Teacher shortages and lack of space have forced most colleges to close enrolments on construction courses – with over half setting up waiting lists to train tradespeople, data shows.
An enrolment survey of Association of Colleges (AoC) members found colleges reported waiting lists for courses in all eight industrial strategy priority sectors, plus health and construction.
The membership body urged policymakers to align funding mechanisms with “demand hotspots” to onboard more learners and “maximise economic impact”.
Based on 105 responses of 213 members, the survey found significant increases in demand for construction, electrical and engineering courses amid a demographic surge in young learners that was too great for current staffing levels and classroom availability.
The popularity spike for construction comes after ministers unveiled a £600 million injection into training 60,000 more “engineers, brickies, sparkies and chippies” this year.
It forms part of the Labour government’s target to build 1.5 million new homes by 2029, which housebuilders recently warned is too optimistic.
Overall, 89 per cent of colleges reported an increase of between 0.1 per cent to 19.9 per cent in enrolments for 2025-26 compared to the previous academic year.
The findings come after persistent warnings from colleges that demographic rises in young people would lead to a shortage of places on critical courses. The AoC previously estimated 25,000 extra school-leavers would try to enrol at college this year.
Over three-quarters (77 per cent) of colleges reported substantial demand for construction education, and over half (56 per cent) said they had waiting lists in the subject area.
Electrical courses were also popular, with 64 per cent of colleges receiving significantly more enrolments, while 50 per cent said engineering enrolments were up and 48 per cent welcomed more students for health courses.
The majority (86 per cent) of respondents were experiencing increased demand in all the industrial strategy priority areas as well health and construction, with a third of colleges creating waiting lists for health courses.
“These subjects with the largest waiting lists mirror those experiencing strong growth in 16-to-18 and apprenticeship enrolments, suggesting continued high demand and capacity pressures,” the report said.
Demographic change was the most cited reason for the enrolments surge in 68 per cent of college responses, followed by 51 per cent citing the impact of the 2025 summer GCSE results.
Most colleges reported capacity issues in almost all subject areas, forcing them to limit or halt enrolments in areas where “student interest overwhelms resources,” mostly in the construction and built environment subject area.
Capacity problems have also bled into apprenticeships provision, with nearly a third (32 per cent) of colleges limiting construction apprenticeship starts.
The only subject area with no capacity issue was modern foreign languages, where nearly one in five colleges (18 per cent) said they had experienced a marked decrease in enrolments, which could be explained by competition with school sixth forms.
T Level enrolments disappoint
The majority of survey respondents said T Level enrolments this year failed to meet forecasts.
The craft and design T Level – introduced last year – was least in demand with 89 per cent of colleges reporting registrations below expectations.
Meanwhile, 63 per cent noted lower enrolments in media, broadcasting and production, and digital data analytics (60 per cent), formerly known as digital business services.
Around half of colleges found numbers were on target, including in maintenance, installation and repair for engineering and manufacturing (63 per cent), and building services engineering (52 per cent)
Demand sky high for ESOL and resits
Colleges struggled to meet demand for their adult provision.
English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) was the area with the “highest unmet demand”, the report said, with 61 per cent falling short.
Meanwhile 41 per cent of colleges struggled to cope with applications for Free Courses for Jobs, which the AoC said was “particularly noteworthy” and would be investigated.
Enrolments in GCSE English and maths were also higher than expected.
Almost two-thirds (65 per cent) of colleges reported an increase in 16-to-18 GCSE English enrolments and 61 per cent reported a rise in GCSE maths.
Demand also surged last year when 75 per cent of colleges reported higher-than-expected GCSE English enrolments, and 71 per cent witnessed a spike for GCSE maths.
Fewer colleges reported increases in functional skills English and maths (35 per cent and 37 per cent respectively).
The report noted that the number of 16-year- olds rose 4.6 per cent year-on-year in 2024, then fell 0.3 per cent this year.
The Department for Education was approached for comment.
The Department for Education has bolstered the FE Commissioner’s team with three new deputies amid a shake-up of its FE oversight regime.
Former EKC Group chief executive Graham Razey, FE adviser Esme Winch and Windsor Forest College group CEO Gillian May have been selected following a recruitment exercise in the summer.
They will each begin three-year terms in the coming months. Razey will join the FE Commissioner’s (FEC) office on December 1, while Winch will begin on January 2, 2026 and May will start on June 1, 2026.
Each deputy will be paid £700 per day for up to 200 days a year.
The three new hires will replace three of the current deputies.
Nigel Duncan and Phil Cook were appointed in 2023 on a three-year term but will be stepping down at the end of this year.
Meanwhile, Frances Wadsworth was first appointed in 2018. Her latest term of office was extended in May and will end her term in February 2026.
Becky Edwards remains in post and is two years into her three-year term.
They will all serve under new FE Commissioner, Ellen Thinnesen, who takes over from Shelagh Legrave in January.
New deputies
Razey began his career at South Kent College and held the principal position at Canterbury College and East Kent College before they merged to become EKC Group in 2018. He retired from Ofsted ‘outstanding’ group in April and stood down as one of the FE Commissioner’s national leaders of further education.
Meanwhile, Winch has been an adviser to the FE Commissioner for six years. She was previously managing director and CFO of NCFE and last held a college leadership role in 2016 when she stood down as CEO and principal of Loughborough College.
May has led Windsor Forest Colleges Group since 2021. The four-college group recruited just over 7,000 students in 2023-24 and was graded ‘good’ by Ofsted in 2024.
The new hires come as DfE refreshed its guidance on how it will oversee quality improvement and financial management of colleges earlier this week.
The new rules will replace place-based teams with new regional improvement teams (RITs) that will assess and direct the support needs of colleges in their areas. Each RIT will have a dedicated lead deputy FEC to provide targeted support.
Carrying burdens that would crush most mortals, CEO Karen Redhead tells Jessica Hill about debt, leaks and freeing West London College from intervention
Karen Redhead compares her job as CEO and principal of West London College to that of King Sisyphus from Greek mythology, who the gods forced to roll a large boulder up a hill for eternity.
Her metaphorical boulder is made heavier by the challenges of managing a “crippling” loan, a crumbling building and, until 2023, operating under the intense scrutiny of the intervention regime.
It is a job “absolutely not for the faint-hearted”. Her college has come a “huge distance” since she started there in 2018; it was rated ‘good’ by Ofsted in May, and has had a ‘good’ financial health grading for the last four years.
But there is still a huge burden she must carry.
Karen Redhead, CEO, West London College
Last big challenge
Redhead was no stranger to tough FE gigs before taking on West London. After stints at Newcastle College, the Learning Skills Council and Stockton Riverside College, she joined South Tyneside College as vice principal in 2006 when it was in “absolute turmoil”. Ofsted had rated the college ‘inadequate’, and she says around £9 million claimed fraudulently by a former staff member was “all being taken back in one go”.
After eight years as principal at Derwentside from 2010 to 2018, Redhead, then aged 57, felt she had “one last big challenge” left in her.
She was under no illusion about how bad West London College’s financial situation was. After her interview with the board, she was “very surprised” to be offered the job, having been “very blunt” about their need for “really tough housekeeping”.
Danger money
She considered the £200,000 salary they offered to be “danger money” for the “career risk” she was taking.
When asked what sort of bonus she wanted, she replied she did not believe in bonuses and said she never wished to be considered for a pay rise.
“I’ve stuck to that,” she says. “I had this feeling that as I was resolving the issues… the risk would reduce, so it was only fair to see the salary flatline over time.”
Just before she was set to start in September 2018,her predecessor, interim Graham Morley, had worked out she would only have enough money left in the bank to pay staff wages for five weeks.
From her boardroom at Derwentside, the pair rang the FE Commissioner together to “press the button” on intervention so Redhead, upon starting, could access an emergency loan from the Education and Skills Funding Agency of £11.6 million (increased to £13.65 million in 2022). She believes it is one of the biggest loans the government has ever made to a college.
West London’s board had approved a budget with a £4 million growth target, at a time when Redhead says the FE Commissioner’s advice was not to approve budgets with 16-18 growth projections. She told them to “start again” with a budget assuming no growth.
As well as the financial black hole the college was in, there was an emotional black hole created three months later by the tragic news of the suicide of its former principal from 2014-2018, Garry Phillips.
Redhead pays “tribute to the significant efforts that were made for over a decade before I arrived, to try to stabilise the college”.
“But unfortunately, the issues the college was facing were significant – this was a long running, intractable problem.”
Although she has tried over the years to “second-guess why certain things happened,” Redhead has “never, ever judged” Phillips. The college’s challenges were “never down to one person”, she says.
Karen Redhead, CEO, West London College
A fighter when needs be
It’s hard not to like Redhead, whose proud working-class Geordie roots give her a disarming honesty and warmth, but also a boldness in challenging the establishment (“I’m a fighter when I need to be”).
Starting out with no senior team, Redhead had to “battle” intervention agencies from the outset, feeling “under pressure very early on” to “shrink the college into recovery” and submit a mass redundancy plan. Instead, she vowed to do “everything” she could to “avoid redundancy” and “build the college back up”.
She was moulded by her “very intelligent” father, who, having been compelled by his mother to work down the pits where he lacked “intellectual challenge”, became a union shop steward who “caused mayhem”. He had Redhead selling Socialist Worker magazines on street corners at the age of 12.
She recalls how on his death bed 12 years ago, with his mind “back in the 1970s” he was still muttering about “those managers”.
Redhead told him: “Dad, I’ve got some bad news for you – I am one.”
Karen Redhead, CEO, West London College
Made to feel ‘worthless’
West London College had been under a notice to improve for five years before she started, yet Redhead sometimes felt the Department for Education treated her like she “caused the problems” when she was “just trying to solve them”, and was repeatedly asked to submit documents they knew she did not have.
Redhead describes one of her contacts at the DfE as being “the opposite of the man from Del Monte”, as the answer to her requests was “always no”.
“There were lots of instances where the DfE could have helped and didn’t,” she says.
West London had to undergo an independent business review which Redhead says she and then-FE commissioner Richard Atkins “both felt wasn’t needed” because “what we had to do here was pretty clear” in terms of getting “control over the staffing”.
Such reviews were “pinched from the commercial world”, and “normally done when a lender considers an organisation to be a risky prospect”.
They typically take two months. West London’s took two years and “sucked the living daylights” out of Redhead’s finance team in a “constant barrage of requests for stuff that they’d already had”.
The college had already spent its emergency funding, and was not seeking to borrow more money, so she questioned the point of it.
She knows she is not the only principal of a college under intervention to feel under such relentless scrutiny.
“Below the radar” she has been voluntarily mentoring other principals facing or undergoing intervention, so they can “benefit from the experiences I went through”.
During an informal “insolvency and intervention group” that Redhead formed, six to eight principals “check for consistency of treatment” during their monthly conference calls, amid a “lack of guidance and framework” around the intervention process.
“We used to laugh at the title… like, you’d really want to be part of that group!
“But it’s very sad, those principals are being made to feel worthless. They feel tactics are coming out that they feel very undermined and intimidated by”.
Redhead sees this as an injustice, as “more often than not, if the leader of the organisation that has gone pear-shaped were part of the problem, they would have [already] gone very quickly. If they’re still there, they’re generally not part of the problem.”
It is therefore “counterproductive” for the FE Commissioner to “give them a hard time”. “Why not have them feel valued instead?”
Redhead questions why the FE Commissioner cannot use a “coaching approach” towards principals.
“You can still have the heat there, but not throw them in the flames,” she says.
Early on in her time at West London, Redhead spent two years on Atkins’ national team – despite her own college being in intervention – but she believes that in more recent years the FE Commissioner has been less willing to consult with principals at the receiving end of intervention.
She hopes to see the FE Commissioner’s office take a more conciliatory approach under its new leader. Ellen Thinnesen is someone who Redhead has “always admired”.
“I’ve always wished I could have a modicum of Ellen’s people skills.”
Karen Redhead, CEO, West London College
Intervention oubliette
As time went on, Redhead found the FE Commissioner’s recommendations on their twice-yearly visits to her college to be “pure distraction”.
Just before an FE Commissioner’s visit in 2023, Redhead’s relationship of over 30 years ended. She considers herself “one of the toughest people I know”. But during the visit, she did something that “nobody who knows me would have believed”; she started crying.
She says she explained her personal circumstances to the FE Commissioner’s team. But in online feedback to the visit, they referred to her “unstable leadership”. Redhead “fundamentally disagreed” with the ensuing report, which she claimed “twisted everything” and “would have been risible if it hadn’t been so tragic”.
There are “parallels”, she believes, in how the FE Commissioner directs criticism at leaders with the way that Ofsted treated Ruth Perry, the headteacher who took her own life.
Redhead subsequently requested a formal assessment from the DfE’s regional team, which concluded that her college had done everything it had been tasked with doing. The college was subsequently removed from intervention – something that Redhead felt should have happened years earlier.
She compares intervention to an “oubliette”; a pit with no doors, in which “you fall into, and it’s bloody difficult to get out of”.
To relieve her stresses, Redhead has always sung – she recalls her son as a child “begging me to stop singing”. These days she sings regularly in the Royal Albert Hall as a “very proud” member of the Royal Choral Society, which is “an absolute tonic”.
Redhead with the music for Handel’s Messiah that she was given as a gift from colleagues
The money pit
She gets a lot of job satisfaction knowing that “we definitely support the learners that need the most help”.
“A lot” of West London’s learners receive language support “even if it’s not funded”, as many are unaccompanied migrants in the care of social services or others entering from “outside the school system”.
Redhead’s office is based in Hammersmith and Fulham College, the largest of West London’s three campuses. Its dilapidated building is a “money pit” that has been too big for the number of students ever since it opened in 1980, and it is “way too big now”. This means too much money is wasted on cleaning, securing and heating the immense building.
The campus’s three boilers, all broken during my visit, are “well beyond their shelf life”. The system has no thermostat, and the fact that its metal pipework is encased in concrete means holes must be dug to find leaks.
Buckets are placed in classrooms to catch the water that regularly trickles through the building’s flat roof. “We’ve chucked so much money at trying to find out exactly where the water’s coming through, and none of it’s worked,” says Redhead.
The college has tried without success to bid for various capital funding and sustainability grants, which she describes as “drastically oversubscribed”.
Meanwhile, a previous condition survey “led the DfE to believe that this place was in much better shape than it actually is”.
Condition funding rules prevent colleges from spending their condition grants from the DfE on big capital schemes, but Redhead laments that it would be “much better for the public purse to invest in something that’s going to resolve a problem, rather than putting sticking plasters over it”.
The college is short of £20 million for the capital works needed.
But “really good conversations” are taking place with Hammersmith and Fulham Council over possible future capital investment.
Redhead doubts she will be “cutting any ribbons” herself on a new campus build – she expects to have retired before a “spade hits the ground”. But she hopes to get the project “well underway” for a future principal to finish.
West London College’s Hammersmith and Fulham campus
Loan troubles
Another looming finance issue is the contractual transfer of the college’s ESFA loan into a commercial loan with around £7 million outstanding in 2030. Since the loan’s terms were agreed, colleges have returned to the public sector and are now prevented from taking on commercial loans, which Redhead has pointed out means the “facility agreement [will be] null and void”.
The college has twice already had to pay legal fees for loan contract changes, and she is reluctant to pay a third time.
But despite West London’s myriad of challenges, Redhead says “never in a million years” does she regret taking it on. “This college is the absolute love of my life,” she says. “I’ve loved the challenge.”
Before I go, I suggest her dad would have been proud of all she has achieved.
“Well, I hope so,” she says. “I sometimes feel like me dad is sitting on me shoulder, reminding me what I should be doing for the staff”.
“Inconsistent” training of Prevent practitioners who refer students “when in doubt” has encouraged over-reporting to the government’s counter-terrorism programme, sparking calls for a rethink from an independent review.
The Independent Commission on UK Counter-Terrorism Law, Policy and Practice, published yesterday, identified “problematic” issues with the “high rate of unnecessary” Prevent referrals that pick up young people with issues that are not terrorism-related.
It warned that young people with complex needs were being referred to Prevent because there is “no other system in place to help”.
The three-year-long review into the UK’s counterterrorism strategy, by the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law and chaired by Sir Declan Morgan KC, called for the statutory duty of Prevent in public sector organisations to be reconsidered, as well as better training for educational staff.
The Prevent duty was first placed on schools and FE providers in 2015, and orders designated safeguarding leads (DSL) to report concerns of radicalisation to the police-led programme.
Previous FE Week analysis of Home Office statistical data on Prevent referrals in FE found sharp climbs in the number of young people being referred to the programme but few being taken to a further stage that offers personalised deradicalisation support.
Yesterday’s commission report collected evidence from 2022 over the following three years from over 200 experts to assess the efficacy of the UK’s counter-terrorism framework.
It found “acute” concerns that there was a risk that counter-terrorism powers are being applied too broadly i.e. capturing behaviour that is “harmful but not terrorist”.
The report added that fewer than 10 per cent of all referrals result in adoption as Channel cases.
“Even among these, some are not considered a real risk of radicalisation,” it said.
Most radicalisation concerns are categorised by the police as “conflicted” or “no ideology”.
The report found the lack of funding for community safeguarding and mental health services is causing Prevent referrals to be made as there is “no other system in place” to help young people with complex needs.
But the commission said there was an increased risk that channel panels, which discuss referral cases, could be overwhelmed by cases where there are significant risks of violence and miss instances of individuals being drawn to extremist violence.
It also warned against the Home Office’s recent internal review after the 2024 Southport attack, where attacker Axel Rudakubana was referred to Prevent three times but not considered a risk, that recommended referrals to be “routinely” escalated.
“The Prevent referral process is picking up many people who may be a risk to themselves or others and need support, but few are terrorism-related; providing support through a counter-terrorism programme is problematic given the serious concerns about Prevent, its effectiveness and its impact on those targeted,” the report said.
Gut instinct of practitioners could ‘reinforce stereotypes’
The commission also heard the 2015 implementation of the Prevent duty in colleges led to a “significant step change” in training and has become embedded into processes and practices for safeguarding.
But while training of practitioners has improved confidence in reporting, the report said it has led to an “increase in the over-reporting of less concerning cases”.
“The benefits of a statutory duty must be carefully balanced against the negative impacts of inappropriate or misplaced referrals,” the report added.
The commission also heard evidence that demonstrated inconsistencies in training and resources, leaving staff to rely on their ‘gut instinct’, which it warned could “reinforce stereotypes and discrimination”.
“The resultant reliance on ‘gut instinct’ combined with ’refer-when-in-doubt’ advice encourages overreporting and risks escalating manageable issues unnecessarily,” the commission warned.
Polly Harrow, assistant principal at Kirklees College and DfE’s further education student support champion, said the findings were “seriously worrying” and suggested a more robust strategic approach is “urgently required” to staff training.
“Whilst it is not my personal experience that cases have been ‘over-reported’, I can see how this could easily be the case, given the serious concerns educators have about ‘getting it wrong’ and the potential consequences of that,” she added.
Harrow said that safeguarding practitioners “typically” think it better to over-report than under-report.
“I take the point in the review that some referrals to Channel are deemed to be manageable at source. I don’t doubt that this is the case, however it does suggest that further clarity is needed not only in terms of definitions and terminology, but that the overall scope of the duty needs to be further refined to ensure maximum effectiveness.”
The report also decried the ‘Educate Against Hate’ website resources, revealing there was an “absence of a human rights-based approach”.
“Many resources neglected young people’s developing opinions and agency, frequently adopting a patronising tone,” it said.
In other cases, the commission found that some education institutions avoided discussing difficult issues from poor resources or rely on third parties to facilitate discussions.
Its research also revealed that students are reluctant to debate difficult views, which could suppress legitimate discussion and is a key aim of counterterrorism work.
Last year, fears emerged that learners were self-censoring themselves to avoid being flagged as Home Office data showed a drop in college referrals.
The review therefore recommended the Department for Education explore how to improve training for school and college staff to create “safe spaces” for discussion.
Other recommendations included a focus on people who pose significant risk to public safety rather that those with extremist ideas, more research into terrorism and extremism definitions before expanding Prevent categories, and a reconsideration of the need for a specific Prevent duty.
The Department for Education was contacted for comment.
Across FE, thousands of staff work tirelessly supporting young people with SEND to build confidence, gain skills and live more independent lives. Yet the essential role of specialist FE too often goes unrecognised.
The Power of Specialist FE awareness week – taking place in the first week of December – aims to change this.
Coordinated by Natspec, which represents and supports specialist FE providers in England and Wales, the campaign celebrates the vital role all FE providers play in enabling learners with SEND to succeed. We want to remind policymakers, employers and the public that an equitable education system must serve every learner, not just those who fit into mainstream pathways.
Why this campaign matters now
The number of children and young people identified as having SEND in England has surpassed 1.7 million – the highest figure ever recorded.
Over 26 per cent of education, health and care plan (EHCP) holders are aged 16 to 25. But post-16 education provision rarely receives the same level of attention or investment as SEND in schools, despite being the place where many young people with complex needs develop the skills and independence that will shape the rest of their lives.
This creates a critical gap in the system, leaving too many young people facing uncertainty about what comes after school.
In its FE and skills inquiry, the education select committee recognised the “neglect of FE SEND policy, as well as inefficiencies, limited accountability and policy fragmentation”. Natspec has repeatedly called for closing this policy vacuum.
Our aims
Our campaign’s ambition is to change the narrative. It gives us the opportunity to celebrate what works, and to raise awareness of the specialist expertise that exists across our colleges. We want to champion the belief that a key tenet of an inclusive education is that it sets up young people to be better included in their adult lives thereafter.
The campaign will build awareness of the contribution of specialist FE to an inclusive education system. It will shine a light on the work being done by highly specialist staff in both specialist and general FE settings, often working across disciplines to make education and training accessible, relevant and impactful for young people with some of the most complex needs.
As a result, we hope that policymakers will acknowledge the vital role of specialist FE in the upcoming SEND reforms and put forward proposals that more securely support providers to offer high-quality provision.
Together, they form a system that works best when every type of provision is valued for its distinctive contribution. When learners have access to the right provision, they gain agency, confidence and purpose. They contribute to their communities, move into work or volunteering and lead more independent lives. That is The Power of Specialist FE in action.
At the heart of this campaign are learners themselves. Throughout the awareness week, colleges will share learner stories on social media and in local media, celebrating their journeys and achievements. These stories, told by learners in their own words, reveal the power of specialist FE to change lives and challenge public misconceptions about disability.
Colleges are also inviting their MPs to visit campuses and meet learners in person to hear their stories. These visits are often transformative, enabling policymakers to see first-hand the outcomes that specialist FE delivers, from improved social outcomes to stronger links with local employers.
A collective call to action
Beyond the awareness week itself, The Power of Specialist FE is a movement. We are calling on policymakers to embed specialist FE firmly within post-16 education and skills strategies, backed by sustainable funding that reflects the complexity and cost of delivering transformative education and training.
Colleges and providers across the FE landscape can get involved through sharing stories, amplifying our campaign’s message or engaging with their local representatives.
Resources to support campaign participation are available on our campaign website. Together we can bring to life the work of this part of the sector and make it impossible for policymakers to overlook it in the future.
In Westminster and beyond, Alan Milburn has earned his reputation for telling uncomfortable truths when few want to hear them. I’ve known him for many years and have seen that fearlessness in action.
Under his leadership, between 2012 and 2017, the social mobility commission became a force to be reckoned with. He confronted powerful elites and elusive prime ministers alike in trying to level the country’s deeply unlevel playing field of opportunity. When the government failed to back his work, he resigned on principle.
Raised by a single mother on Tyneside, Milburn’s first political activism came from fighting for shipbuilding and steel jobs. That early grounding has never left him – which makes him the ideal person to lead a new review into what is increasingly a national crisis of opportunity. Nearly one million young people are not in education, employment or training (NEET).
As someone who dropped out of school myself before returning to retake A-levels, I know how it feels to be an outsider. I was lucky: teachers, friends and family gave me a second chance. Many of the young people now labelled “NEET” will never get that chance. I also happened to have an academic bent. This meant I could fit into an education system that valued above all else performance in narrow academic assessments.
If this review is to make a lasting difference, Milburn must challenge three powerful orthodoxies that have long derailed solutions to one of social mobility’s seemingly intractable problems.
The first trap is the deficit approach that still dominates so much national policy. Even the term “NEET” sounds more like a disease to be cured than a description of young people’s lives. Labelling them by what they are not doing defines them as failures rather than as individuals with strengths and futures.
The equity approach I advocate starts from a different place: standing in the shoes of the young people we aim to serve. It asks how we can better understand what they offer, what needs to change in our institutions, and how we can work together.
It’s so tempting for politicians to slip into the blame game. See for example the debate over the underachievement of “white working-class boys”. Too often from the national stage we pathologise the communities we have failed in the past. The problem isn’t necessarily that these young people don’t value education – it’s that our system hasn’t valued them.
So, one simple step: let’s change the language. Instead of “NEETs”, talk about young people in transition, those seeking next opportunities, or those facing barriers to participation.
We also need to look at the bigger picture. The review rightly focuses on the growing mental health emergency among younger generations. Rising anxiety and hopelessness are inevitable when the old life model that guided previous generations – work hard in education, get a stable job, buy a home – has broken down.
Tackling this demands more than therapy sessions or attendance drives; it requires rebuilding a sense of purpose, belonging and opportunity for a generation who feel the system no longer works for them.
My research for the Monday Charitable Trust found that half of those failing to reach a standard pass in English and maths at 16 had already fallen behind by age five. Their trajectories were shaped as much by socio-emotional skills as academic development. Low skills are passed down from one generation to the next. These are structural, intergenerational problems, not short-term policy gaps.
Finally, the review can do something governments rarely manage: breaking down the policy silos. For too long, we’ve treated education, employment and health as separate domains when they are deeply connected. The danger now is “initiativitis”: a flurry of disconnected reforms – the curriculum review, the youth guarantee, the white working-class review – without a unifying vision.
Milburn has never shied away from asking the hard questions. I hope his review will do just that: forcing us to confront the deep issues that threaten to scar a whole generation.
These words beneath the crest of the Working Men’s College, founded in 1854 by a group of Christian Socialists, encapsulate a radical vision: education not as charity, but as a right. It was a means for working people to participate fully in civic and cultural life.
The Reverend Frederick Maurice, one of the College’s key founders, believed education should form citizens, not just employees. By calling it a “college”, he implied a society where teachers and learners were equal members. This marked a stark departure from the earlier adult educational efforts of the mechanics’ institutes. Liberal studies, humility in teaching and a rich social life became integral to the college.
Maurice was joined by an extraordinary group of philanthropists – Thomas Hughes (author of Tom Brown’s Schooldays), John Ludlow, the philologist Frederick James Furnivall. It was also supported by figures such as the writer John Ruskin and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who shaped WM’s early art teaching. [1][2]
The college shared its ethos with Birkbeck College, as both prioritised skill acquisition within a broader vision: developing individuals as citizens and community members, not just workers. No single institution can offer every opportunity, but their benefactors instilled a lasting commitment to a wider educational community – a principle that remains relevant today.
Colleges are communities where people learn from and with each other, not only from teachers or texts. In a world overflowing with information, learning to evaluate and synthesise knowledge collaboratively is essential, whether navigating data systems or developing cultural literacy. Yet current structures and funding rarely encourage this mutual learning.
Today, we see a revival of analogous impulses among Gen Z: crafts, supper clubs, and collective creativity are being embraced not just as hobbies but as medicine for loneliness, digital fatigue and a loss of connection. These mirror the same drive behind the founders of WM College, who believed that learning should restore community, moral purpose and human flourishing.
Mathematics and languages were valued not merely as practical skills, but as gateways to higher knowledge – aimed at producing students, not just mathematicians or linguists.
Similarly, the arts were treated seriously. Pre-Raphaelites like Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown and William Morris taught evening classes, bringing art to the working classes. Students often discovered renewed purpose, employment opportunities or new skills – echoing today’s need for education that enriches life as well as work.
As early as 1965, WM College formally admitted female students – pioneering inclusion. These steps reflected not just demographic inclusion but a philosophical one: that men and women are equal in ability and citizenship.
From the start, WM College fostered a sense of community and inclusion. Students learned from tutors and one another, developing mutual support and intellectual curiosity.
Today, the adult education landscape is vastly different. Responsibility for skills shifts between departments, funding is fragmented, and providers face pressure to focus narrowly on employability outcomes.
Skills policy is wrongly low-down in party priorities, with much talk of trade colleges but little sustained support for adult learning beyond vocational outcomes. Yet the lesson from Maurice and his contemporaries is clear: one need not wait for perfect policy conditions to act. They built a college where formal adult education barely existed, because it was the right thing to do.
What might today’s policymakers, funders and philanthropists learn from these 19th-century pioneers?
Education shapes society as much as it serves the labour market. WM College’s founders saw it as a tool for civic renewal, building character, social cohesion and moral responsibility.
Long-term commitment matters. The college’s early supporters invested decades of sustained effort, not just funds or enthusiasm. Modern philanthropists should take note.
Community is central. At WM College spaces are created where people of all backgrounds can meet, learn and grow together. In an era of social fragmentation, this model feels urgently relevant.
Today, as young people rediscover the therapeutic, communal, and creative value of making things with their hands, there is fertile ground for adult education that nurtures wellbeing, human worth and shared life. The challenge is to act with the courage and imagination of those Victorian philanthropists, who built not just a college but a movement rooted in civic purpose and inclusion.
Almost four in five UK employers say they’ve got skills gaps in their business. That’s a huge number and it comes at a real cost.
Staff are stretched; productivity takes a hit; quality drops and recruitment costs rise. Finance and accountancy teams aren’t immune. In fact, they sit right at the heart of it.
The role of the accountant has evolved – and continues to do so. It goes far beyond crunching numbers and arranging tax and VAT returns. Our new report shows how employers want people who can lead teams, think strategically (27 per cent), analyse data (23 per cent), and guide organisations through digital change.
Yes, the technical skills still matter – things like budgeting, reporting and payroll – but they’re no longer enough on their own. Transferable skills like problem-solving (27 per cent), leadership and management (25 per cent), as well as critical thinking are now just as important.
This shift reflects the way businesses now work with their finance teams. Accountants aren’t just keeping the books balanced, they’re helping boards decide where to invest, how to manage risk and grow responsibly. That requires confidence, communication and the ability to influence.
Digital skills are climbing the list too. Employers identify AI literacy and automation (25 per cent) alongside cybersecurity (20 per cent) as crucial finance and accounting skills for the future.
Finance professionals need to be confident working with new tech and aware of the risks that come with it. The message from employers is they want a mix; training must deliver the technical, digital and human skills side by side.
Challenges employers face
Unfortunately, while most employers see training as the answer, they’re struggling to make it happen. A massive 84 per cent say they face barriers to upskilling, leading to 10 per cent outsourcing work overseas.
We need urgent action, because every outsourced role is one less chance for UK talent to gain experience, and to strengthen the long-term resilience of the sector.
The biggest problems are lack of time (41 per cent), cost, low engagement (27 per cent) and a lack of suitable training (22 per cent).
However, that doesn’t mean progress isn’t happening. A quarter of employers have upskilled staff in the past year, and one in 10 are using apprenticeships to bring in new talent.
Looking ahead, many are planning for mentoring, professional courses and certified short programmes. That’s encouraging – but employers can’t fix this on their own. They need the government to step-up too.
Recommendations for businesses:
Provide clear progression routes to retain and nurture talent, and partner with training providers to upskill employees in automation, cybersecurity and digital finance systems.
Work with training providers and awarding bodies to co-design training schemes that meet real-world business needs to provide a pipeline of talent to help your business grow.
Recommendations for government
Create an “SME Skills Navigator” service to help small employers access relevant finance training and apprenticeships.
Develop a campaign targeted at learners and employers to increase the attractiveness of apprenticeships, with a particular focus on SMEs.
Urgently clarify what types of short courses in accounting and finance are eligible via the new growth and skills levy, with clear timelines for implementation.
A joint effort
Finance is the backbone of every business. If we don’t tackle the skills gap, we’ll feel it across the economy – through lower productivity and innovation, weaker growth and fewer opportunities.
The good news is employers are willing to invest in their people. With the right support, they can. Everyone needs to play a part – the accounting industry, government, training providers and businesses – to ensure finance professionals have the full skillset they need to thrive.
This isn’t just about businesses getting the numbers right. Strong finance skills support better decision-making in every sector, from charities to public services to start-ups. They underpin innovation, investment and the resilience of communities.
If we build a pipeline of finance professionals with the right skills, we’re not only protecting the economy today – we’re giving the next generation of accountants the tools to grow it tomorrow.
For almost 30 years, CSCS cards have been a golden ticket to work on building sites but as an FE Week investigation exposed last year, they’re open to abuse.
Not only do unscrupulous individuals offer fake cards claiming they beat anti-fraud technology, but others have infiltrated training centres to sell them to people who aren’t given the necessary health and safety training.
With huge labour shortages in construction, the emergence of fake cards became rife.
Stakeholders must be confident in the skillsets of those they employ. Likewise, newly qualified apprentices awarded a degree, diploma or certification must be reassured they are competing on a level playing field with others in the industry.
Physical cards no longer meet the demands of a modern construction workforce. It’s time to move towards a smarter, digital solution; digital passports.
Causeway Technologies is spearheading a campaign that involves lobbying ministers and stakeholders to make digital skills passports mandatory in every public construction project.
The technology is already used on some of the UK’s largest projects – by more than 600,000 people in the UK. What’s missing is policy leadership to make it mandatory.
A digital skills passport allows employers, contractors and clients to instantly verify a worker’s qualifications, competencies, and health and safety records.
It provides a secure digital profile connecting verified qualifications, training records and on-site experience in one continually updated platform. The worker simply logs in or scans a QR code on a mobile device, instantly sharing verified training, qualifications, and competency data.
Why is this so important? Because whether you’re managing a major infrastructure project or building a single home, you need to know the person doing the job is trained, and the evidence is real. Without digital checks, it’s far too easy for credentials to be forged, missed or left out of date. That’s not just an admin issue – it’s a safety risk.
Causeway Technologies provides the digital infrastructure powering current skills passport systems. Our technology does not oversee the passport itself but ensures stated skills are transparent, portable, and trusted – bridging education outcomes with workforce deployment.
The technology already powers the workforce systems behind Network Rail’s Sentinel and the Highways Passport scheme, the world’s largest passport programme. In total, it is used by over 900,000 workers worldwide.
In the new skills white paper, it was revealed Skills England has been tasked with exploring the further development of skills passports.
The new government agency will “review best practice and learn from previous experience”, but the idea is the passports would list an individual’s skills, competencies and work experience in a standardised way.
Digital skills passports can provide:
Virtual safety: A short-life QR virtual check-in backed by multi-factor authentication means IDs can’t be screenshot. In other words, they change, so can’t be copied.
Approved training providers: Skills passports are backed by a list of approved training providers who can add qualifications. Should qualifications be applied fraudulently, it would be flagged and the company responsible blocked.
Link to governing body databases: Skills passports can link directly to governing body system databases and be checked.
Photos: All passports have images on them, and true 3D biometric checks can be used for secure sites.
Evidence: Unlike a physical card, a skills passport can list not only qualifications but copies of certifications and training hours, all stored on the person’s record.
Of course, no system is immune to abuse and there will always be people looking to cut corners. But that’s exactly why we need better tools to close the gaps. If we want to protect workers, uphold standards and build with confidence, we can’t rely on plastic cards and good intentions.
A digital skills passport should be industry standard. It’s time to move from intent to implementation and set a new standard for skills and safety that takes workforce trust to the next level.
