AELP conference 2024: Insights from ex-minister and new CEO

FE leaders and experts gathered in Hammersmith this week for the 2024 Association of Employment and Learning Providers’ (AELP) national conference, a week before the general election. Here are the key takeaways from some of the speeches…

I’d up the apprenticeship levy, says Halfon in parting salvo 

Former skills minister Robert Halfon would have “no problem” increasing the apprenticeship levy if he were in charge, and “absolutely would” review and improve functional skills.  

In a wide-ranging “in conversation” session at this year’s AELP annual conference in London, Halfon said he was “depressed” that apprenticeships and skills were not featuring prominently in the Conservative party’s election campaign.   

“I’m glad the Conservatives have said we would have 100,000 more apprenticeships. I actually wish that apprenticeships and skills featured more in the campaign. That has depressed me a bit.”  

Halfon shocked the sector and the Westminster establishment in March by suddenly resigning as minister for skills and announcing he would stand down as an MP. He told FE Week at the time he felt he had “done all I could” for apprenticeships and wanted to spend his remaining time in parliament working for his Harlow constituents.   

Robert Halfon

While welcomed by delegates as a champion for apprenticeships, Halfon was challenged on stage about restrictive English and maths rules that training providers say holds back achievement – a topic that has featured heavily at successive AELP conferences.  

Apprentices must pass English and maths qualifications if they fail at GCSE to achieve their apprenticeship. Providers have long argued qualifications’ curriculum, assessment and funding are not fit for purpose.   

Learners with English and maths passes earn higher wages, Halfon told the audience, and he didn’t want “to create a kind of ghetto system where you say because someone has a disadvantage, they do a lesser qualification”.  

But asked what he would do if he were to become the minister again, he would “absolutely look at functional skills and review it and make it more practical”.  

On apprenticeship funding, he claimed he had “no problem, personally” with asking employers to pay more in to the levy as long as it was done “carefully”. But he wouldn’t be drawn on why the Treasury top slices almost £800 million from levy receipts each year.   

The apprenticeship levy has been described by AELP as a “cash cow for the Treasury” because of the growing gap between what employers pay in and what they allocate to the DfE and devolved UK administrations.   

“I always lobbied for more funding,” Halfon said, “but I also had the argument thrown at me all the that the levy’s not being used by businesses.”  

He is worried that apprenticeship numbers will fall under a Labour government and warned that employers could game their new funding system.   

Labour’s plans for a “skills and growth” levy would allow businesses to spend their funds on wider skills training, as well as apprenticeships.   

“I want it to remain an apprenticeship levy, not be a skills levy. What it has done is raise funds to pay the costs for SMEs to train apprentices. If you dilute it, you’ll have gaming of the system potentially, but also lots of people doing skills courses rather than hiring apprentices.” 

Rather than use the levy to fund other skills courses, Halfon backed a skills tax credit. Learning and Work Institute and Holex have put forward tax credit models that would give businesses tax benefits if they invested in particular types of training, such as level 2 and below qualifications, for certain workers.   

On his next steps, Halfon said he would be “honored” to join the Lords, but quipped: “There’ll be a bigger queue for the House of Lords than the Selfridge’s sale, especially if the [general election] polls are correct.” 

 His advice for new MPs entering parliament next week is to “evangelise about apprenticeships and skills”.  

“My hope and aim is that I will move on from Westminster life championing apprenticeships to championing apprenticeships and skills working somewhere.” 

ITPs help ‘make magic happen’ in trying times, says AELP boss

Private training providers are still battling against “institutional suspicion”, the chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers’ chief executive has warned.  

Ben Rowland (pictured) told delegates at the association’s annual conference in London that he was working to create better working conditions for them to “thrive”.  

He used his speech on day one of this week’s event as an opportunity to run through what he has learned over his first six months in post.  

Following a roadshow in which he met more than 200 members face-to-face, Rowland said he heard how ITPs “make magic happen” by injecting productivity into employers and how they contribute to the nation’s prosperity through their training offer.  

But tight funding and regulatory markets meant they had to do this “with one arm tied behind your back” and with “very little appreciation”.  

“There still, unfortunately, is institutional suspicion of independent providers”.   

He told delegates this was triggered by “previous episodes” in which civil servants “have felt they have had rings run around them by unscrupulous providers”.  

“I’m not talking about the officials necessarily that we work with personally, but the teams underneath them who operationalise policy, funding and rules.”  

He said his interactions with government had also shown him how policymaking was “light on data and strong on anecdote”. He told members that funding decisions were often made based on isolated snippets of data out of context and/or on the basis of a handful of conversations. This was something that “had to change”.  

The way government assesses risk was also “odd”, he said. In the case of ITPs, the risk of “not equipping people with the skills the country desperately needs carries very little weight, whereas they obsess about the risk that money does not flow in exactly the way they want their ideal programmes to work”.  

He said that if AELP and its members could “present our case in the right way” then the sector would “slowly but surely get them to create the conditions in which we can flourish – because if we flourish, then so do they. We just need to show them this”.  

He revealed that the association was launching a series of “mini-commissions” and a “regulatory burden project” to boost evidence for conversations with incoming ministers on the most pressing issues facing the skills sector.  

The commissions will last eight to 12 weeks. The first will focus on whether the existing English and maths functional skills exit requirements are holding back apprenticeship progression and outcomes. 

Devolved AEB ‘difficult to navigate’ 

A “postcode lottery” of adult education funding and policies created by devolution should be simplified by the next government, training providers have urged.  

The devolution of England’s £1.5 billion adult education budget to regional mayors – now accounting for about 60 per cent of spending – was discussed at a workshop at the conference on Tuesday.  

A hands-up survey suggested that about half viewed devolution of adult skills as a negative.  

While devolution allowed mayors to leverage their local knowledge and could encourage innovation, it also risked creating a “postcode lottery” for learners, training providers and employers, panellists agreed.  

Labour has pledged a “presumption towards” increasing local spending if it wins the election, suggesting it is unlikely to reverse the Conservative’s decision to hand skills budgets to nine mayoral combined authorities (MCAs) and local authorities by 2026-27.  

Lucy Hunte, the senior apprenticeship development manager at NHS England, said devolution could be “quite challenging” for trusts that straddled more than skills area because of differing policies and bidding rules set by mayoral combined authorities (MCAs) and the Education and Skills Funding Agency.  

“Some authorities are really, really engaged … you know, what do you need? What are your skill requirements? 

“Others, they dictate and say, ‘this is what you need,’ and that’s not necessarily fit for purpose. 

 “It’s a really mixed bag and it’s a shame, because I think if handled properly, it is really, really beneficial – but the feedback I get from my employers is it’s just a minefield. It’s really difficult for them to navigate.”  

Examples of “different” approaches MCAs took included the sectors they prioritised and what level of earnings qualified learners for free or discounted learning.  

Fellow panellist Steve Morris, the commercial director of Learning Curve, said his team was “heavily involved” in devolution because it regularly bid for training across the country, His commissioning team and grown from two to nine in the past five years.  

Turning to solutions, he encouraged providers to collaborate on MCA contracts and with authorities to ensure mutual understanding.  

Hunte said rules needed to be “simplified and standardised” across England, to ensure contract-awarding timescales and bidding systems were carried out in the same way.  

Earlier in the day, Stephen Evans, the chief executive of the Learning and Work Institute, said MCAs should focus on outcomes and be held to account on “broad targets” such as employment and apprenticeships.  

He suggested that some spending, such as careers guidance and skills bootcamps, should be commissioned by the government rather than regional mayoral authorities. 

Why what doesn’t work in the classroom is as important as what does

“Just give it a try,” was the advice I received when I started teaching. I wanted to innovate, as though I were the first teacher on earth, and those words gave me licence to do my own thing. On reflection now, I see they put ego before students.

One of the most positive things to happen in teaching in the decades since is the hugely-increased reverence for research and the desire to be informed by ‘what works’. In further education, you can scarcely find a teacher who hasn’t been involved in some kind of practitioner research.

Yet we still seem to be in the dark when it comes to what has been proven to work when replicated and scaled up.

A good example of this is 16-19 English and maths. They’re FE’s two biggest qualifications by far. They are vital for progression in education or employment. And they have been a focus of colleges’ Herculean efforts for almost a decade now. Yet where things are piloted or trialled, we don’t seem to have much luck.

Using text messages to nudge learners? No impact.

Contextualisation? Apparently difficult to assess “whether the intervention had an impact”.

The evaluation of ‘Assess for Success’ sounded more like my school report card: “some evidence of promise”. However, there are no plans to trial it further.

And a year on, we’re still waiting to hear about the impact of ‘5Rs’.

Part of the problem is applying school methodologies to colleges that can have over ten thousand students and turnovers in nine figures. The above studies hint at that, with comments such as needing “more clarity about the expectations of participating staff” or “less than half of teachers attended both of the first two training sessions”.

College English and maths teams are commonly bigger than the staffs of entire schools, but they receive fewer contracted hours. And when things get busy, dropping a burden that comes without sufficient incentive is the obvious choice.

We must make informed choices to ‘adopt/iterate/avoid’

I know from managing the DfE’s Centres for Excellence in Maths (CfEM) project how tricky it is to retain participants. For instance, it was a sad irony to see a large ‘Engagement & Resilience’ project scuppered by a 79% student drop-out rate.

It’s also daft to try anything other than recruiting whole teams within colleges. Lone teachers, or even pairs, can rarely swim against the tide for the duration of a trial. Besides, it requires tracking individual students’ outcomes rather than provider-level data, which is much more onerous.

There are some green shoots though. In addition to the groundbreaking CfEM mastery trial that led to improved GCSE maths scores, there were enormously encouraging results from college-led projects on bar modelling and ratio tables.

On the oft-neglected English side of things, my own creative-writing resits intervention, funded by SHINE, retained almost 500 student participants across three colleges. It not only demonstrated improved confidence in the high-tariff GCSE writing tasks, but also clear mental health benefits.

It’s also important to acknowledge that finding out something doesn’t work is valuable. I’ve seen the zero-impact ‘Lesson Study’ approach raising its head again recently, alongside long-debunked ‘discovery learning’.

It’s our duty as professionals to learn from what’s already been tested, so that we can make an informed choice to ‘adopt/iterate/avoid’.

The best challenge I ever heard on CfEM when I inherited that project was: “How do we know it wouldn’t have had more impact to just give the students the £250?” (based on the £30 million cost divided by the c.120,000 student reach).

My answer (which I thought of too late) is that the £30 million wasn’t just for those students participating between 2018 and 2023. It means we know – forever – that mastery teaching will improve maths exam scores.

Every teacher who takes that into the classroom, year on year, brings down that per-student cost while improving outcomes for learners.

So when an enthusiastic new teacher asks for your advice on trying something out, don’t send them out to ‘mess around and find out’. Instead, ask them: “What does the evidence say?”

How Labour can seize the opportunity on tertiary education

Consensus is emerging around moving towards a tertiary system for post-compulsory education. However, while much ink has been spilled on the potential benefits of closer links between industry, further and higher education, much less has been said about how we might bring such a system into effect. 

To effectively meet the needs of individuals, businesses and society, we must consider regulation, process, funding and the role of individual  institutions in a holistic fashion. In other words, an integrated tertiary system will not come about organically through our current approach of ad hoc collaborations within an otherwise competitive quasi-market. 

Since 2007, more than 200 sixth forms have emerged, coinciding with a decline in numbers at FE colleges. At the same time, a range of new universities and ‘alternative providers’ have arisen and around 11 colleges and four college groups (comprising 19 individual institutions) have acquired degree-awarding powers.

A further 130+ colleges are registered with the Office for Students to deliver validated provision on behalf of a university. They are likely to be joined by a swathe of independent training providers once  the new registration category comes into play for the delivery of smaller technical qualifications funded by the Lifelong Loan Entitlement. 

These changes, along with the plethora of qualifications in existence, mean that the post-compulsory landscape is riddled with complexity, duplication and redundancy.

This lack of national planning results in significant regional variations. Millions are left behind in educational cold spots like Boston, where only 23 per cent of the resident workforce hold higher education qualifications and less than half (47 per cent) have post-16 qualifications. In other regions more than 60 per cent of the workforce are qualified at Level 4 or above.  

If we define a system as a set of institutions working together as parts of an  interconnecting network, it is clear we don’t currently have a functional educational system in England.

The quasi market and siloed thinking of those delivering post-16 education and training – whether its FE, HE, sixth forms or independent training providers – prevents the development of novel solutions to address local skills shortages in a collaborative fashion. So too do our funding and regulatory regimes, which simply don’t support cross-sector innovation. 

The post-compulsory landscape is riddled with complexity

Should the polls prove to be correct, the Labour Party will soon have a mandate to make significant changes; we are pleased to see many indications in their manifesto that they intend to do so.

These include commitments to establish a new Skills England body, further devolve adult skills funding to combined authorities and to transform FE colleges into specialist technical excellence colleges. Pleasingly, the manifesto also proposes to create a post-16 skills strategy to better integrate further and higher education. 

As ever, the devil will be in the detail when it comes implementing these ideas.

Enabling colleges to specialise, for example, is a positive proposal. However, if some are to focus on ‘technical excellence’, surely others should be supported to focus on gateway provision. After all, there are nine million working-age adults with low basic skills and many others who wish to acquire new skills to change careers.

Other colleges will also have existing specialisms (such as land provision) or emerging ones (such as creative technology). These should be recognised and encouraged to develop if they meet local learner and employer need.  

It will be the job of Skills England (via cross-departmental working) to set the national framework through which combined authorities determine how education and training can best be delivered at a local level. It will first need to decide where the boundaries should be drawn across overlapping sixth form, college and university delivery within regions – a thorny task.

In the hope of contributing to thinking through some of the detail around this vision, we are pleased to be working with Universities UK to consider how different institutions might play their part in a tertiary landscape.

We are keen to ensure that the FE sector’s views are reflected. Therefore, if you have thoughts on how a tertiary system might be constituted – including what its components should be and what existing barriers will need to be overcome – then we would encourage you to get in touch.

To contribute your views, email info@universitiesuk.ac.uk 

Optimism and realism: Five takeways from the AELP national conference

This week’s AELP National Conference was my first as the organisation’s director of membership and growth and it was a great way to start my second week in post. I’ve learned a lot. Just as importantly I’ve felt a wave of optimism about the sector’s future. Here are my five main takeaways.

Appetite for change

There was a buzz around the national conference that said to me our members are raring to go. With the country on the verge of a general election, our whole sector is ready to step up. If the next government is serious about filling skills gaps to grow the economy, the appetite is there for us all to push in the same direction to meet that ambition.

To do this we need a policy environment in which our members can flourish. The message from conference was that the government needs to get it right on the creation of Skills England, as well as the rules around funding and content of programmes.

Skills means growth

This year’s theme of ‘Skills Means Growth’ allowed us to look deeper into the reasons why we’re all so passionate about skills. Hearing from Anthony Impey MBE from Be The Business put into sharp focus the UK’s productivity problem and how that has led to stagnant economic growth.

“Productivity is not everything – but almost everything”, he said, before outlining that poor productivity gains since the 2008 financial crash have left us £11,000 per person worse off.

With investment in skills being a key driver of productivity, The Learning and Work Institute’s Stephen Evans shared some stark slides showing the decline in skills funding and its impact over the past 15 years.

Investment levels in the UK sit at less than half the EU average. We’ve also seen a 20 per cent cut in the skills budget since 2010.

Skills means economic growth, but it also means personal growth and improving social mobility. Tight funding in skills has impacted the most disadvantaged in doing so hitting personal growth among those who would benefit from it most.

Challenges and opportunities

Unless the opinion polls are completely wrong, there will be a new government in place after next Thursday. Any change of leadership – political or otherwise – brings some turbulence. But while change brings challenges, it also brings opportunities.

Broadcaster and author, Matthew Syed gave an inspirational speech on how we can build resilient and adaptable organisations. He spoke of ensuring a growth mindset and not being afraid of innovation.

The sector will need to show resilience and learn to adapt, but that’s what we’re good at. After all, we certainly get enough practice!

Celebrating our civic mission

Understandably, we talk a lot about apprenticeships – popular, rigorous programmes that combine learning with a real job. But there’s so much more that we do, and we need to shout more loudly about that!

The work ITPs do with learners on 16-19 study programmes is the hidden jewel of FE. Tens of thousands of lives are improved every year as a result of the hard work our members put in. The adult education sector and skills bootcamps shouldn’t be forgotten about either.

Reducing the number of young people not in education, employment or training and giving the most disadvantaged in society the opportunity to improve their lot is at the core of what we do. Our members will welcome any government that values and empowers that.

A powerful conversation

Conference played host to fascinating and optimistic discussions among delegates, sponsors, exhibitors and staff, on and off stage.

But this is just the start of the conversation. It’s clear that we can and should inform and support an incoming government to set the conditions for a flourishing skills system.

We will shortly be launching the first of our mini commissions, which are designed to shift the dial on a range of important skills issues, and we’ll also be continuing our regulatory burden project to reduce the administrative burden on providers.

We need AELP members to help us on this journey, and I look forward to meeting and speaking with more and more people across the sector over the coming months.

Revealed: Most T Level drop outs switch to axed courses

Nearly all students who dropped out of the second wave of T Levels switched to a course that is set to be scrapped through controversial government plans. 

The exclusive data has sparked renewed calls for the Conservatives to abandon their proposals that involve defunding a host of level 3 qualifications in the next two years and for Labour to stand behind their commitment to “pause and review” the reforms.  

The Department for Education’s latest T Level action plan, published in April, confirmed previous FE Week reports that a third of students who started a T Level in 2021 left the programme early.  

DfE launch T Level reviews amid ‘worrying’ drop-out rates

A total 5,321 students enrolled in 2021 but only 3,510 completed. Of the third that withdrew, 370 did an apprenticeship, 716 transferred to another course and 682 left education.  

But the action plan did not lay out the courses those 716 learners chose.  

Data obtained by FE Week through the Freedom of Information (FOI) law, and analysed by the Sixth Form Colleges Association (SFCA), revealed 90 per cent of students who switched to other technical or vocational courses chose a qualification that will be axed by 2026 under Tory reforms. 

Seventy students, one in ten, swapped T Levels for A-levels, another 50 did a different academic qualification and six did a different T Level. 

But 145 students, one in five, moved to a lower level 1 or level 2 qualification.  

James Kewin, the deputy chief executive of the SFCA, believes defunding non-T Level qualifications and funding limited alternatives will result in more students choosing lower-level courses in their post-16 choices.

Defunded options

Three in five (439) switchers moved to an applied general, tech level or vocational and technical qualification (VTQs).   

These have been earmarked to lose public money, either because they overlap with T Levels or because they don’t meet the government’s criteria for “reformed” level 3s.  

SFCA’s analysis shows 397 of the 439 students switched to qualifications that will be axed. 

James Kewin

Kewin said: “It’s hard to fathom how ministers can look at this sort of data and conclude it is in the best interests of students to plough ahead with the plan to scrap most non-T Level qualifications. 

“The government remains determined to remove the safety net provided by these qualifications, despite the data published today showing the very obvious dangers of doing so.” 

Introducing T Levels has not in itself been controversial, with many in the sector supportive in principle because of the extra teaching hours, higher per-student funding rates and generous capital funding for colleges and schools. 

But removing public funding from rival qualifications and heavily restricting other options has been one of the most controversial education policies of the Conservative government. 

Kewin, who leads the Protect Student Choice campaign coalition of 28 school, further and higher education organisations, said he “looks forward to a very different approach being adopted after next week’s election”. 

Last June, the campaign secured a commitment from Labour to “pause and review” the defunding of qualifications if it won power. 

Seema Malhotra, the shadow skills minister, said in October Labour “will work with colleges to develop the skills Britain needs through a pause and review of the disruptive defunding of qualifications”. 

But the promise was absent from this month’s Labour manifesto. 

FE Week understands DfE officials have identified defunding level 3 qualifications as an issue for urgent decisions for the incoming education secretary.

College international income takes off after Brexit and pandemic turbulence

College income from foreign students and overseas projects is recovering following a huge dip in the aftermath of Brexit and the pandemic, FE Week analysis of government data suggests.  

But the £40 million received last year is still down a quarter on total international income in 2018-19 when £54.1 million was generated. Regulatory and accommodation burdens are also prompting many colleges to cease the offer.  

Universities are under the spotlight for their reliance on international students with most of their fee income now generated from abroad.  

While most education export information available relates to HE providers, the Department for Education does publish an annual database of college accounts that includes data on their international income.  

FE Week analysis of the database found that in 2018-19, 87 colleges earned a combined total of £54,132,000 from either foreign students paying fees to study with them in England or from training projects that they deliver in other countries – working out at an average of £622,000 per college.  

This plummeted in 2020-21 when 63 colleges received £27,196,000 in international income, an average of £431,683.  

Signs of recovery are found in the latest available data for 2022-23, when 53 colleges earned £39,971,000 (£754,000 on average).  

Our analysis shows that the international income accounted for just 0.8 per cent of total college sector income in 2018-19 and 0.5 per cent in 2022-23. 

‘Our work is under-reported and undersold’  

The annual database does, however, have limitations as late filing means some data is always missing. But the spreadsheet is the most accurate picture of college international income in the absence of a full analysis of colleges’ individual accounts.  

Emma Meredith, the director of skills and international policy act the Association of Colleges (AoC), said the “fantastic” international work of colleges was “too often under-reported and undersold”.  

“Several” policies were also a major barrier to reaching the pre-pandemic income.  

Aside from Brexit impacting England as a partner for students and the pandemic halting travel, other factors include the move from Erasmus+ to the Turing placements scheme, and long-standing “complicated and lengthy” visa process issues.  

The government’s approach to immigration has also restricted the recruitment of non-UK students in colleges, according to the AoC, as have accommodation challenges.  

Exeter College earned almost £500,000 from international students in 2018-19, but has since pulled out of the offer.  

This was to “prioritise meeting the needs of students from the local area”, said a spokesperson.  

The college “enjoyed the additional diversity and richness the international cohort brought to our sixth form” and leaders “may” look to restart recruitment in the future.  

‘Good’ Ofsted grade is vital 

English colleges that do not hold a ‘good’ or higher Ofsted grade are also banned from recruiting.  

Nottingham College earned £400,000 in international fees in 2018-19, but was forced to withdraw its licence for sponsoring overseas students in 2020 when it was judged ‘requires improvement’. It has since returned to ‘good’, but decided not to re-enter the international space.  

A spokesperson said: “The investment required to re-establish a level of international provision would be almost certainly better spent on supporting the development of our offer that directly responds to local and regional need.”  

The AoC released its own report this week that included a survey of college international activity in 2022-23.  

Of the 40 responses, 63 per cent said that staffing capacity has had a negative impact on international work.  

The survey found a significant fall in the number of colleges with at least one member of staff dedicated to international work: 21 per cent compared with 72 per cent in 2021-22.  

The AoC claimed that colleges offered “brilliant” value for money to international students, with the average fees for one year of an HE course set at £7,857 – at least half the fees charged by many universities.  

Since the pandemic, numerous global events have led to rising numbers of international students coming to the UK.  

AoC’s survey found 79 per cent of colleges welcomed learners from Ukraine, as well as 42 per cent welcoming Afghan citizens in 2022-23.  

FE Week’s analysis of DfE data shows some colleges’ income from international fees is booming, however. NCG earned almost £2 million last year compared with £800,000 in 2018-19. Chichester College Group similarly more than doubled its foreign student income over this period to £2.1 million in 2022-23.  

Our analysis also found that only seven colleges had an overseas campus in 2022-23, generating income that totalled £15.7 million. Almost £12 million of this was earned by Lincoln College alone from its operation in Saudi Arabia, while Burton and South Derbyshire College brought in £2.2 million from its venture, also in Saudi.   

Nina Chorzelewski, AoC’s policy manager, said: “FE colleges continue to value working globally … providing a wide variety of opportunities for diverse groups of people, all of which can be potentially life changing for students.” 

Top Ofsted marks for Lincolnshire sixth form college

A Lincolnshire sixth-form college’s Ofsted rating has been upgraded to ‘outstanding’ for the first time.  

Franklin College in Grimsby has more than 1,600 students aged 16 to 18 and a further 370 students on adult learning courses.  

Following an inspection in May this year, Ofsted gave the college top marks in all areas, praising its teaching quality and engagement with local skills needs. Its previous inspection in 2018 resulted in a ‘good’ judgment.  

This time around, inspectors said adult learners experienced a “rich range” of learning and training activities.  

“Their studies help adult learners to live fuller lives, socially, educationally and economically.”  

The college’s campus atmosphere was also “warm, friendly and inclusive” with “high levels of respect” from students.  

Peter Kennedy, Franklin College’s executive principal and chief executive, who has been in post since 2018, said the Ofsted grade was a welcome recognition of the “amazing college”.  

“I really could not be prouder to have been a part of our journey.” 

In its report, Ofsted said leaders engaged “very well” on local skills needs, inviting local employers in to meet students and contributing to developing the local skills improvement plan. 

The college ensured it had a “coherent” local offer through close collaboration with other educational leaders, including for those at risk of not being in education, employment or training.  

To ensure improvement, staff “carefully monitor” student performance through review booklets, as well as checking the quality of their own teaching.  

Teachers were “very experienced well-qualified” and were offered a “highly relevant” professional development programme.  

Lessons were “interesting and informative”, taught in a way that consolidated learning and transferred key concepts to long-term memory.  

High-needs students were supported “very well” through specialist resources, including digi-pens, overlays and coloured paper.

Franklin College’s pre-entry English programme was also praised for helping to tackle low levels of literacy in the communities it served. 

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 467

Louise Fall

Principal and Chief Executive, City of Wolverhampton College

Start date: August 2024

Former Job: Deputy Principal, City of Wolverhampton College

Interesting fact: Louise is an avid fan of professional boxing, with highlights being watching a live fight in Las Vegas and once having the opportunity to meet Tyson Fury – a picture of which she proudly displays in her office!

Scott Bullock

Principal & Chief Executive, East Durham College

Start date: September 2024

Previous Job: Principal, Newcastle College (NCG)

Interesting fact: Scott has a passion for road cycling and has climbed most of the big hills in the Canary Islands. He also once shared a ride back from a football match in a Mark 1 Ford Transit with a very young Paul Gascoigne.

#GE2024: Listen now as Let’s Go Further outlines the FE and skills priorities facing our new government

Presented by FE Week’s Editor, Shane Chowen, the series features discussions with leading experts from inside and outside our sector and essentially asks one simple question – what does our sector need from the next government?

Recorded in a year that could shape skills and education for decades to come, it’s a must listen for those wanting the inside track on themes such as the call for a sector-wide strategy, the ever-expanding use of generative AI, apprenticeships, the skills gap and much, much more.  

Episode 1
FE: how do we shift from rhetoric to action?

In this episode, The Baroness Wolf of Dulwich DBE CBE and Sir Michael Barber set the scene for the series by discussing the big issues facing the FE and skills sector in 2024.

Baroness Alison Wolf is an economist, an academic and a life peer and has been a Non-Executive Director at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology since 2023. Sir Michael is a former teacher who went on to work at the National Union of Teachers and was, until recently, an advisor at the Department for Education and the Treasury on skills policy delivery.

Their discussion covers funding, apprenticeship reform and levy, skills as a crucial element of economic growth, and the role of employers.

Michael warns against the skills system assuming victim status:

“They say ‘what’s the government going to do about it?’ – and kind of wait rather than say, there’s a problem, this is what we’re going to do about it…….there needs to be a sense of momentum and not being a victim, being a change agent.”

Alison is critical of the Mayoral Combined Authorities:  

“I really think the mayors need to step up a bit. Actually, quite a lot of the money is already devolved to the Mayoral Combined Authorities, and what has been to me very depressing is how little they’ve actually done to take advantage of their new freedoms.”

The episode concludes with Shane asking Alison and Michael what their long-term goals would be for the next government. Listen here to find out what they say.

Episode 2
The Business of Skills

A national, long-term skills strategy that can respond with agility and flexibility to the needs of employers and local communities is what’s required to solve our skills problems, according to our guests on this episode.  

Jane Gratton, Deputy Director of Public Policy at the British Chambers of Commerce and Nicola Drury, Head of Skills and Apprenticeships at Amazon, join Shane in a discussion around the ever-growing skills gap from an employer’s perspective.

Jane makes the point that three out of four businesses surveyed by the British Chambers of Commerce are unable to recruit the skills they need, and discusses how stability is key if the system is going to work.

“The workplace is changing at a phenomenal pace, more digital, more automated, the circular economy, the green economy. What we really need is a slick system for getting people re-skilled, getting them into different jobs…. getting them into new opportunities within employers  … so that the employer can grasp the opportunity and an individual has a really quick way to get the skills they need for them to progress at work.”

Nicola emphasises the effects of the many changes over the last few years – both circumstantial via economic uncertainties and the pandemic – and in the number of skills initiatives; T Levels, Bootcamps, Multiply and Kickstart. She also talks about how, at Amazon, they’ve grown their apprenticeships:

“The fact that there’s no age restrictions, that helps the ageing workforce. They help people pivot, it gives people an alternative – and a great alternative – to university. So, for me, that’s a really strong system.”

The panel also discuss the Skills Fund and the need to use it to support regional devolved areas of skill, and they address the fact that only 50% of students are leaving education with a grade C or above in Maths and English.

Listen here

Episode 3
Who is plugging the skills gap?

With job vacancies at a record high but apprenticeship take-up and employer spend on training at a low, this episode asks who is trying to plug the skills gap – and who isn’t getting a chance to.   

Our guests are Naomi Clayton, Director of Policy and Research at the Learning and Work Institute, and Sam Tuckett, Associate Director for Post-16 and Skills at the Education Policy Institute.  

Lack of investment leading to reduced opportunities for people to take part in formal learning, the role of inequality in who gets the opportunities and the absence of a long-term skills strategy are all discussed.

On the issues of apprenticeships, Sam says:  

“So apprenticeship take-up has declined substantially in recent years, specifically since the introduction of the levy and there’s been a drift to the South in apprenticeship take-up and, when there have been increases, it tends to be the high level apprenticeships and the degree apprenticeships….”

When questioned about the Lifelong Learning Entitlement, the new system being phased in from 2025 that will entitle every adult up to the age of 60 to a loan to access a range of courses at Level 4 and above, Naomi says:

“I think, in general, it’s a good idea, but we think it needs to be more ambitious….We’d like to see the Lifelong Learning Entitlements extended to encompass entitlements at lower levels of learning.”

Sam makes the point that getting adults without qualifications into education and training should be a priority for a new government, while Naomi concludes:

“We really need to make sure that beyond things like the Lifelong Learning Entitlement, we are making it easy to access learning everywhere, that we have really good information and advice to enable people to make informed choices about learning.”

Listen here.

Episode 4
AI in FE – opportunity or threat?

As the use of generative AI expands across the FE and skills sector, there is much debate around whether it’s a good or a bad thing. Does it present a chance to modernise outdated methods of teaching, learning and assessment, or does it put us at the top of a very slippery slope towards lower standards and a reduced real-world understanding of your chosen discipline and overall love of learning?

Self-proclaimed AI optimist, Debra Gray, CEO and Principal of Hull College, and Paul McKean, Director of Further Education, Skills and Training at Jisc, tackle this head-on.  

In essence, they feel the truth lies somewhere in the middle. That with the right management, integration and stewardship of the technology, AI gives us the tools we need to take a well-timed and much-needed look at how learners learn, and teachers assess.

“I think this is a real inflection point for us in terms of assessment methods. We can’t keep using 19th century assessment methods for the purposes of a 21st century economy.”

Debra explains how the team at Hull College have made a conscious effort to maximise the use of generative AI – for teaching, learning and leadership. Students are encouraged to use it as a research tool, to support assignment structure, to consider different viewpoints, to create inspiration and give ideas, to simplify complex ideas and to evaluate feedback. 

Leaders and teachers are encouraged to use it to strategise, provide ideas, analyse data and summarise an often overwhelming wealth of material. The opportunity to redefine the role of teachers is discussed. To move away from the ‘sage on the stage’ and lean towards the ‘guide on the side’ – freeing teachers up to focus on what teaching is really about – igniting sparks, sharing passions and building meaningful relationships with students.

Whilst illustrating how AI can lead to huge efficiencies, innovation and increased accessibility – the discussion does acknowledge it also provides challenges that need to be navigated effectively.

Listen here.

Watch our video with Debra Gray as she shares her passion for the sector.
Episode 5
How can FE lead the green revolution?

How can the FE and skills sector develop an education and training system that creates a skilled workforce for new and emerging industries? And what can the next government do to support colleges seeking to skills and reskill the workers needed to tackle the major global challenges, from climate change to global security?

For this episode, Shane is joined by Charlotte Bonner, CEO of the Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges, and Jeremy Kerswell, CEO and Principal of Plumpton, a land-based college in East Sussex.

The episode highlights the debate and discussion around green jobs and green skills – and the implications for our education system and global industries.

Charlotte says:

“Have we got what we need to develop the volume of technical skills that we need to invest in the infrastructural changes and the technological changes we need across society, particularly with things like energy systems, agriculture  systems, travel and transport systems..?  And at the moment, I think, in terms of volume, the answer is no.”

Charlotte continues by noting that all jobs can have some green element and we need to ensure that there’s an almost universal curriculum around sustainability skills – and that educators need to be prioritised to ensure they have the required knowledge to deliver a greener curriculum.

Jeremy flags his concerns for the incumbent workforce. He says:

“I think there’s huge risks.. in terms of people already employed in the sectors who desperately need upskilling at a time of significant change for these industries. And I’m not sure we’ve .. got the freedom and flexibilities to truly be able to meet …the needs of the incumbent workforce.”

The panel go on to discuss the growth in green subject areas, the need for a national food strategy and how that could be complemented by a national strategy for skills for the land-based sector.

Finally, when asked about the likelihood of meaningful change from the next government, Charlotte says:

“…let’s put a sentence in the Ofqual handbook that says qualifications need to be fit for purpose to achieve our sustainability and climate goals….it’s still allowing awarding organisations to interpret that, but it would create radical change really quickly.”

Listen here.

Episode 6
Future-proofing the FE curriculum: how do we do it?

The final episode in the series looks at the FE and skills curriculum and asks what a new government needs to do to ensure it is fit for purpose and future-proof.  

Our guests are David Gallagher, CEO of NCFE, an educational charity and leader in vocational and technical learning, and Karen Spencer, Principal and Chief Executive of Harlow College.

David acknowledges that we can’t predict the future but we can follow hints about what the FE curriculum may be called on to deliver. He states:

““….things like adaptability, resilience, creativity, problem solving, you know, these are all things for me that absolutely should be at the heart of curriculum and hardwired in there.”

Karen states:

“I would like to see something that’s much more adaptive and recognises all of those big themes that are going to come through like digital technology… VR, AI, green skills. And we can’t possibly do that with the setup we’ve got at the moment.”

The discussion goes on to cover the shift away from level two qualifications and the mismatch between what businesses need and what the education sector is delivering.

The need to have a system that can adapt to local or regional need is also discussed, with a call to get all stakeholders – regulators, employers, awarding organisations, colleges and teachers around the table at the same time.

Finally, a call for more trust in the sector is made, noting that with multiple regulators or quasi-regulators, it’s difficult for those on the ground to feel trusted.

Listen here.

Let’s Go Further is produced by Research Podcasts.

Click here to listen to all series of Let’s Go Further.