Wakefield will grow supply and demand together for high-skills jobs

Wakefield is an ancient cathedral city, with fantastic countryside within easy reach. It sits at the heart of a well-connected road and rail system. Its schools are successful. But in many respects, Wakefield is not thriving.

Its economy underperforms. There are too few highly skilled jobs. Despite some amazing companies, there is not enough innovation in the economy. And far too few adults have the higher-level skills which equip them for the economy of the future. The Wakefield Futures Commission was set up by Wakefield Council and the West Yorkshire Combined Authority to address the gap between Wakefield’s current economy and what it needs to succeed better for its citizens.

The commission did something rarely done in struggling cities or towns. We asked: what would it take to really shift a local economy from a low-skills base to a high-skills base, from low pay to higher pay, to make it future-ready? So often this is seen as either a supply problem – there aren’t enough highly-skilled people – or a demand problem, that there are not enough highly skilled jobs.

A town where the economy generates few higher-skill jobs will always struggle to persuade adults to invest time and money in gaining higher-level qualifications. Equally, an economy that creates such jobs but cannot supply the right skilled people to fill them will see opportunities fly by. Success depends on growing the supply and demand sides together, thinking about how they interact in specific ways.

Wakefield illustrates this challenge vividly. The district has created jobs quickly since 2019, but too many are lower paid. Productivity per worker is £12,000 lower than the national average. Only 8.2 per cent of jobs are in knowledge-based industries. To match the regional average, Wakefield would need 12,000 more knowledge-based jobs.

Although Wakefield’s young people achieve strong academic results, only a third of older residents hold higher-level qualifications, compared with nearly half nationally. Our commission found explanations for these gaps.  With relatively few high-skilled jobs, there are few incentives for employers to invest in training or for adults to participate. And the cost and accessibility of training makes things harder. The result is a cycle of lower skills and insufficient training.

But this can be fixed if we think about growing supply and demand together, raising demand for skills and better jobs in the economy alongside the supply of the skills those jobs need. We propose a new organisation to build supply and demand together, the Wakefield Futures Centre.

This centre will work with employers, university researchers and training providers, including Wakefield College.  There’s already a range of higher-level training provision in Wakefield, including at Wakefield College and at the Academy of Live Technology, but too often the provision is not matched to future skills needs, or not accessible to enough people. 

The Wakefield Futures Centre won’t be a new training institution competing for students, but a backbone organisation to make the system work better. It will help match demand and supply – convening employers and training providers to ensure skills are aligned to local jobs. It will promote short, stackable courses that can be flexible to help adults access them. It will collect and share data on what works. Above all, it will drive collaboration so that universities, colleges, businesses and the council work together.

Its focus will be on sectors where Wakefield can realistically grow high-skill jobs: advanced manufacturing, the creative industries, advanced logistics and the green economy. There are already local strengths here, from the Academy of Live Technology to clusters of advanced manufacturing companies, that are essential for economic growth.

We are also calling for achievable national reforms to free up the skills market: bursaries for adults taking short higher-level courses, local powers to commission higher-level award-bearing provision tailored to business need, and reforms to the apprenticeship levy so smaller firms can access modular training.

Finally, we recommend an annual ‘report card’ to track progress not just in qualifications gained, but in the outcomes that matter – wages, productivity, and job creation. If we are serious about transforming the skills system, we must be serious about measuring the results.

Wakefield’s challenges and opportunities are, of course, its own. With sustained leadership, the Futures Centre and shifts in national policy, Wakefield can not only move decisively from being a low- to high-skilled district, but can provide a model for other towns to follow.

With the right design and determination, even long-standing cycles of low skills and low pay can be broken.

We’re joining the dots to create lifelong learning in the North East

The lifelong learning entitlement (LLE) promises to reshape how people study and train throughout their lives, while creating both opportunities and challenges for the institutions that support them.

But universities face growing budgetary pressures and colleges are increasingly stretched. The UK has not built a system truly connecting these proud but separate sectors, although the wish of greater collaboration has been articulated by successive policymakers.

With key questions over the LLE still unresolved, the case for regional collaboration between HE and FE has never been clearer. Amid constrained resources and rising expectations, such collaboration is essential to build resilience, clarity, and collective strength across post-16 education.

Colleges in Greater Manchester and Lancashire have already shown what can be achieved when provision is coordinated, and across England FE has often led the way in developing strong local groups.

Initiatives such as the Institutes of Technology are an attempt of bringing FE and HE providers closer together on specific skills shortages in a regional context – often aligned to local skills improvement plans (LSIPs). However, as the Lifelong Education Institute’s Mapping the Course report highlights, this maturity has been largely confined to FE.

Universities have too often been peripheral to regional skills structures, pulled by national funding models and international priorities. The challenge now is to bring HE into the centre of regional planning. By aligning universities with colleges, training providers, employers and civic leaders, we can move from isolated initiatives to skills systems coherent for learners and sustainable for providers.

The North East illustrates the need. The region has lived through successive waves of reform – training and enterprise councils, regional development agencies, local enterprise partnerships and LSIPs. Each produced some successes, but too many were swept away before they could mature. Our report calls this “hyper-active incrementalism”: constant change that fragments rather than unifies. Long-term collaboration could break that cycle.

One benefit is resilience. With finances under strain across the post-16 system, duplication is hard to justify. By pooling facilities and expertise, institutions can deliver more while spending less. The Northern Accelerator, a collaboration of North East universities, has more than tripled annual spinouts, showing what can be achieved by sharing investment and expertise. The same approach can support teaching and training.

A second benefit is clarity. For the LLE to succeed, learners must be able to build credits with confidence that their achievements will be recognised. There are debates about how far learners will move between providers, and concerns about student finance, but the principle of stackable, portable credit is essential. A national framework, ideally UK-wide, must underpin this, with regional consortia adding practical tools such as skills passports and badging to give assurance to learners and employers.

The third benefit is influence. Employers already have regional chambers of commerce and employer representative bodies to speak collectively, and employees have regional branches of employee representative bodies. Education would gain from their own collective voice, ‘a chamber of learning’ – a regional forum where schools, colleges and universities can speak with one regional voice in order to shape skills strategy with Skills England and combined authorities.

These ideas are already in practice and visible across the North East. Newcastle University together with regional education providers, including Newcastle College Group and Education Partnership North East, are reskilling oil and gas sector engineers for roles in offshore wind and battery technology. Newcastle University is also the HE partner in the North East Institute of Technology (NEIoT), working with colleges and employers such as Nissan and Esh Group. The Institute of Electrification and Sustainable Advanced Manufacturing utilised these partners in creating clear pathways from T Levels to degree apprenticeships. With New College Durham, we are developing the National Battery Training and Skills Academy, preparing a workforce for one of the region’s fastest-growing sectors. Through an agreement with Northumbria University and local colleges, we are aligning skills and health initiatives at city level. And through Universities for North East England, the five universities are working together to strengthen their civic role and connect research, innovation as well as education and skills programmes to regional priorities.

These partnerships show that collaboration does not have to be confined to just signing agreements between providers. Employers can – and have to – be active partners, co-designing curricula, creating demand and co-investing in talent. Policymakers, too, play a role in setting conditions that allow education and business to plan together for the long term.

The establishment of regional education partnerships can help formalise this approach to collaboration within existing governance arrangements and advise, guide and inform skills development.

The LLE will be complex, and implementation not straightforward. Demand is uncertain, the Student Loans Company will need to adapt, and the government must intensify engagement with providers. Collaboration cannot remove these challenges. However, it can make the system easier to navigate, more coherent for employers and more efficient in its use of resources.

SEND reforms for schools won’t solve FE’s high-needs problems

The government’s SEND reforms are primarily focused on solving problems that affect schools: lack of inclusion in mainstream settings; spiralling costs; identification of need and support not happening early enough.

But these are not the big issues for colleges. Here, 90 per cent of learners with education, health and care plans (EHCPs) are already in a mainstream setting; less than 10 per cent of the high-needs budget goes on post-16s despite them accounting for 26 per cent of EHCPs; and needs have usually (though not always) been identified well before young people enter FE.

To improve the SEND system for FE learners and providers, the government must consider a different set of issues and other ways forward. Critically, ministers mustn’t impose on colleges a set of solutions to problems we don’t have. Taking medicine for symptoms we aren’t suffering won’t cure FE – and it may make matters worse.

The fact that SEND reforms are being wrapped up in a schools white paper doesn’t fill me with hope that FE will get much of a look in. But that’s not going to stop Natspec – and the Association of Colleges – from pressing the case in the final weeks of drafting before the promised autumn publication date.

We’ll be pushing policymakers to prioritise three key areas: better mechanisms for facilitating transition from school to FE; fairer levels of funded support for FE students with SEND; and ending the cliff-edge experience of leaving college, where support is suddenly withdrawn and rather than opportunities opening up, they fall away.

Specifically, we’ll be looking for the white paper to include plans for:

Transition from school to college

  • Creating a better system for commissioning high-needs placements in FE that can be consistently applied across mainstream and specialist colleges
  • Developing an information-sharing mechanism between schools and colleges for those without EHCPs

Fairer funding for FE

  • Committing an equitable level of funding to SEND in FE through a dedicated SEN support funding stream for students with lower-level needs
  • Allocating FE a proportionate amount of both the high-needs budget and SEND-related capital funding

Post-college opportunities

  • Cross-departmental work to ensure sufficient support and opportunities exist to enable young people post-college can put into practice the skills, knowledge and behaviours they have gained through FE, and go on to lead fulfilling adult lives
  • A system for the early planning of individuals’ post-college social care, support for employment and ongoing learning opportunities

Recognition for specialist FE colleges

The white paper presents the perfect opportunity for government to fully recognise the essential role of specialist colleges. While they may serve just a small number of learners (around 9,000), specialist colleges are the only state-funded alternative to mainstream FE and are therefore essential to ensuring the inclusiveness of the FE system as a whole.

Despite this, specialist colleges are treated very differently to their mainstream counterparts, particularly in terms of eligibility for government support and funding streams. Now could be the time to announce a new designation for specialist colleges that brings them fully ‘inside the tent’.

And if the government really wants to demonstrate that they value the specialist sector, they could start by announcing:

  • A one-off capital improvement catch-up fund to enable specialist colleges to carry out urgent and overdue improvement works
  • A commitment to giving specialist colleges access to future capital funding rounds in a way that is equitable with general FE colleges

FE provides a vital last rung on the ladder to a successful adulthood for many young people with SEND. Reforms that fail to make that rung secure risk wasting all the time, effort and funding invested in getting young people to this point.

Badenoch: I’ll double apprenticeships budget by slashing uni degrees

A future Conservative government would double England’s apprenticeships budget to £6 billion a year by slashing university student numbers.

Leader of the opposition Kemi Badenoch plans to use her speech at the Conservative Party conference tomorrow to pledge to reintroduce student number controls on “poor value” degrees and direct the “savings” towards apprenticeships and “worthwhile” courses.

She is expected to say: “Every year, thousands of young people go off to university but leave with crippling loans and no real prospects. Nearly one in three graduates see no economic return, and every year taxpayers are writing off over £7 billion in unpaid student loans. Wasted money, wasted talent. A rigged system propping up low-quality courses, while people can’t get high-quality apprenticeships that lead to real jobs.”

Individual higher education institutions would be subject to student recruitment caps, which were abolished by the Conservatives in 2015, for courses “on the basis of quality and graduate outcomes”.

Badenoch expects this will reduce university student numbers by 100,000 a year by the end of the next parliament. The Conservatives claim this would free up enough cash to double England’s apprenticeships budget from £3 billion to £6 billion over that period. New apprenticeships for 18 to 21-year-olds would be “incentivised”.

The University and College Union (UCU) called Badenoch’s plans “economically illiterate”.

Return of ‘rip-off’ degrees

Badenoch, who claims to be a former apprentice, will say: “A lot of people know I did two degrees. One in engineering. One in law. But while I can’t remember how to do parallel integration. I can remember how to fix a broken computer. Which I learnt on my apprenticeship. We need more apprenticeships.

“I was working with adults. I was paying my own way. And it gave me self-confidence in a way my university degrees never did. And unlike my subsequent university degree, I wasn’t still paying off my debts in my early 30s.

“So we will shut down these rip-off courses and use the money to double the apprenticeship budget. Giving thousands of young people the chance of a proper start in life. Just like I got.”

In Manchester, Badenoch will echo Conservative Party announcements from before last year’s general election, which also raided funding from “rip-off” university degrees to pay for more apprenticeships. 

But the party has not spelt out which university courses would be at risk. A press notice trailing the speech said caps would be placed on courses “that consistently lead to poor graduate outcomes”.

“We will introduce controls on student numbers in specific subject groups, so the taxpayer is not left subsidising courses which are leading to low graduate earnings or limited career prospects,” the party said.

Controls on university student numbers were abolished in 2015 by then-Chancellor George Osborne.

Apprenticeship consensus

Ministers would decide on the courses and the number caps, which would then be allocated to providers “on the basis of quality”.

Last week, prime minister Sir Keir Starmer used his party conference speech to replace Tony Blair’s 50 per cent higher education target with a pledge for two-thirds of young people to achieve higher-level qualifications through universities or apprenticeships.

Ben Rowland, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), said having both leaders talk about apprenticeships shows “there is now a welcome political consensus behind more apprenticeships”.

He added: “AELP welcomes the gauntlet that Kemi Badenoch has thrown down of a commitment to doubling apprenticeship funding.”

The apprenticeships budget for financial year 2025-26 is £3.075 billion.

Voter intention polling by YouGov currently places the Conservatives third behind Reform UK and Labour.

UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: “This is an economically illiterate policy; no country has ever grown by slashing university places. Nonsensical ideas such as this come as no surprise from the party that crashed the economy, and fortunately, have no hope of being enacted, as the Tories will not be winning an election anytime soon.

“The way to deal with the student debt burden is through a return to public funding, this could be paid for with a wealth tax, so those who benefit the most from getting a degree contribute more.”

10-year adult ed rescue plan would boost economy by £22bn, says L&W

The government, employers, and individuals should inject an extra £2.2 billion every year over the next decade to restore skills attainment to 2010 levels, boost the economy and save £8 billion annually for the taxpayer, a think tank has said.

Learning and Work Institute (L&W) has today unveiled a decade-long roadmap to reverse government and employer cuts in training investment and undo the decline in adult literacy and numeracy skills.

In a new report, the think tank urged for an expanded lifelong learning entitlement, an incentivising skills tax credit and reiterated proposals for a “flex and match” skills levy for employers to spend part of their money on non-apprenticeship training.

It comes a week after prime minister Sir Keir Starmer announced a new target for two-thirds of young people to enter higher-level learning by age 25.

L&W said that any plan to deliver this ambition would need to triple level 2 and 3 achievements every year for a decade.

The Department for Education last year calculated around one in five 16 to 64 year olds – nine million people – have low literacy or numeracy, and millions more have low digital skills.

By 2035, the UK should aim to have nine in ten adults (3.5 million more people) with essential English, maths and digital skills and an extra three million more people to have at least a level 2 qualification.

Stephen Evans, L&W chief executive, said the ambition arose after their research revealed that the UK had growing inequality in the proportion of people with essential skills compared to  other OECD countries. 

“A step change in effort from government, employers and communities to create a lifelong learning century could reap the rewards of a £22 billion growth prize,” he added.

“It’s time to rewire our learning and skills system, focusing more on outcomes, encouraging employers to invest more, and harnessing the digital learning revolution.”

10 years of effort

L&W reported that population growth has meant stretched and reduced public spending has caused a 22 per cent real terms spending fall per 16 to 64-year-old since 2010-11, from £154 each year to £120. 

“Reversing this fall would mean an extra £1.6 billion per year,” the report said.

It also calculated a 20 per cent drop in government spending on adult skills in England between 2010 and 2025.

“This has to change,” the think tank said.

An extra  £2.2 billion would need to be spent on lifelong learning to reverse the cuts. This would come from a mix of government funding, employer spending and individuals.

Around £1.4 billion should be earmarked for level 2 and 3 qualifications, assuming each costs £5,000.

Another £800 million should go towards essential English, maths and digital skills qualifications, based on a £1,800 per qualification.

The report concluded: “Lifelong learning can help turn changes in demography, technology and society shifts from a gathering storm to a time of opportunity. That will take a ten-year concerted effort from people, employers, community organisations and governments. The prize from this is great, the cost of inaction large.”

The report proposed redirecting funding, such as £140 million of spending on level 7 apprenticeships and “already highly qualified people” on skills bootcamps to learners to achieve essential skills and up to level 3.

It added that the £60 million expected annual revenue from the immigration skills charge could add to the public spending on skills.

L&W also recommended an “expanded” lifelong learning entitlement that would give extra help with the costs of learning, including maintenance loans for level 3 in “priority areas” and allowing training up to one year while on universal credit. 

The think tank proposed the expansion should also include a new learning account, where the government provides every learner with an initial £5,000 toward course fees, and “targeted” top-ups for career changers.

“[The LLE] should be paired with a strengthened right to request time off to train so people can come back to their current job should they decide while training that they did not want to switch careers,” the report added.

World-class skills base could help employment rate target

L&W laid out several targets for adult attainment by 2035. 

One target was to aim for at least nine in ten adults having essential skills like functional literacy, numeracy and digital, equating to an extra 3.5 million people, over 3 million of which would be in England.

To achieve these, the report estimated that literacy and numeracy skills achievements would need to double to 600,000 per year for a decade, with full level 2 and 3 achievements trebling to 430,000 per year. 

The economic benefits, L&W said, would equate to a boost to the economy of £22 billion.

It explained that there would be 170,000 more people in work, saving £7.8 billion annually to the taxpayer per year once delivered.

This would also contribute 10 per cent of the employment growth needed to reach the government’s 80 per cent employment rate ambition.

But the report added that the benefits are “likely to be underestimates” as researchers looked purely at employment and earnings impacts.

“It doesn’t include potential spillover impacts of a more highly skilled workforce on innovation, investment and the productivity of other workers, or social outcomes like health, or impacts of learning that don’t result in full qualifications,” the report said.

£31k FE teacher training bursaries to continue in 2026-27

Tax-free bursaries worth up to £31,000 to further education trainee teachers in key STEM shortage subjects will continue to be offered next year, the government has confirmed.

The decision is part of education secretary Bridget Phillipson’s drive to recruit and retain 6,500 additional teachers by the end of this Parliament in 2029.

Bursaries were increased to £31,000 in 2025-26 for FE trainee teachers in computing, engineering or manufacturing, mathematics, and science, including biology, chemistry, or physics.

SEND-specialist trainees are also being offered £15,000 this year, while £10,000 is on offer for those training to teach English.

The Department for Education suggested these bursaries will continue in 2026-27 at the same rate in the same subjects, in a notice to the press this evening.

It said: “As part of today’s package, bursaries for teacher trainees in further education will also be available, with £31,000 for those teaching in key shortage STEM subjects, £15,000 for SEND-specialist trainees and £10,000 for those training to teach English. 

“This reflects the importance that the government places on supporting colleges and other FE institutions to train and recruit high-quality teachers.”

Full confirmation of the STEM subjects that attract £31,000 bursaries is expected tomorrow morning (October 7).

A DfE spokesperson said the department will also offer schools up to £29,000 to “cover the cost of training apprentices in mathematics, chemistry, physics, and computing, as well as £20,000 in modern foreign languages, meaning apprentices pay nothing for their training and will earn a salary while they are training before moving on to a qualified teacher salary”. 

The Postgraduate Teaching Apprenticeship (PGTA) funding “will, for the first time, will be equivalent to the initial teacher training incentives in all subjects”.

Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “We welcome the fact that the government recognises the need to get more specialist teachers into the classroom. 

“The recruitment and retention system is badly broken, with the majority of schools and colleges suffering from teacher shortages. Bursaries and scholarships may be helpful in some areas, but it is hard to see how they will turn the tide of this crisis on their own.”

Jack Worth, education workforce lead at the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), added: “Our research has shown bursaries are very effective for recruiting more teachers and retaining additional teachers long-term, particularly in shortage subjects such as physics and maths.

“This announcement could go a long way towards helping the government meet its pledge to recruit and retain 6,500 additional teachers.”

The government has committed to publishing the full details of how it will deliver on its pledge for 6,500 more teachers by December, a year and a half after being elected.

Forecasts suggest up to 12,400 more teachers will be needed in colleges alone by 2028.

‘Inadequate’ apprenticeship provider accuses Ofsted of creating ‘state of fear’

An apprenticeship provider in Kent has accused Ofsted inspectors of creating a “state of fear” for its staff following an ‘inadequate’ result.

Art Providers Ltd, which mostly delivers adult care apprenticeships nationally, was hit with Ofsted’s lowest grade in a critical inspection report this morning.

But leaders at the independent training provider said they did not agree with the rating and alleged poor conduct from inspectors, including evidence being ignored.

A team of inspectors examined Art Providers’ apprenticeship delivery between July 15 and 18, when it had 154 apprentices on its books.

The watchdog claimed that “too few apprentices achieve their apprenticeship in the time expected”, adding that the “small minority” who do complete are “well prepared for their final assessments”.

A spokesperson for Art Providers told FE Week that the report did not reflect around 20 apprentices who are currently registered for their end-point assessment.

“We’re not claiming to be perfect but we’ve not had a single learner fail. We’ve had distinctions, people graduated with distinction merit so I don’t know where the inadequacy is coming from,” they said.

The ITP has been providing apprenticeships since January 2023 and has no published qualification achievement rate yet.

Ofsted said it found “consistently poor” attendance from apprentices and condemned leaders’ lack of planning of on- and off-the-job training.

The Art Providers spokesperson claimed that inspectors based their judgment on only seeing the one-to-one teaching delivered during inspection week and did not consider the monthly group teaching sessions.

The Ofsted report also noted leaders’ failures to mitigate “fundamental weaknesses” in its provision, poor oversight and poor sequence training.

Inspectors said: “[Leaders’] lack of a clear and accurate understanding of the challenges facing apprentices has significantly limited their ability to make improvements. As a result, too many apprentices fall behind or disengage from learning without getting the help they need.”

The ITP challenged Ofsted’s rating when they found out they had been awarded ‘inadequate’ in four out of the five areas.

Leaders told FE Week that they submitted “hundreds” of pages of evidence for Ofsted after they complained.

“Out of almost over 100 pages of evidence provided, the person they brought in to look at this matter agreed that they should just look at a single page, which simply means they didn’t look into the evidence we supplied,” they said.

They also raised conduct complaints about one of the inspectors “practically creating a state of fear in the staff”.

“When the inspectors were here, we actually complained against one of the inspectors, who was basically shutting people down when the inspection was going on,” they added.

Private providers judged ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted are usually sanctioned by the Department for Education, which can include contract termination.

The ITP said they had not spoken with DfE yet, but was positive the department would hear their case to retain their apprenticeship contract after the local DfE representative had been “quite sympathetic”.

Ofsted is currently overhauling its inspection process after a coroner ruled that an Ofsted inspection contributed to the death of headteacher Ruth Perry and amid wider concerns about the reliability of inspection judgments.

New-style report cards are due to be rolled out from November 10, with headline overall grades for FE providers removed in favour of sub-judgments in up to 16 areas using a colour-coded five-point scale.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 509

Laura Woods

Chair, Middlesbrough College

Start date: August 2025

Previous job: Former Director of Academic Enterprise, Teesside University

Interesting fact: Laura found a whole new world of interests after full-time work, from creative writing to swing dancing, cryptic crosswords and all things French

Robert Halfon

Executive director – policy, membership and external affairs

Start date: September 2025

Previous job: Former minister for skills

Interesting fact: Robert is an enthusiastic horologist and at one point had a collection of over 200 watched though, with a mortgage to pay, it’s now a more manageable 25

More than half of Turing trips turned down

A record-breaking number of applications to the Turing Scheme were rejected by the government this year following a spike in interest ahead of the programme’s expected closure.

Latest data reveals that bids from education providers to organise international trips for young people soared to 951 in 2025-26 – but just 454, or 48 per cent, were accepted.

In 2021-22, the programme’s first year, 91 per cent of 412 applications were granted. The proportion of successful bids fell to 61 per cent of 520 requests the next year, before hitting 77 per cent of 619 bids in 2023-24, and then 85 per cent of last year’s 755 applications.

The Turing Scheme was supposed to end last year but the government agreed to a one-year extension. However, the total funding pot was trimmed by nearly a third to £78 million as part of the Department for Education’s cost-cutting spree.

Figures published this week show the government even underspent this reduced budget by over £4 million despite record numbers of applications.

‘Shorter mobility’ for FE students

The data shows applications from further education providers rose to 318 this year, but half were rejected. It means just £24 million in Turing cash has been handed out to FE providers in 2025-26, a 28 per cent cut from the previous year.

DfE acknowledged the lower success rate of applications, but said it funded successful applications in full as well as appealed bids to ensure providers can deliver the projects they applied for.

The DfE also limited the maximum funding pot available per FE provider application to £205,000 and has almost halved daily living costs for students going abroad this year. DfE said it placed the limit to avoid stretching the available funding across many providers and increase the risk of providers not being able to deliver their intended placements.

It also said where providers applied for funding above the cap, the applications were scaled down to the cap.

This funding cut and low approval rate means around 11,000 FE learners and apprentices will go on a trip this year, a 6 per cent fall from last year.

Richard Lloyd, co-founder of Further Afield, an initiative that arranges trips with FE providers, said funding pressures were resulting in “shorter mobility” placements across the board. He said: “It can sometimes mean experiences feel more like short group trips rather than the longer, more independent exchanges traditionally associated with study abroad.”

Erasmus+ return?

Named after the mathematician and code-breaker Alan Turing, the DfE-funded initiative replaced Erasmus+ in March 2021 with a new focus on social mobility. The then education secretary Gavin Williamson also allowed trips to be made outside the EU.

Figures show FE providers continued to target more disadvantaged students despite dipping into a smaller funding pot. Two thirds of FE participants going on a Turing trip this year are from a disadvantaged background, compared with 59 per cent in 2024-25.

Schools have ramped up their social mobility efforts too, with around 82 per cent of all school placements being handed to students from deprived backgrounds, up from 56 per cent the previous year.

But universities bucked the trend with their share of disadvantaged students on Turing trips rising just 2 per cent to 52 per cent of all 18,826 participants.

No funding has been announced to continue the Turing Scheme next year. In May, skills minister Jacqui Smith said the government had begun negotiating to “work towards” rejoining Erasmus+.

The DfE was approached for comment.