Leeds City College is one of the single largest providers of apprenticeships in the UK following the launch of the Apprenticeship Training Agency — jointly owned with the local authority — and the creation of the Food Academy at city centre restaurant Flannels.

Now the third largest college in the UK with more than 40,000 students, 1,500 staff and an annual turnover of £90m, it is a far cry from 1993 and incorporation when the then small Kitson College was rebranded Leeds College of Technology.

Since then, one factor more than almost any other has contributed to the changing size and scope of FE — that’s merger.

While the Coalition government may be sceptical of the rush to merge, as have all previous administrations at times, the merger bandwagon has rolled on over 20 years with the creation of giants such as Newcastle College Group, Bedford and New College Nottingham. The litany of colleges absorbed into Leeds City includes Park Lane, Airedale, Wharfedale, Keighley, Thomas Danby, Joseph Priestley and Leeds College of Music (which retains its name as a wholly-owned subsidiary).

But what has changed beyond the size? On one level, less than you might think, according to Peter Roberts, (pictured) the principal since 2009 and chair of the 157 group.

“Skills I need for the job of chief executive have changed,” he says.

“Curriculum and quality used to be my strengths, but now I’m expected to be a politician, have networks, be around 24/7 and definitely not disappear for four or five weeks’ holiday.”

He still draws greatest strength from his curriculum roots.

“When I do my weekly blog and can write ‘I remember when I was a teacher…’ I know that adds to my credibility,” says Roberts.

And with ultimate responsibility for diverse operations from estates management and customer services to complex MIS and dealing with every level from pre-entry level students to HE for foundation degrees, now at record levels, “I need to be able to manage teams of people with skills I don’t have.”

What has not changed, Roberts insists, is the fundamental curriculum ideas and chances FE offers.

“At one time we were a tertiary college offering shipbuilding apprenticeships and flour milling. Now even the face of motor mechanics has changed and we offer advanced manufacturing and technology skills,” he says.

“But it’s still what it always was — a relevant curriculum.

“FE is, or should be, what it has always been at its best — bespoke tailoring of vocational education to suit individual needs.” But that tailoring — possible, he says, because of the economies of scale size brings — is bringing something new.

Work-based programmes, online learning and, recently, incubation start-up units helped create 300 new micro-businesses and 700 jobs in Leeds last year.

Work with business is a key area with Leeds City College having established links with more than 2,500 public, private and third sector companies from small and medium-sized enterprises to major household names including Arriva, First, Debenhams, IKEA, Lloyds TSB and BAe Systems.

Roberts warns, however, against FE losing sight of its other fundamental purposes.

With the disappearance of unskilled and semi-skilled work, “we are seeing more and more people with disadvantaged backgrounds, NEETs are rising and there’s more work to be done with Job centres,” he says.

“If colleges like us did not do the work, it’s difficult to know who would pick it up.”

So, despite the austerity we now face, he pleads with FE leaders not to lose sight of the basics, the LLDD learners, the mother returning to learn by doing flower arranging and finding a new career path and the young disaffected person in danger of becoming a NEET by being forced down an inappropriate route.

“For example, in Leeds, healthcare and digital technology are the big thing. But if I tell young people who want to be hairdressers this is what they must do, they will quit and become NEETs,” explains Roberts.

“We need to have time and patience to guide people appropriately. This is what FE at its best has always been good at.”

Next time you come across a member of your college marketing staff, treat him or her gently. They’re a much misunderstood lot, says Nick Warre

In 1990 I was one of the first people in FE to have the word marketing in my job title. There were very few of us, and we were not popular.

We were guilty of spin, sharp salesmanship (I wish) and the dark arts. We were the Mandelsons of our time. This wasn’t what education should be doing. It’s a noble pursuit and marketing had no place in it.

We all had trouble at home and we stuck together and formed something called the Marketing Network as a mutual support mechanism. It’s still going.

Come 1993 and it all changed. Competition, the DLE (demand led element) and the battle for bums on seats began and it was open warfare. Suddenly we weren’t doing enough of the dark arts. Heavens, jobs are at stake man!

Academic staff felt no shame about telling us how to do our jobs. Guerrilla marketing became common. There are some shocking stories from that period of people gate-crashing school careers’ fairs, bounty money (complicated), free gifts, theft, even the cunning use of projectors. It was exciting. But throughout this the marketing managers would still get together for a beer and to commiserate. Who else understood us?

Then the Further Education Funding Council noticed college marketing budgets were spiralling out of control and the National Audit Office showed up looking at value for money.

The college is seldom mentioned — FE is ubiquitous and strangely invisible”

They never did work it out, but we calmed down a bit and ground on with the job of being creative, poaching Year 11s and trawling the patch for punters. Budgets were trimmed and we got creative and dangerous again.

But marketing staff have a foot within the college and a foot outside. They have knowledge of both domains. The expectation was that they took messages out. The reality was that they also brought messages back. And some of these were unwelcome.

But there were always two critical problems. FE still has them.

The first is that marketing does not enjoy the same legislative hinterland as human resources, finance and health and safety. Marketing managers are still called on, or instructed, by college managers to do things that probably won’t work, but cost a small fortune. They can’t counter by calling on legislation. I recall one chap telling me: “At our college, if a course fails to recruit we put an advert in the paper. If that doesn’t work, we do it again.”

The second was, and is, that despite the fact that all of us are constantly surrounded by the products of FE (get your car fixed, go to a hotel, have a haircut, buy a sandwich, call a plumber, there they all are), but all that’s mentioned is who validated the qualification — “I’ve got my City and Guilds,” you’ll hear, or “My son’s doing his BTec,” and then there’s “I’ve got an RSA”.

The college is seldom mentioned — FE is ubiquitous and strangely invisible. Marketing managers, I salute you. It’s a hell of a job.

Nick Warren, freelance marketing specialist and consultant with the Policy Consortium

When the Association of Colleges helped give 31 enterprising colleges a permanent presence in India earlier this year, the initiative required a  level of customer service to match that of the best export companies.

Education export services are already worth £14bn a year to the UK and are expected to rise to at least £22bn by 2020. So it was no surprise the  trip to India involved Skills Minister Matthew Hancock helping, in his own words, “co-ordinate the government’s support for education as an export industry”..

And yet, 20 years ago, before Incorporation, colleges were largely characterised as public institutions focused on qualifications with little or no customer service, communication and marketing.

Jim Horrocks, former principal of Barnsfield College, recalls his first year in post when he observed growing queues waiting for a door to be opened at 2pm to process people for enrolment.

Something had to be done and the responsive college programme led by the FE Staff College, Blagdon, was designed to encourage colleges to prepare for market-led change that exploded during the 1990s.

In those early days, there was often something of a wish and a prayer in the operations”

Gazelle Group chief exective Fintan Donohue, (pictured) a member of that first team, says: “The responsive college programme promoted the idea of student as a customer and we spent much time with colleges, helping them recruit, train and support marketing managers for the very first time.”

The main legacy is seen in the Responsive College Unit (RCU), which continued as an independent agency after Incorporation, says Peter Davies, marketing consultant with the Policy Consortium.

He had helped create the College Marketing Network in 1987, which was crucial to supporting the RCU success and is still going, with around 180 members and an award scheme and annual conference in November.

But Incorporation brought a considerably more focused approach. “My impression of the marketing staff who attend is that their professionalism and competence has improved out of all recognition compared with the early days, and that the best practice in the sector now would be outstanding among any service organisations with comparable budgets,” says Davies.

Analysing customers and colleges in the 1999 publication Managing External Relations in Schools and Colleges, Davies points to the key change as that of a move from promotion to marketing. Far more precise market research was needed to inform decisions about curriculum development, stimulated in 1994 by the legal requirement on colleges to produce strategic plans.

“As a consequence, colleges adapted their management information systems (MIS) for the purposes of marketing intelligence, which had not been a primary consideration in their original design,” he says.

The workload on managers was incredible, says Carole Overton. “I was assistant principal at Deeside College. My responsibilities included marketing along with MIS, funding, planning, external work from companies, admissions, student services and multimedia learning and a few odd extras like nurseries. How I did all that I don’t know,”she says.

In those early days, there was often something of a wish and a prayer in the operations. Andrew Morris, formerly director of marketing and development at City and Islington College, recalls: “Bizarrely, I became director of marketing and development in my college with no background in the former. Someone had to do it.

“In fact I read about Ruth Silver’s approach at Lewisham College in a marketing magazine, took her advice and hired in a Blue Chip company. Certainly the quality and punch shot up; then it was taken back in-house and then the capacity and budget increased enormously with external recruitment — and the level of sophistication we see in FE today.”