Latest news from FE Week

How I helped shape Reform’s plan to get England taking on apprentices

Tell consumers there are 65,000 restaurant tables available, but they’re not much use if the restaurants aren’t willing to cook the food. It’s the same with apprenticeships.

For most of my working life, I’ve been involved with small businesses and tradespeople. I founded and built what became one of Britain’s most recognised platforms for bringing consumers and tradespeople together, so I’ve spent a large part of my life listening to small businesses and trying to understand what makes them tick.

I learnt very early on to ask people what was wrong, rather than simply telling them what I thought was right. What frustrates you? What’s stopping you? What would make this work better for you?

If you listen properly to the answers and keep removing those frustrations, you have a much better chance of changing behaviour. Government needs to approach apprenticeships in exactly the same way.

We have a million young people in Britain not in education, employment or training. At the same time, businesses are crying out for skilled people. We’ve educated a generation where there can be huge competition for graduate-level jobs, while young people can leave university with £50,000 of student loan debt. How have we ended up with both problems at the same time? Something has gone seriously wrong.

We have looked at apprenticeships from the wrong end. Government talks about creating apprenticeships. But before you can create an apprentice, you need an employer willing to take one on. So instead of starting in Westminster and designing another scheme, start by asking small businesses: “What is stopping you from taking on an apprentice?”

I’ve been asking tradespeople exactly that, and the same answers keep coming back. Cost. Bureaucracy. Insurance. Time. Finding the right young person. The risk of taking somebody on who doesn’t work out. And then the big one: spending years training somebody, only for them to leave once you’ve turned them into a valuable employee. Sometimes they then end up quoting against the very business that trained them.

The issue is the size of the hurdles. If they’re too high, small businesses simply won’t jump them.

One tradesman told me his insurance company wanted around £6,000 a year to insure a 19 or 20-year-old apprentice to drive his van. He said if we could solve that problem, he’d advertise for ten apprentices tomorrow. Government may not be able to solve every individual problem, but many of these hurdles could be reduced or removed.

Reform’s recently announced 30 per cent Apprenticeship Wage Credit tackles one of them directly. In the early stages, an employer is paying somebody who may initially produce very little, while another employee gives up productive time to train them. If they’re on minimum wage, 30 per cent is going to help hugely.

But cost isn’t everything. Employers worry about what happens if they choose the wrong person. I’d like to see a sensible assessment period at the beginning, giving both employer and apprentice a genuine opportunity to decide whether they are right for each other.

Then the apprenticeship is successfully completed. What happens now?

Reform has announced a £2,000 tax-free bonus for an apprentice who remains with the business for two years after qualifying. I like the principle enormously. Retention was one of the ideas I put forward when discussing this work with Reform. The more confidence employers have that their investment won’t simply walk out of the door, the more likely they are to make that investment.

But I think there is an even bigger hurdle: employment law.

A tradesman said to me: “I’m a tradesman, not an HR department. I’d love to give a youngster a chance, but I need to know that if it doesn’t work for either of us, we can shake hands and move on.”

Most tradesmen aren’t employment lawyers, nor should we expect them to be. They may not know every detail of the Employment Rights Act, but they understand how the growing burden and perceived risk of employment affects their decision to take somebody on. If government continually increases that perceived risk, we shouldn’t be surprised when a one-man business decides to remain a one-man business. I’m delighted Reform has announced it will scrap the act.

We are not short of entrepreneurs or great skilled trades willing to pass their skills to the next generation. What we need is a government that recognises the hurdles have to be lowered or removed if we expect them to take apprentices on.

My philosophy is simple. Listen to businesses. Ask what’s stopping them. Remove the hurdles. Give them the tools and encouragement to take the next step, then get out of their way.

If we can make Britain’s businesses want apprentices, we won’t have to spend quite so much time asking how to create more apprenticeships.

Rural colleges are the missing piece of the industrial strategy

There is a particular kind of silence in rural education policy.

It is the silence between a young person wanting to study and the bus that never arrives. Between an employer with vacancies and the skilled worker who cannot afford to live nearby. Between a college ready to deliver a strategically important course and the industry specialist who can earn far more by staying on the tools.

Too often, debates about skills focus on shortages, pipelines and productivity. Those issues matter, but they overlook a more fundamental question: does our skills system properly understand place?

A rural college is not simply a smaller urban college with better scenery. It operates in a different economy, with different constraints and a different civic role.

At Kendal College, learners routinely travel long distances because the right course is unavailable closer to home. Employers want to expand but struggle to recruit locally. Apprenticeships must fit around dispersed workplaces, seasonal demand and small businesses. Transport, housing and access are not peripheral issues; they determine whether education is possible at all.

The challenge is equally acute when recruiting staff.

To deliver high-quality technical education, colleges need professionals with current industry expertise. Yet those are exactly the people rural employers are also trying to recruit. Construction, engineering, hospitality, health, digital and clean energy all face the same dilemma.

In rural areas, smaller labour markets, high housing costs and long commutes make that competition even tougher. A curriculum may be strategically important, but if it depends on one specialist who is difficult to replace, opportunities for learners quickly become fragile.

Cumbria’s local skills improvement plan illustrates the scale of the challenge. Cumbria Tourism found 73 per cent of visitor economy businesses struggled to recruit staff, while 66 per cent reported skills shortages, particularly among chefs, front-of-house staff and managers.

This is not simply a hospitality problem. It is a place-based skills challenge affecting employers, learners and colleges alike.

The recent Milburn review reinforces why early intervention matters. Around 65 per cent of young people who are NEET for less than a year return to education or work. For those out of education or employment for longer than a year, that falls to just 25 per cent.

In rural areas, seemingly small barriers such as unreliable transport, unaffordable travel or the lack of an appropriate local course can become the first step towards long-term disengagement.

The review also found 44 per cent of NEET young people reported a work-limiting health condition, while a similar proportion were not claiming out-of-work benefits. Many remain largely invisible to the systems designed to support them.

Colleges are often the first to spot those warning signs. We see attendance slipping because transport has failed. We see apprentices whose employers want to support them but cannot release staff. We see adults unable to retrain because traditional timetables simply do not fit their lives.

We also see what happens when the right support exists. Learners build confidence, discover careers they had never considered and progress into apprenticeships, higher education and skilled employment.

Skills England has highlighted another important challenge. Young people develop valuable skills through caring responsibilities, volunteering and part-time work, yet these are often overlooked by employers focused solely on qualifications and previous experience.

At the same time, artificial intelligence and automation are changing the labour market. Technical skills will remain essential, but employers increasingly value judgement, resilience, communication and problem-solving alongside them.

This is where further education excels. Good vocational education develops not only technical competence but professional behaviours, teamwork and responsibility. Those qualities will become more valuable as technology reshapes work.

To deliver that across rural communities, colleges need greater flexibility. Industry specialists should be able to move more easily between employment and teaching through secondments, guest teaching and dual-professional roles. Employer partnerships must become genuine delivery partnerships rather than simply advisory relationships.

Most importantly, we should stop treating FE workforce recruitment as merely an HR issue. It is an industrial strategy issue. Employers need skilled workers, and colleges need skilled professionals to train them. Those challenges cannot be separated.

We also need to acknowledge that rural delivery costs more. It costs more to sustain specialist provision across large geographical areas, to recruit industry experts and to build partnerships with dispersed employers.

The alternative costs far more: unfilled vacancies, weaker local economies and talented young people quietly drifting away from education and work.

If government is serious about productivity and growth, rural delivery cannot remain an afterthought.

Rural colleges are not simply providers of qualifications. They connect learners to opportunity, employers to skills and communities to economic growth. Their success extends far beyond the classroom.

Ultimately, opportunity is shaped as much by geography as by qualifications. Unless national policy recognises that reality, too many talented young people will continue to find that the biggest barrier to their future is not their ability, but where they happen to live.

Foundation apprenticeships can bridge the gap too many young people fall through

Cutting youth unemployment takes more than just scattering random, disconnected schemes around. What we actually need is a flexible pathway that meets young people where they are, rather than expecting them to fit into a pre-made box.

Youth unemployment has surged to an 11-year high. We’ve got fresh leadership promising a shake-up to education, but while politicians debate the future, young people are left waiting. A generation is going to lose out while we wait for action. Right now, independent providers and businesses are left trying to handle an economy that feels incredibly flat.

At Swarm Training CIC, we are proud to be partnering with Skilled Futures to support our foundation apprenticeship programme. Filling that gap between standard study programmes and full apprenticeships – a gap far too many young people fall through. Filling that space with something useful, relevant, and valued by learners and employers alike is vital.

My perspective comes from decades spent inside classrooms, serving as a secondary school governor, and working with groups like London’s Violence Reduction Unit to catch young people before they completely drop off the radar. When you spend years working with vulnerable teenagers, you see the anxiety of a young person trying to bridge the chasm between a chaotic home life and the rigid expectations of a workplace. For plenty of these kids, leaping straight into a standard full-time job is just too far in one go.

Often ability isn’t the problem, readiness and confidence are. A young person can leave school with amazing technical potential but have never caught a bus to work on their own, managed money, or known how to talk to a manager. That isn’t a qualifications gap, it’s a transition gap.

Headteachers tell me regularly how desperate they are for employability training for their students, but the funding simply isn’t there. Meanwhile, at every business event I attend, leaders voice the exact same frustration: young people are leaving education totally unprepared for the world of work.

Foundation apprenticeships won’t solve this problem entirely, but they are a massive step in the right direction.

The best programmes treat learners as individuals. Some need heavy employability support, mentoring, and confidence-building before they’re ready for a workplace. Not every learner needs eight months, employability training or more technical knowledge bolted on.

We also need to make sure pastoral support sits right next to technical training. Getting a young person through their first few months at work usually comes down to the unglamorous, everyday stuff: helping them budget until that first payday, figuring out a bus route, or just being on the other end of the phone when everything feels like too much. None of that shows up in achievement data, but it is often the exact difference between someone sticking with a job or walking out the door.

The best employers I know aren’t looking for someone who knows everything on day one. It is all about attitude – the rest can be taught. Foundation apprenticeships give employers a structured way to shape a young person into their business, with proper support for both sides.

But none of this works if a foundation apprenticeship sits in a silo. It has to lead somewhere. Every learner needs to know from day one what job they are working towards and what comes next. It is one step on a journey, but if you can’t see where you’re going, you are just as likely to walk into a wall or off a cliff rather than into a long-term, productive, and rewarding career.

There is also a tougher conversation we need to have. Plenty of independent training providers genuinely want to work with the young people who need this most. But there’s an understandable nervousness about the risk because we are judged on rigid achievement rates, progression, and an increasingly tough inspection framework. Have we accidentally built a system where providers avoid the learners who need the most help simply because taking them on puts official performance figures at risk?

Our funding and accountability systems need to catch up to reality. Inclusion will only ever work if it is embedded at all levels. Taking on a vulnerable learner shouldn’t leave a provider worse off than one who plays it safe.

We want to work with employers to shape programmes that flex around the individual, not the scheme. If we get this right, foundation apprenticeships stop being just another government programme and become the start of a truly sustainable route into work that changes lives, strengthens businesses, and tackles one of the country’s most stubborn problems head-on.

Apprenticeship subcontracting rules review delayed

A review of apprenticeship subcontracting rules that was supposed to conclude this month has been pushed back.

Reforms from the review, which launched in July to examine policy, rules and definitions, were due to come into effect from January 2027.

But the Department for Work and Pensions today said the review “will take longer than planned”.

Any changes resulting from the review will now take effect from August 2027. Officials said this later date should give providers sufficient time to adjust to the changes.

Engagement with sector representative bodies will begin towards the end of this year, while wider comment from the sector will follow “shortly afterwards, in early 2027”.

The DWP is looking to update their definitions after finding some providers were failing to declare subcontracting because they were unsure what counts, particularly when associates or freelancers were involved.

DWP said it was “reviewing the definition of a subcontractor to make it clearer who is and who is not a subcontractor and what we mean by directly managed and controlled”.

42,000 college students are ‘hidden NEETs’, children’s commissioner finds

Tens of thousands of 16- and 17-year-olds are enrolled in further education colleges but missing more than half their classes, analysis suggests.

An estimated 42,000 young people in the age group are “hidden NEETs” because they are signed up to post-16 education but attending so rarely that they are effectively disengaged, the children’s commissioner has found.

The figure could almost double the number of 16- and 17-year-olds officially recorded as not in education, employment or training (NEET) in England.

Children’s commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza is now calling for attendance data for young FE students to be collected consistently across all state-funded education providers, with the Department for Education setting “ambitious” targets that Ofsted can use to inform inspection judgments.

The DfE said it was introducing “attendance monitoring” in further education to enable early support for young people whose attendance begins to decline. It added that it was working with the sector to develop the approach and identify effective strategies for tackling absence.

Slipping through the cracks

De Souza said her ‘hidden NEETs’ report provides a near-comprehensive picture of attendance in further education settings for the first time.

FE settings are not required to report attendance to the DfE in the same way as schools. Using her statutory powers, de Souza requested attendance data for 16- and 17-year-olds during the 2026 spring term.

Analysis of figures from 262 college groups found 28,528 students in the age group were severely absent – missing more than 50 per cent of sessions – equivalent to 5.9 per cent of students.

The commissioner’s office estimated that, if data from all 290 college groups targeted in its research were included, the number would rise to 41,995.

There were 46,520 16- and 17-year-olds already known to local authorities as NEET, according to the latest data. Adding the estimated hidden NEETs would make the total population 1.9 times larger.

De Souza said: “My concern is that tens of thousands of children are currently being counted as ‘in education’ when, in reality, they are barely attending.

“We have a blind spot: hidden NEETs slipping through the cracks, young people with all the negative impacts of not being in employment, education or training but with none of the targeted interventions designed to help and support them.”

Her report added: “We could, in theory, achieve ‘NEET zero’ and do nothing for this cohort. They would be, for all intents and purposes, hidden NEETs.”

College attendance ambitions vary

De Souza’s research found college attendance is “substantially” lower than in schools, with particularly poor attendance in GCSE English and maths resit classes and on lower-level programmes.

Average reported attendance rates were 84.8 per cent for 16-year-olds and 83.4 per cent for 17-year-olds. This compares with overall attendance rates of 94.8 per cent among primary school pupils and 91.6 per cent among secondary school pupils during the same term.

College students receiving free school meals, those with an education, health and care plan (EHCP) and looked-after children all have higher absence rates than their peers.

There are also major differences between colleges in how attendance is measured.

Almost a third set attendance targets below 90 per cent, the threshold that would correspond to persistent absence in the school system. Meanwhile, 8 per cent did not set attendance targets for their 16- and 17-year-olds.

Colleges cited mental health, poverty, transport difficulties, caring responsibilities, paid work and the transition from school as key barriers to attendance.

College leaders told the commission that efforts to tackle poor attendance were hindered by funding pressures, a lack of statutory levers to support attendance and insufficient sharing of information about students’ previous attendance between schools and colleges.

Mental health support is also less widely available in college settings, with mental health support teams (MHSTs) covering 42 per cent of post-16 students compared with 79 per cent of secondary pupils.

Cath Sezen, director of education policy at the Association of Colleges, claimed all colleges set high expectations and take attendance very seriously. She added that data is regularly monitored by teachers and managers, with strategies put in place to support good attendance habits.

She said: “Colleges do so much for students, against all odds, but the growing strain on the FE system, as well as funding pressures is limiting colleges’ ability to provide tailored support, particularly for those who need it most.”

As well as calling for the DfE to introduce statutory attendance data collection across FE, de Souza wants free bus travel extended to all under-18s and the rollout of MHSTs expedited in post-16 settings.

The report comes as former Labour health secretary Alan Milburn prepares to publish his full national review into youth participation in work and education. His final recommendations are expected this autumn.

Milburn said: “The children’s commissioner is right to shine a light on hidden NEETs.

“The fact that colleges have no obligation to report attendance means tens of thousands of young people can disengage entirely without clear accountability. A better system is needed to ensure that no young person can be lost in this way.”

A DfE spokesperson said: “Engaging young people in further education is vital to tackling the NEETs crisis. This is an important report that highlights just how badly students in further education need to be prioritised in future reforms.

“We’re introducing attendance monitoring and tracking in colleges and accelerating the roll out of mental health support teams in colleges. Just like with schools, we will continue to work with the further education sector to ensure that colleges and training providers proactively and effectively tackle student absenteeism.”

English and maths spending fallen 40% since devolution, research finds

Spending on English and maths training for adults has fallen by about 40 per cent since skills devolution, a think tank’s analysis has found.

According to a Learning and Work Institute (L&W) report published today, adult essential skills learning has “fallen off a cliff edge” since devolution and annual participation has halved over the last decade.

The briefing, published for international literacy day, shows the average annual spend on English fell from £135 million in the three years before devolution began in 2019-20 to an average of £81 million across the last five years – a 40 per cent drop.

Maths saw a similar decline, with annual spending falling 37 per cent, from an average of £155 million pre-devolution to £97 million.

Achievement has also fallen by 52 per cent to 111,000 per year for English between 2016-17 and 2023-24, and 53 per cent for maths, to 110,000. Alex Stevenson, deputy director at L&W said that since devolution, neither devolved nor non-devolved areas have managed to “buck the trend” of declining participation in maths and English with their share of the “decreasing” adult skills fund pot.

He added: “It’s more a sense of a lack of prioritisation on adult maths and English, rather than taking the opportunity of skills devolution to innovate and get more adults engaged in learning these essential skills for life and work.”

The data compiled by L&W also found that English and maths spending has decreased less in devolved areas than in non-devolved areas, potentially reflecting local policy changes such as per-learner funding rate uplifts. However, participation has fallen “at a similar rate” in both devolved and non-devolved areas.

The briefing comes amid national funding rates per qualification remaining “largely unchanged” over the past decade and follows a two to three per cent cut to the national adult skills fund (ASF) budget in 2025-26.

Promising to prioritise low literacy and numeracy rates, Greater Lincolnshire’s Reform UK mayor Andrea Jenkyns has cut public funding for ESOL courses from the ASF in her region from the start of the next academic year.

Competing priorities

L&W’s research was based on government spending data and freedom of information responses from mayors with devolved adult skills.

It asked for data on all regulated literacy and numeracy learning aims up to and including level 2, including GCSE English and maths, but excluded non-regulated learning aims, English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), and the Multiply numeracy programme, which was not funded through ASF.

The exact reasons for falling English and maths spending from the ASF are “complex” and not explained in L&W’s data.

These could include the need to stimulate learner demand for English and maths courses, the “stigma” of having low skills, and lack of awareness of legal entitlements to fully funded courses.

Adult skills providers and commissioners also have to balance a range of learner demands with their limited funding allocations, including ESOL, which is reportedly in “high demand” in areas like London and the West Midlands.

While Multiply “may have” contributed to learners being enrolled on non-regulated learning that doesn’t appear in L&W’s data, it may also have supported learners to progress into ASF programmes.

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesperson said: “We are committed to helping adults gain the essential skills they need to progress in work, further learning and everyday life.

“Through the adult skills fund, eligible adults can access a fully funded English and maths provision, with providers and local leaders given flexibility to determine how to best meet local needs.

“We are also working with partners across the skills sector to help more adults access the training opportunities they need to succeed.”

Revealed: 3 London colleges chosen to host WorldSkills UK national finals 2027

Three London colleges will open their doors next year to hundreds of skilled young people competing to be the country’s best in dozens of trades.

Capital City College’s Mosaic@Soho campus, Waltham Forest College and London South East Colleges’ Bromley campus will each host competitions as part of the WorldSkills national finals.

The 2027 event marks the capital’s biggest skills competition since it last hosted the global WorldSkills competition in 2011.

London also puts on its own regional Greater London skills competition every year, which brings together students from across the capital to compete in 14 vocational disciplines.

The annual event also provides a pathway into the national competitions. Last year, more than two dozen national finalists hailed from London’s FE colleges and secured two medals.

The national finals will officially transfer to London in November, following this year’s event in south Wales where colleges and universities in the region have hosted the competition since 2025.

The competition will see apprentices and students participate in more than 40 disciplines spanning engineering, manufacturing, health and hospitality.

Capital City College will host competitions particularly focused around digital, business, and creative disciplines.

Meanwhile, budding engineering, technology and construction champions will head to London South East College to compete and Waltham Forest College will host health and hospitality competitions, alongside foundation skills for learners with additional needs.

Entries for the 2027 national competition will open next March, with the finals taking place between November 24 and 26, 2027.

Mark Smallman, operations director at WorldSkills UK said: “Bringing the WorldSkills UK National Finals back to London is a hugely significant moment for skills in the UK. Working with the Mayor of London and our host colleges, we’re proud to shine a spotlight on the exceptional talent of apprentices and technical education students from London and across the UK, showcasing the high-level, work-ready skills that employers need and inspiring the next generation to see where skills can take them.”

Howard Dawber, deputy mayor for business and growth at the Greater London Authority, said: “The WorldSkills UK National Finals is an exciting event showcasing London’s talented students and apprentices in sectors that are key to the capital’s growth, and I’m delighted that London will host this prestigious competition for the next two years.”

Asfa Sohail, deputy CEO and principal at London South East Colleges, added: “This is about much more than hosting a national competition. It is an opportunity to inspire ambition, celebrate excellence and showcase the vital role that skills and technical education play in transforming lives, strengthening communities and supporting economic growth.”

Two weeks and counting

Today also marks two weeks until 28 Team UK parade the UK flag in China for the WorldSkills Shanghai 2026 opening ceremony.

Mechatronics team Liz and Emily in China for a pressure test

Since the squad came together for their summer “mindset” bootcamp, our champions have barely had a moment to catch their breath.

Some have already had a taste of the competition itself, jetting out to China and back for international pressure tests, while others have been sizing up the opposition closer to home in friendly competitions with their peers.

Mechatronics pair Liz Hopkinson and Emily Bettridge, who work at Toyota, swapped the UK for Wuxi, China, for a training camp ahead of the big event.

Joinery competitor Jamie Matthews from Northern Ireland headed to DeWalt’s training centre in Slough and aircraft maintenance competitor Elyot wrapped up his final training session in in Gosport, Hampshire.

Joe Shingler, bricklaying champion, took his trowel to the Hertford Showground for the Super Trowel Final, the industry’s own bricklaying competition.

Katie Sime practising on WorldSkills UK’s Chris Herron

Elsewhere, hairdressing competitor Katie Sime has been putting in extra training hours with her employer Reds Hair Company. WorldSkills UK’s international development manager Chris Herron obliged as Sime’s model for the day.

Once the team lands in Shanghai, they will have a short window to adjust to the time difference and acclimatise before the competition gets underway.

The opening ceremony will be streamed live from Shanghai from 1pm on September 22 and hosted by broadcaster Steph McGovern.

WorldSkills Shanghai runs from September 22 to 27.

Braverman: Employers training apprentices won’t get a ‘free-for-all’

Employers allowed to train their own apprentices under a Reform UK government would not get a “free-for-all”, Suella Braverman has said, two weeks after the party announced the use of third-party training providers would be “optional”.

Pressed on how apprentices and the taxpayer would be protected from poor-quality in-house training, Reform’s education spokesperson told FE Week she was “absolutely cognisant of that issue”, and the party would find a “sweet spot” between regulation and flexibility for employers.

Following her main stage speech at Reform UK’s party conference today, Braverman said: “I’m not saying scrap standards. I’m not saying it’s a free-for-all. I’m saying that we need more flexibility, and we must absolutely have some kind of regulation or standard which ensures that minimum requirements are met.”

She said the balance “has not been struck properly”, and she would “like to not go to the other extreme, but to ensure we get to the sweet spot” where employers have flexibility but the taxpayer “can be assured that we’ve got a well-trained person”.

Braverman did not say who would set or police those standards, or whether inspectors would enter workplaces delivering their own training.

In her speech, she promised a “vocational and technical skills revolution” funded by cuts to university funding, and repeated her pledge to create a “record number of apprenticeships”.

Reform’s apprenticeship wage credit paper, launched on GCSE results day, would give small and medium-sized employers a 30 per cent credit on the wages of 16 to 18-year-old apprentices, worth about £4,742 a year, plus a £2,000 retention bonus for apprentices who stay with the same employer for a further two years. It also set a target of 600,000 apprenticeship starts a year, up from 353,000 in 2024-25.

It also proposed making external training providers optional for qualifying employers, a move Alison Wolf, a former Number 10 skills policy adviser, warned would “effectively abolish apprenticeships in a very large proportion of cases, and just replace it with a wage subsidy”.

‘Not very good’ colleges

Braverman’s argument for cutting providers out of apprenticeship training appeared to centre on the quality of colleges.

She said employers told her the system was “too bureaucratic”, “too expensive” and “too risky” and that they were “wholly disincentivised” from taking on an apprentice.

“Often they’re limited to their local FE college. Now, if they’ve got an excellent, outstanding FE college, that’s fine.

“In a lot of places, they’re not very good, and so they’ve got to send this young person off to college for a day or whatever it is a week, and the teacher might not turn up, the course is wholly irrelevant to what the job is requiring on site, and it’s a waste of everybody’s time.”

Braverman did not revise her analysis after it was put to her that the vast majority of apprenticeship training is delivered by independent training providers, rather than FE colleges, returning instead to the need for flexibility alongside minimum standards.

Flags, anthems and ‘the great university scam’

Braverman used her conference speech to confirm that every school under a Reform government would be obliged to fly the union flag and sing the national anthem and “our great hymns”, as part of what she called a “balanced, patriotic curriculum” covering the British Empire.

She told FE Week the requirement would apply to pupils up to the age of 18, and would be made mandatory in law. She did not say whether it would extend to sixth form or FE colleges but did say there would be “consequences” for non-compliance.

“It will be in law. It will be in guidance, and it will be made clear that it’s an obligation,” she said, adding that Reform would “definitely be looking at the criteria that Ofsted apply” and that there would be “consequences” for those that did not comply.

Asked how often pupils would be expected to sing the anthem, Braverman said the regularity would be specified “in due course”, but that she was “not suggesting necessarily every day”.

The bulk of her speech covered what she called the “great university scam”. She pledged that within the first 100 days of a Reform government she would scrap the cap on medical training places for British students – promising to resign if she failed – and remove interest payments on student loans for British nurses.

A third pledge would cut taxpayer funding for student loans and tuition fees for what she called “Mickey Mouse degrees” by 20 per cent, which she claimed would save £4 billion.

Courses would face a new “value for money” test, with funding withdrawn from those with “poor teaching and zero job prospects”, from universities that “don’t value freedom of speech” and from degrees that “don’t benefit the UK economy”.

That money, she said, would be redirected “into our vocational and our technical skills revolution”.

Asked for more information on what a Reform UK technical and vocational skills revolution would look like, Braverman accused prime minister Andy Burnham of “copying Reform” through his plans to increase access to technical education.

Braverman told FE Week: “I’ve been talking about the imbalance in the system since the beginning of the year. We’ve got too many young people going into higher education for various reasons, the great university scam, as I call it, and they’re not coming out with good prospects.

“There’s too much government and public funding going into the university sector, and chronic labour market shortages, and an under-serviced FE sector. A Reform government would want to stand for a wholesale rebalancing of that.”

New City College chief Gerry McDonald elected next AoC president

The chief executive of a large London college group has been elected as the next president of the Association of Colleges.

New City College boss Gerry McDonald will take on the role from Birmingham Metropolitan College principal Pat Carvalho on October 16, after winning this year’s election against Anna Dawe, principal of Wigan and Leigh College, and Rebecca Gater, principal of Solihull College & University Centre.

McDonald has worked in further education for three decades. He became Tower Hamlets College principal in 2013 before running New City College when it was formed in 2017 following mergers between campuses across Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Epping Forest, Redbridge and Havering.

McDonald said: “I am delighted to have been elected AoC president 2026-27.

“Building on the work of my predecessor, Pat Carvalho, I will continue to advocate for our sector and the critical role that colleges play in our communities.

“Never has our sector been more important and our voice so relevant. I will do all I can to ensure that the impact of colleges is seen, understood and valued by as wide an audience as possible.”

McDonald is a serving college leader on the National Leaders for Further Education programme, led by the FE Commissioner, and deputy chair of the Education and Training Foundation.

He also serves on the Greater London Authority’s London Energy Mission Board. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2025 new year honours for services to further education.

McDonald has been chair of the AoC’s employment policy committee in recent years but will hand over those duties after becoming president.

David Hughes, chief executive of the AoC, said McDonald is a “true champion of further education” and brings with him “enormous knowledge and experience” in the sector.

“Gerry has given much to AoC already, through his work leading our employment and pay negotiations committee,” Hughes added.

“I look forward to continuing to work closely with him to influence policy and funding and make the most of the many opportunities coming our way.”

AoC presidents are elected by the organisation’s college members. They serve for a maximum of two years and act as ambassadors for the membership organisation and the wider further education sector.

Carvalho, outgoing president and principal of Birmingham Metropolitan College, has held the role since 2024.

She said: “It’s been a privilege to serve at AoC president over the last two years, and I do hope I have made worthy contributions.

“We have a great member organisation rich in expertise and experience ably led by David Hughes. The sector is now entering a period of unprecedented changes and although this feels daunting, I know our sector has the ability to make the most of these opportunities to get the best outcomes for our students, staff and communities.”

Hughes said: “The president role is an important one for AoC and for members, and I want to thank Pat Carvalho for the hard work she has put in, the impact she has made and the support and advice she has given me and the team in AoC as president.

“I also want to say a big thank you to Anna Dawe and Rebecca Gater for putting themselves forward for the role; it was absolutely brilliant to have three candidates running, and it shows the importance and value the position has for the sector.”