two government departments, for example. The range of policies over a number of years hasn’t helped the sector; neither has the fact that so few policy-makers have FE backgrounds.

But there is a bit we can start to cure: in selling ourselves outside the boroughs we sit in, contributing to debates, responding to consultations, and encouraging students and colleagues to do the same.

It may seem like simply another thing to add to already-overflowing piles of work, but it might be a small price to pay if it means fewer poor decisions are made for (and to) the sector as a whole. FE is too good a secret to keep to ourselves.