Latest news from FE Week

Giving his students a virtual reality check

My senses tell me I’m in Sizewell nuclear power station, jumping into a reactor and splitting atoms with my fingertips.

But I’m actually standing in a dark, windowless lecture theatre, lit up by four giant screens at Eastern Education Group’s extended reality lab in Suffolk, wearing a headset to discover how nuclear energy ends up in our homes.

The group’s suave chief executive, Nikos Savvas, is deploying the latest tech wizardry across his group to create virtual replicas of working environments, to give learners hands-on workplace experiences without having to leave their campuses.

Savvas bought the former camera factory that houses the lab for £2 million with Local Enterprise Partnership funding in 2015, two years after becoming principal of West Suffolk College.

It is part of an all-age education group that includes two other sixth form colleges, a new construction technical excellence college, a network of adult learning centres, and primary and SEND schools across Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire.

A Teslasuit at Eastern Education Group’s Extended Reality (XR) Lab

Savvas proudly shows me a black, superhero-like Teslasuit that enables wearers to feel hot, cold, wet or even pain sensations through electrical stimulations, to train them for working in high-risk sectors. There are also gloves with finger tracking to simulate touch, for mastering tactile procedures.

Savvas is accompanied throughout my visit by his communications manager and two external PR advisers, and I wonder at first whether I am being swept along by a carefully choreographed publicity exercise.

“No one trusts me alone with any journalist. Clearly, I need to be chaperoned!” he jokes.

But it is clear that Savvas’s mandate to embrace technological innovation is motivated by a genuine belief that our current assessment-driven system is broken, and the latest tech tools can help to fix it.

Savvas passionately believes that by creating virtual worlds, his educators can inspire young people by bringing learning to life, and that using AI marking tools can free his teachers up to get to know their learners better.

“We’re living in a world that’s changing so quickly that the focus of education needs to be ‘how do you create a better society’, not ‘how do you pass exams better’,” he says.

He is working with his teachers to figure out what is “the very essence of teaching that we need to keep”, and what can be outsourced to AI.

Savvas does not mince his words.

“If I can get kids to be nurtured for the rest of the time with their teachers, I don’t have to have them captured in a prison in the classroom – I can get them to exercise and eat healthily too. This is education at its best.”

Journalist Jessica Hill with Dr Nikos Savvas in the XR Lab

Silicon dreams

Savvas started his own career journey splitting atoms in a very real sense, conducting experiments in particle physics at Stanford Linear Accelerator in California as part of his PhD programme through the University of Manchester.

He initially left his native city of Athens to study physics in Manchester, before moving to San Francisco at the dawn of the “Silicon Valley explosion”.

While friends back in the UK were struggling to connect to the internet via a cable, he could sit in a café on his laptop, enjoying the world’s first wireless connections.

“I could glimpse the future; it was mind-blowing,” he says.

After finishing his research, he could not persuade his wife (a British GP) to move Stateside, so he put his dreams of becoming a Silicon Valley tech programmer to one side.

He initially rejected the idea of teaching as a career because, having come from a “long line of teachers”, he was jaded by constant kitchen table discussions about education while growing up.

But he realised his vocation lay in FE when attending a talk delivered by a single mum, who spoke about how adult education had not only transformed her life but also that of her “off the rails” daughter, who became inspired to study by watching her mum thrive through learning.

“I realised that’s how you break the cycle. To get to the child, you need to get to the parent, and that’s why FE and adult education, more than anything else, changes lives.”

He started teaching at Pendleton College (now part of Salford City College Group) with a physics class of seven students, six of whom had just failed their exams.

Savvas gave them an irresistible incentive; if they passed their next attempt, he would take them Greek island hopping.

He stuck to his word and relished seeing them tick off new experiences during their two-week adventure. For some, it was their first time on a train, plane or ferry. For others, it was their first experience camping and seeing the sea. The trip became an annual tradition for Savvas and his learners.

Gloves with finger tracking to simulate touch

Vocational over A Levels

After moving up the ranks to principal, Savvas left to lead West Suffolk College in 2013.

Two years later, he formed Suffolk Academies Trust to sponsor the largest sixth form in Ipswich, Suffolk One, after it went “bankrupt” with a £9 million debt on a £10 million turnover.

One, as it is known, had opened five years previously at a cost of £70 million (back “when money was no object”) but had struggled financially due to low recruitment.

Savvas continued to expand the group’s sixth form provision, building the £35 million Abbeygate sixth form college in Bury St Edmunds, designed for 2,000 A Level students. It has continued to grow quickly and currently has 1150 students on roll.

Savvas believes young people’s concerns about student debt and AI replacing traditional graduate entry-level roles are now influencing their year 11 progression choices, with more opting for courses with clear routes into employment.

Whereas a few years ago applications to One were spread evenly between vocational and A Level courses, now they are 2:1 in favour of vocational.

But he expresses frustration that the wider system still focuses on progressing students to universities, with plans for new V Levels driven by the perception that “to make them better we should make them look a bit more like A Levels, instead of asking how we can make our qualifications more practical and vocational”.

Since Savvas formed Eastern Education Group in 2023 it has continued to expand, with the DfE recently handing it another new SEND school and centre of excellence.

Adult education is still a key focus for Savvas, with his group soon opening a lifelong learning campus in Thetford and working with Cambridge and Peterborough Combined Authority to open three new centres in St Neots, Soham and Ely.

Nikos Savvas at Abbeygate Sixth Form College

Playing games

Savvas is a devotee of psychologist Carol Dweck’s growth mindset theory – the idea that people learn best when they are allowed to make mistakes and improve from them. He believes that schools do this well in the early years, but this changes as children move through the system.

“We go into an examination mode, where every mistake is punished by taking grades down, so they don’t take risks, and learn only the narrow knowledge that will get them through the exam.”

In Savvas’s view, primary schools have also been quicker to embrace new technologies than colleges (both his own children used VR headsets at primary school), while universities have been slower still.

“The vast majority of under-35s own some sort of VR headset for gaming,” he says. “Then in education, it’s still whiteboards, maybe a PowerPoint or a short video.”

Savvas believes that using AI marking tools means that instead of spending evenings assessing work that a student might “look at once and then put in their bag, never to be seen again”, teachers can focus on mentoring, coaching and building personal relationships, leaving AI to “help with all the mundane stuff”.

“Our favourite teachers are the ones who knew who you were,” he adds.

West Suffolk College is also working with its sister schools and colleges across the group to gamify GCSE maths using AI. One prototype involves escape room-style challenges where learners must collaborate and use maths to progress.

The project attracted international attention at a recent AI conference hosted by the group, which drew delegates from as far away as Canada.

Dr Nikos savvas speaking at the recent AI conference

Savvas is pragmatic about the prospect that these initiatives may not turn out to be the next big thing.

“If somebody else’s solution turns out to be better than ours, that’s brilliant,” he says. “I’ll go buy their product and use it.”

He warns that AI is already shaping young people’s education, as learners are using it at home and on their phones – so doing nothing is not an option.

“The real question is whether FE helps guide that use thoughtfully, or steps back and leaves it entirely unguided. Waiting is not a neutral position. It simply means someone else, with different priorities and no obligation to our learners, determines how this technology develops.”

Savvas acknowledges the fear that exists around AI’s threats to human capability, or what is being termed “metacognitive laziness” – students producing better outputs without doing the thinking that produces lasting learning. But he argues that AI used in the right ways can increase knowledge and deepen critical thinking.

“We have thought carefully about data, age-appropriate content, and how the model supports, rather than shortcuts, the learning process.”

Nikos Savvas at Abbeygate Sixth Form College

Fighting for what’s right

While Savvas considers himself a natural optimist, mental health concerns in young people and recent attempts to “sow fear and division” in communities are creating fresh challenges.

In December, a malicious communication prompted a mass evacuation at One and its surrounding streets.

A month before that, Savvas and Palvinder Singh, CEO of Kirklees College, had penned a letter expressing their indignation at the “growing threats to the fundamental British values that underpin our education system” after Union flags started becoming a common feature of some neighbourhoods.

“Once any symbol starts becoming a symbol of intimidation, it’s not acceptable,” he says. “The whole point of British values is about the rule of law, inclusivity, equity and equality. This is what makes Britain great.”

They had intended for the letter to include more names, but other college leaders backed away out of fear of publicising their views.

“If the chief executives and the principals are feeling intimidated, what about our kids and our staff?” he asks.

“Leaders in general need to be vocal in this climate. If this is what will intimidate us, imagine if something really serious happens. Behaviours that before were beyond the pale become normalised.”

Savvas says he has approached people putting up flags in his community to ask them why they are doing so. “It’s not about you,” they tell him. “It’s about them.”

“Who is them?” he asks them. “Is it your nurse in the NHS? It takes time and discussion. That’s why adult education is so important.”

Meanwhile, back at the lab, Savvas’s tech team show me how retail staff training to work at a branch of The Range can now use a VR headset and 360-degree treadmill to walk around a ‘store’ before setting foot in one.

Then, technical developer Jake shows me a pit-stop challenge experience he has created so learners can compete to change a tyre in the quickest time possible on a virtual racing circuit. “You give students a leaderboard and they start getting really competitive,” he says.

While all this tech cannot fail to impress, Savvas is realistic about the risks. “Quite a lot of things we’ll do aren’t going to work,” he says.

But failure is not something he fears.

“We’ll dust ourselves off and go at it again. That’s the nature of the growth mindset.”

Cambridge fined £875k for automated test blunder

The University of Cambridge has been fined £875,000 after automated marking failures caused tens of thousands of people to receive incorrect English language test results, including some needed for visa, immigration and university applications.

Regulator Ofqual said the errors, made by the university’s awarding body Cambridge English, affected 62,794 learners whose results later had to be changed.

The penalty related to the International English Language Testing System (IELTS), described as a “high-stakes” qualification which is jointly owned by the British Council, IDP IELTS, and Cambridge University Press & Assessment. IELTS boasts it is the “world’s most trusted English test”.

A spokesperson for IELTS said it had apologised and offered refunds and resits to affected students.

Amanda Swann, Ofqual’s executive director for delivery, said: “Tens of thousands of people took these tests with the expectation of accurate results which influence important decisions.

“Those who took these tests, as well as those who used them, were let down by systemic failures over a long period and our significant fine reflects this.”

The problems stemmed from flaws in the automated marking of IELTS listening and reading assessments delivered on-screen between August 2023 and September 2025, according to the regulator’s monetary penalty notice.

The regulator found that two separate technical issues caused correct answers to be marked as wrong and, in some cases, incorrect answers to be marked right.

One fault involved answer keys being incorrectly ordered as data passed between testing and marking systems. Another related to the handling of diacritical marks such as accents and umlauts, which under IELTS policy should have been ignored but sometimes caused correct responses to be awarded zero marks.

During the affected two-year period, Cambridge English processed almost 7.8 million IELTS test instances. Of these, 93,865 were found to contain marking errors. For 63,000 tests, component or overall qualification results were different once corrections were applied.

Most corrections increased learners’ scores. Ofqual said 20,602 overall band scores were revised upwards, while 1,115 were revised downwards. Nearly all corrections to overall results were by 0.5 on a final score scale of zero to 9. Two learners saw their overall score increase by a full band.

Ofqual found that 2,740 corrected results led to a change in a learner’s Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) level. A total of 1,108 affected candidates had taken Secure English Language Tests (SELTs) for UK visa and immigration purposes.

Cambridge English identified four cases where incorrect IELTS results affected visa eligibility decisions. However, all four learners subsequently retook the test and met the required standards.

Ofqual said it had found no evidence of wider material harm arising from other organisations relying on incorrect results, although it acknowledged limitations in the available data.

The penalty follows a voluntary settlement agreement reached on June 1, in which Cambridge English admitted multiple breaches of Ofqual’s conditions of recognition and agreed to pay the fine as well as the regulator’s legal costs.

The £875,000 penalty was reduced because of Cambridge English’s cooperation and decision not to contest the case.

Cambridge English established a dedicated 24-hour support hub and has spent more than £6 million on refunds, compensation, customer support and remedial action.

In total, 26,246 test takers requested and received a refund.

Ofqual said Cambridge English ultimately corrected all affected results.

A spokesperson for IELTS said: “We apologise to those affected, and we take responsibility for the error that resulted in some people receiving incorrect results.

“Once this issue was identified, we acted to rectify it, correcting results and supporting people. We offered refunds or resits to everyone affected. We addressed additional support requests, including for 19 individuals who contacted us regarding potentially missed opportunities. We worked directly with recognising organisations and relevant authorities to help mitigate any harm.

“We have conducted a thorough review of what happened and have implemented additional operational controls and safeguards to prevent a recurrence.”

Adult skills funding 2026-27: rule changes you need to know

Construction safety card costs, free maths and English courses for apprentices, visa documentation requirements and frozen funding rates have all been confirmed in new adult skills fund rules.

Funding regulations published by the Department for Work and Pensions have approved several changes to the 2026-27 adult skills fund (ASF) funding and performance management rules for non-devolved areas.

The ASF is worth around £1.4 billion annually and pays for skills, employability and wellbeing courses for more than one million adults each year.

From August, the ASF earnings threshold for learners taking level 2 and 3 courses and free courses for jobs programmes will rise from £25,750 to £26,800.

The rule changes are the first since adult skills policy transferred from the Department for Education to the DWP, although the DfE continues to implement the ASF on the DWP’s behalf.

Here are the key changes:

CSCS cards

The costs of Construction Skills Certification Scheme (CSCS) cards and associated health and safety qualifications will be covered for the first time.

The move mirrors the policy of several mayoral areas with devolved adult education policy, such as the Greater London Authority, that already cover the costs of construction safety cards, although eligibility rules vary by area.

It means eligible learners enrolled on a level 2 or 3 qualification within the building and construction sectors will have their CSCS card and health and safety test costs covered.

According to the Construction Industry Training Board, the standard CSCS card application fee is £36 and the health and safety test fee is £23.50.

Other qualifications with an “associated alliance scheme” can also be funded, the new rules confirm.

Maths and English

Adult apprentices who do not hold a grade 4 GCSE or equivalent will be funded to study English and maths up to level 2.

This follows the government’s decision to scrap the apprenticeship completion rule requiring learners to achieve English and maths to GCSE level last year, in a bid to boost apprenticeship uptake.

The ASF will only apply where an apprentice’s employer does not agree to fund English and/or maths.

Visa paperwork tweak

For the first time, providers will be required to show documentary evidence that a learner “intends to, and is likely to be eligible to” renew their visa if it runs out before the end of their course.

Existing rules give providers discretion to fund learners if they have a “high degree of confidence” that the learner intends to renew their visa.

When approached for comment, the DWP declined to clarify what evidence would be required but emphasised that the rule update was a small technical change.

Funding expert Steve Hewitt warned that providers would be “more likely to turn these learners away” over fears of losing funding if they are audited.

The regulation change is more stringent than tweaks flagged by senior DWP civil servant Tracey Cox in March.

Apprenticeship funding rules currently say learners are only eligible for funding if their visa ends after their end-point assessment date.

Frozen rates

Base funding rates for ASF courses will remain frozen for a third year.

The freeze extends the effective real-terms funding cut for ASF courses, which, according to the Bank of England’s inflation calculator, is equivalent to a six per cent reduction in value since 2023.

The DWP will also continue to use an index of multiple deprivation from 2019 to calculate its disadvantage uplift rate.

Free courses for jobs

The free courses for jobs (FCFJ) offer, which means adult learners earning below £26,800 a year are eligible for a funded level 3 qualification, has been expanded to more level 2 qualifications.

Specific level 2 qualifications for engineering and manufacturing have been added to the DfE’s list of funded qualifications, following the addition of construction courses last year.

Existing FCFJ level 3 qualifications are offered for accounting and finance, digital, health and social care, and public services.

Post-16 students trail schools in mental health teams rollout

Fewer than half of post-16 students are covered by the government’s mental health support teams, despite ministers claiming they are on track to roll out the service to every school and college by 2029.

New Department for Education data shows 42 per cent of 16 to 18-year-old students are in settings now covered by a mental health support team (MHST), compared to 79 per cent of secondary school pupils and 56 per cent of primary pupils.

MHSTs began rolling out in 2018. They are designed to help young people aged five to 18 with mild to moderate mental health issues stay in education through “evidence-based interventions”, and supply college and school leaders with expert advice on their mental health and wellbeing policies.

The DfE claimed this morning it was “on track to meet its manifesto promise that every school and college will have access to mental health support teams by the end of 2029”.

But today’s figures suggest the rollout is heavily weighted towards secondary schools. Students in every category of post-16 setting, including academies, free schools, specialist colleges and mainstream colleges, were around half as likely to be covered by an MHST than a secondary school pupil in 2025-26.

Ministers are framing the programme as part of efforts to improve attendance and reduce youth disengagement. Today’s announcement said seven in ten schools and colleges with MHSTs reported improved attendance, and pointed to recent official estimates that around one million 16 to 24-year-olds are not in education, employment or training.

The department’s survey of settings already working with MHSTs found 92 per cent agreed the teams had provided beneficial mental health and wellbeing support. The survey was sent to 9,308 schools and colleges and 2,421 replied, achieving a 26 per cent response rate.

The DfE told FE Week that decisions on MHSTs are based on local NHS-led assessments of need and readiness of education settings and local partnerships.

It wasn’t always like this

The gap between pre and post-16 MHST coverage has grown over time.

In the early years of the rollout, college students were covered at broadly the same level as secondary pupils. In 2021-22, some 34 per cent of college learners were in settings supported by an MHST alongside 33 per cent of secondary school pupils.

But by the current academic year, 79 per cent of secondary school pupils were covered, up 46 percentage points in four years, while college student coverage rose by just eight percentage points.

Primary schools also received a much faster expansion than colleges, with pupil coverage increasing from 22 per cent in 2021-22 to 56 per cent now.

Last month, a report from the Association of Colleges (AoC) found that 82 per cent of colleges reported a slight or significant increase in mental health disclosures from students aged 16 to 18 in the last year. The report specifically called for the government’s mental health support teams to be “meaningfully adapted” to post-16 contexts.

Jen Hope, senior policy lead for mental health at the AoC, said: “We would like to see the full rollout across every college, because the number of college students in need of mental health support is significant and our own survey on student mental health showed earlier this year that around half of colleges had support from a mental health support team.

“That’s a great start, but every college needs that support in place as soon as possible. It is good that this service covers colleges as well as schools because in the past, the needs of FE students were not well understood or prioritised, and support is not always at the level we need.”

Movers & Shakers: Edition 537

In defence of messy whiteboards

I began teaching back when the world wide web was a mere cyber strand. It existed as a novelty but had not yet really begun to change the world as it would. As for whiteboards, they were interactive only in the sense that you had to wipe them clear, leaving a smeary blue residue until they finally received their big clean every half term break. In those halcyon days, a particular mark of teacher pride was always their board work. I even recall being assessed on it in observations; it was that big a deal.

I went to school in the mythic days of blackboards – both static and rolling varieties – with flying fag-ends of chalk bouncing off unwitting bonces and flung board rubbers exploding in cloudy white puffs against badly-behaved boys’ dark blazers. That would provide a talking point throughout any pupil’s day.

But my teaching career began as these more primal times were ending. Gone was the chalk that dried out teachers’ fingers and in came multi-coloured whiteboard markers that left them stained with ink instead. A brave new world beckoned. When learning how to teach, I even had classes on how to use a whiteboard properly. I was told nothing at all about computers and their screens. They were reserved for the computer science specialists, who hogged them then like ancient druids did their special stones. But I remember the lessons on how to use a whiteboard well.

I learned long ago to appreciate the craft of whiteboard work. A good board develops as the lesson progresses, displaying the creativity of the moment, new thoughts unfurling as light bulbs pop into being above students’ heads. Key words are circled and lines drawn to link ideas, quick and clumsy doodles illustrating a point while hasty under-scorings stress important terms that need to be learned. Sometimes a well-used whiteboard is a true work of art. I’ve sometimes even taken pictures of boards I was pleased with.

Back before I had my own classroom, I’d find boards with a message inscribed in the corner in bold capitals, a big box around the words ‘Please leave’. Where then was your board work to be done? But it was a request mostly granted. Although occasionally you’d only see the request after half the work was already erased.

With modern interactive whiteboards, screens can be saved and scrolled through afterwards, referred back to or sent on to absent students. Board work can be made to last. But that seems to betray the beauty of the ephemerality of the learning moment, full of surprise and discovery. An organically developed whiteboard can contain a dynamism within its borders with which the dull bouncing titles and slow-fade-in photos of a pre-planned, earlier-prepared Powerpoint presentation can never compete. A pre-written, already-saved interactive whiteboard screen is simply no match for the slowly evolving, madly adapting quasi-organic life form of a well-worked whiteboard. That is a thing of beauty brought into being by the alchemical interaction of a class and a teacher inhabiting a moment together.

In a previous job, I was told to always close my gates on leaving any home I’d visited, primarily to stop pets escaping onto the street. It became a useful phrase later to indicate the need to never leave shared jobs half done for someone else to complete. Always close your gates. When I was later training to be a teacher, one of the only bits of advice I can recall was to always wipe your whiteboards clean at the end of your lesson. Partly this was to preserve the surprise for any incoming group but also the thinking was that, as a new teacher, you might well be sharing classrooms. Antagonising older colleagues by leaving whiteboards half-filled and still in need of a clean wasn’t a politic move to win hearts and minds in a school where you might soon want a job.

But throughout my career, I’ve loved entering empty classrooms to find filled-in boards that were inadvertently left behind. I’ve peered closely into the mysteries of such boards like some ancient crone looking deeply into her crystal ball or darkling mirror. Sometimes whole lessons from the recent past have swum back into view before my very eyes. I’ve somehow sensed the excitement of the enthusing pen-wielding teacher. I’ve traced the swirling eddies of side-questions and clarifications as inspiring ideas have been tracked and developed across the width and height of the board.

The liveliness of the lessons before mine have thereby become clear to me through the simple medium of that well-worked whiteboard. I’ve often found it frankly inspiring, knowing I stand in a line beside masters of the art and craft of teaching.

So despite the good advice I’ve received over the years about closing my gates and wiping my whiteboards, I now have another plan. I’m determined instead to forever keep my gates open wide with a welcome awaiting all and to happily invite all free whiteboards to constantly be filled. Let the tumble of learning commence.

The UK has a commercialisation problem, not just a skills problem

The UK has become very good at creating expertise and surprisingly poor at commercialising it.

For years, the national conversation around growth has focused on digital capability, engineering, healthcare and green jobs, all rightly important. But there is another capability hiding in plain sight: the ability to turn expertise into economic value.

Brilliant products do not create growth on their own. Commercial capability does. The UK does not just have a skills gap. It has a sales capability gap, and we rarely talk about it on the main stage.

Across the country, highly technical businesses are hiring brilliant engineers, consultants and specialists while relying on inconsistent sales capability to bring that expertise to market. Having worked with organisations in over 60 countries undergoing commercial transformation, one pattern repeats: businesses rarely fail because they lack expertise. They struggle because they cannot consistently translate expertise into commercial outcomes.

In many organisations, sales remain one of the few business-critical functions where people are expected to pick it up as they go, despite carrying responsibility for revenue, customer trust and growth. It is still too often viewed as personality-driven rather than professional, instinctive rather than structured.

The reality is very different. Modern selling is commercial problem-solving. It requires critical thinking, communication, financial understanding, stakeholder management and the ability to navigate increasingly complex buying environments.

Ebsta and Pavilion’s research found that 69 per cent of sales professionals missed quota last year, while just 17 per cent of sellers generated 81 per cent of total revenue. Sales cycles are becoming longer and more complex. If sales is the engine of growth, sales capability is economic infrastructure.

The symptoms are familiar: opportunities stall, new hires take too long to ramp up, managers firefight instead of coach. 58 per cent of managers say they received no management training when first appointed, according to the Chartered Management Institute. Capability gaps compound across teams over time.

High activity can disguise weak commercial conversations. Confidence can mask poor qualification. I was speaking to a so-called top performer recently and when you dug into the numbers, they closed more deals because they received more leads. Their close rate was identical to mid-level performers. Effort does not always equal effectiveness.

Too much sales development still operates like an event rather than a profession. Organisations send people on courses, measure attendance and hope performance improves. But capability does not develop through exposure to training alone. It develops through professional formation: building commercial capability, professional identity, ethical grounding and behavioural consistency over time.

Buyers do not lack information – they lack confidence in the person delivering it. LinkedIn’s Trust Advantage study found 86 per cent of buyers say seller expertise drives trust, yet only 45 per cent trust the sellers they meet. That gap has direct commercial consequences. When sellers are professionally formed and independently recognised, decision friction reduces, buyers move faster and relationships deepen.

Research conducted through ISP, Cranfield School of Management and Westfield Health found professionally formed sales teams achieved an 18.2 per cent quota uplift and reduced unwanted attrition by 60 per cent over 24 months.

We would never allow finance, legal or engineering teams to operate without standards, structured development and recognised pathways. Yet many organisations still approach sales that way.

AI will automate more transactional elements of selling: prospecting, research, forecasting. But that shift makes human capability more valuable, not less. As AI reduces information asymmetry, competitive advantage moves towards trust, judgement, commercial insight and relationship quality. The future salesperson will not need to be less professional. They will need to be more so.

Professions like procurement, accountancy and HR have long-established chartered pathways and recognised standards. Sales, one of the most commercially influential functions in the economy, is still treated as informal or instinctive.

The UK economy needs growth. Employers need productivity. Individuals need opportunity. Sales capability sits at the core of all three. Until we start treating it as economic infrastructure, we will continue underestimating one of the most important drivers of sustainable growth.

A professionally recognised sales workforce would not just improve organisational performance. It would strengthen productivity, accelerate innovation, improve customer trust and help the UK compete more effectively on a global stage.

The professionalisation of cheating should alarm every awarding body

Impersonation and exam fraud is not new. As long as there have been candidates willing to cheat, there have been those with the knowledge and skills prepared to sit assessments on their behalf, usually in exchange for payment.

This form of cheating has typically been associated with small local networks operating through personal contacts or word of mouth.

What was once a localised and limited form of cheating has developed into a global online marketplace offering sophisticated impersonation services to paying clients.

ASRG’s latest whitepaper, Candidates for Hire: A Case Study of Impersonation Services in Assessment, explores how these operations now function as organised commercial services combining technology, identity fraud and professional impersonators into a single package. It also includes a case study of a website that openly advertises its services online.

The internet has fundamentally changed the scale and accessibility of impersonation.

Services that once relied on local connections are now advertised openly through polished websites, encrypted messaging apps and social media. Some providers encourage customer reviews, offer guarantees of confidentiality and make bold claims about achieving the highest possible scores for their clients.

Impersonation is increasingly being presented as a normalised commercial service rather than a covert illegal arrangement.

The methods used by these groups are equally concerning. They may combine remote access software, physical disguises, identity fraud, behavioural coaching, hidden communication tools and cheating devices to bypass detection.

In online exams, candidates may be guided on how to act naturally on camera while an impersonator completes the assessment from another location. For in-person assessments, fake documents or disguises may be used to bypass identity checks and verification.

ASRG also identified examples of websites selling fraudulent identity documents while encouraging buyers to protect their privacy. These sites advise customers to “consider payment methods that protect your privacy”, with cryptocurrency often recommended as a preferred option for anonymity.

Online assessment has created new opportunities for impersonation. It removes many of the barriers that once made this form of cheating more difficult. Candidates can now pay someone else to complete their assessment from anywhere in the world. At the same time, online payment systems, cryptocurrency and digital advertising have made it easier for these impersonation services to operate across borders.

In Candidates for Hire, we examined one website openly advertising impersonation services for high-stakes qualifications. The website was not hidden in obscure parts of the internet – it operates in plain sight.

The website appears to focus on qualifications commonly associated with the United States, including the LSAT, GMAT, GRE, and TOEFL. These assessments are globally recognised and often used as gateways to higher education, employment opportunities or immigration.

The pricing alone highlights the scale of this market. The site states that online assessment services begin in the thousands of dollars, while in-person impersonation services start at $20,000.

How would you feel if you discovered that your doctor or surgeon had not actually completed the assessments required for their degree? Or if the person you hired was not as qualified as their CV suggested? Impersonation may be seen as rare, isolated incidents, but the exitance of sites like this suggest the issue is a lot bigger than we think.

What makes these services particularly concerning is how normalised they appear online.

Professional branding, customer testimonials and assurances of discretion frame impersonation as a legitimate business rather than misconduct or fraud. Normalising impersonation services undermines the value and public trust placed in educational and professional qualifications. These websites depend on operating under the radar, so awareness is vital to expose their practices, reduce their ability to target users, and encourage stronger action from platforms and regulators.

To stay informed on emerging assessment security threats and future research, join ASRG for updates and ongoing insights into the latest in assessment security.

Sussex ruling is a warning shot for the OfS – not the end of the free speech debate

FE colleges with higher education (HE) provision and regulators more generally will have noted with interest the recent High Court decision in The University of Sussex v The Office for Students (OfS).

Not only did the High Court find that the OfS had failed to apply the law correctly in its approach to freedom of speech, it also found bias, concluding that the OfS had approached its investigation with a “closed mind”.

Despite this severe criticism, which is particularly significant for a regulator whose remit depends on correct interpretation of the law and procedural fairness, the OfS has confirmed that it will not appeal, saying in a statement that it wants to “focus on the future” and “learn lessons from the judgment”. However, HE providers should not be under any illusion that freedom of speech and academic freedom has moved down the OfS’s regulatory radar.

The same statement makes clear that the OfS anticipates having a “range of sharper tools” to help it “effectively intervene where freedom of speech or academic freedom is compromised” including the complaints scheme due to launch this September. This will be open to staff, members and visiting speakers of HE providers to raise complaints directly with the OfS about freedom of speech or academic freedom breaches, but not to students.

The OfS adds that “it is important to note that the judgment broadly endorsed the approach set out in our free speech guidance”. The guidance referred to here – Regulatory advice 24: Guidance related to freedom of speech – was published last year, after the OfS’s decision to fine the university £585,000 for freedom of speech related breaches.

The High Court decision highlighted that the guidance has a proportionality test to be applied by organisations when taking decisions in this often grey area. However, the OfS did not apply this test in its own investigation, taking instead what the court considered to be a legally incorrect approach – effectively treating lawful speech as determinative, rather than properly applying a structured proportionality assessment.

The judgment, and the OfS’s response to it, provide some reassurance that a more nuanced approach is correct. That said, such decisions remain highly complex and at risk of challenge.

Governing documents and policies require careful drafting to ensure the right balance is struck and, as the judge noted, even the OfS’s own guidance does not make this an easy task: “The very complexity of the OfS’s own regulatory documents and of the three-step approach relied upon by the OfS illustrates the difficulty of drawing up a simple document, which will meet the various competing legal and good governance requirements.”

The OfS has made clear that it expects HE providers to review their policies and processes, highlighting issues such as the handling of protests and staff recruitment. That review should not be limited to headline freedom of speech codes but should also entail looking at governing documents, equality, inclusion and complaints policies and procedures as well as those for staff and visiting speakers. The importance of consistency between policies and a clear governance framework when it comes to sign off and hierarchy of policies has been underlined by this case.

There are interesting parallels to draw between this decision and recent UK case law involving other regulators. One view is that this case can be read as part of a broader pattern in which courts appear willing to apply closer scrutiny to regulatory reasoning, evidential foundations and procedural fairness in certain contexts (for example in financial services and competition law). In some instances, this has resulted in decisions being quashed or remitted, increasing litigation risk and cost for regulators. The University of Sussex judgment is consistent with that direction of travel, particularly in its rejection of inadequate or overly loose reasoning and emphasis on the critical importance of a clear statutory footing and disciplined analysis.

Concerns may arise where regulators are perceived to be pursuing exemplar or signalling cases – echoing criticism that the OfS appeared to target the University of Sussex to set an example.

There is arguably potential for a more cautious, legally defensive regulatory posture across sectors. It remains to be seen how this will translate once the OfS begins to operate its self-described “sharper” range of intervention tools.