Skip to content
24 July 2026

Latest news from FE Week

Apprenticeship units must become an employer-led success

Around three-quarters of businesses investing in AI are not getting the return they hoped for, according to a recent IBM survey of chief executives. The reason is rarely the technology itself – it is people: the leaders and teams who do not yet have the skills, or the confidence, to put AI to work. I hear this from employers almost every day.

At the same time, the apprenticeship budget is set to reach £3.3 billion in 2026-27. For all that potential investment, conversations about the levy too often feel like a chore. Spend it, transfer it, or lose it. At the same time, the government’s Employer Skills Survey showed that the percentage of employers offering training has dropped from 66 per cent in 2017 to 59 per cent in 2024. The opportunity is to reverse that decline by using the levy to build the capability businesses actually need.

No organisation can hire its way to AI transformation. Success depends on building capability across the whole workforce, from the senior people who set strategy and sign off the risk, to the teams putting AI tools to use day to day.

The employers already pulling ahead are the ones aligning their levy spend with their business priorities. They treat AI as a leadership and people challenge rather than just a technology project, and they invest accordingly. This is what turns a promising commitment to AI adoption into lasting productivity, and one-off training into productivity that sticks.

This is why the emerging reforms to the growth and skills levy matter. One of the most significant is the arrival of apprenticeship units: shorter, focused modules that give employers more flexibility and targeted development in priority areas. Three of the first seven units focus on AI leadership, covering strategy, governance, procurement, and organisational transformation.

This is good news. The people who set an organisation’s risk appetite and sign off its AI investment are often the least confident about the technology, and the least likely to commit to a full apprenticeship. A focused unit gives them an accessible, convenient way in and avoids employers being encouraged to use apprenticeships where is too long and doesn’t align with the learner’s job role or their ability to complete the programme.

Units will not fix everything though, and we should be honest about that. They will add to the skills system, not replace full apprenticeships. Critically, they must not become a backdoor to thinner, cheaper, lower-quality training. The apprenticeship quality requirements built up over the past decade exist for good reason, and they need to stay. The real value of a unit is as a gateway: a way for employers to engage with structured, quality training, and to see for themselves what deeper investment might deliver.

Their success will depend on two things above all. The first is how quickly the model evolves. As employers, learners, and providers start using units in practice, we need to gather feedback in real time and adapt, because AI is moving far too fast for the skills system to stand still.

The second is whether employers help to shape units rather than simply taking products off the shelf – they need to be genuinely employer-led, not formulated by well-meaning civil servants or ministers. The strongest apprenticeship standards have always been the ones employers built, and the same will be true here.

Units are only one part of a skills system that is evolving at every stage. From Alan Milburn’s review of young people and work, to the emergence of V Levels and the Francis review’s recommendations for schools and colleges, through to ensuring the growth and skills levy continues to support adults already in work, change is happening across the entire landscape. The real opportunity lies in joining these reforms together rather than treating them in isolation. Only then can the system deliver more than the sum of its parts.

The real prize in the growth and skills levy is not simply greater flexibility. It is the chance to reposition skills development as what it truly is: an opportunity, not a compliance chore. The organisations that thrive in the AI era will not be the ones that spend the most on technology. They will be the ones that invest most effectively in their people.

Apprenticeship units are the latest chance to do exactly that, and we should embrace them, and help to shape them.

 

Jacqui Smith reappointed minister for skills

Jacqui Smith has been reappointed as skills minister in prime minister Andy Burnham’s government, retaining her joint role across the Department for Education and the Department for Work and Pensions.

Number 10 confirmed Baroness Smith’s reappointment as a DfE and DWP minister this evening. FE Week understands she will retain the skills brief she has held since July 2024.

She will continue to work across two departments, responsible for apprenticeships and adult skills at DWP and 16-19 further education and higher education at the Department for Education.

Work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden was reappointed yesterday. Burnham appointed Lucy Powell to replace Bridget Phillipson as education secretary.

Alongside McFadden, Smith’s reappointment provides some continuity as ministers battle stubbornly high youth unemployment. She will also play a key role in Burnham’s pledge for parity of status between academic and technical learning across the education system.

Before becoming prime minister, Burnham clashed with Smith over skills devolution while serving as mayor of Greater Manchester. He called DfE his “biggest frustration” and warned that its resistance to giving mayors greater control of skills funding risked becoming “anti-growth”.

Smith later acknowledged “tension” with mayors and said there was potential to devolve more, but ruled out handing them full control of 16-to-19 funding.

Fellow DfE minister Georgia Gould and DWP minister Andrew Western have also been reappointed, though their portfolios have not been confirmed.

As Smith sits in the House of Lords, ministers from DfE and DWP who are MPs respond to further education and skills-related questions in the House of Commons.

For DfE, that role had fallen to Josh MacAlister. He has so far not been given a government job. For DWP, that role has been shared between McFadden and Western.

Smith is the only Lords minister at the DfE, meaning she is also responsible for representing all of the department’s policy areas in the upper chamber.

Smith and Burnham previously served together in Gordon Brown’s cabinet between 2007 and 2009, when she was home secretary and he held posts including chief secretary to the Treasury and culture secretary.

Meanwhile, Phillipson remains in cabinet as minister for women and equalities, with Smith continuing as minister of state in the same brief. In a machinery of government change announced earlier today, the equalities office was moved to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

Elsewhere, former defence secretary John Healey was appointed chancellor of the exchequer yesterday. Healey served as adult skills minister between 2001 and 2002, his first government post, before moving to the Treasury.

Who is Lucy Powell? 10 facts about the new education secretary

Lucy Powell has been appointed secretary of state for education by new prime minister Andy Burnham as he forms his first cabinet.

Taking over from former education secretary Bridget Phillipson, Powell is the tenth person to hold the role in 10 years.

As we await details of how Burnham’s government will approach education policy, here’s what we know about the minister who will deliver it…

1. She’s Mancunian

She was born and raised in Manchester.

A Labour Party bio says she is a “proud Mancunian” whose politics “were shaped growing up in the North under Thatcher”.

2. She’s from a family of teachers

Powell’s mother was a headteacher.

“I’m from a family of teachers,” Powell told Schools Week in 2015. “Practically everyone in my family is a teacher, apart from my dad, who is a social worker.”

Her parents were also active Labour supporters, and she joined the party at just 15.

“My mother went into labour on election day and refused to have me until she’d voted,” she told an interview with Vogue in January. “We are a very Labour family.”

3. Powell is state educated

Born in Moss Side in 1974, she attended Didsbury state schools Beaver Road Primary School, and Parrs Wood High School.

She studied A Levels at Xaverian College, a large Roman Catholic sixth form in central Manchester.

She excelled academically, taking maths, further maths, physics and chemistry. She was singled out by a teacher who encouraged her to apply for Oxbridge, and was reportedly the only pupil in her year to get an offer from Oxford.

4. She left Oxford after a year

Powell cried when she found out she’d secured a place to study chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford.

“I didn’t want to go at all,” she told GB News in 2021. “But what do you do? You’ve got an offer at Oxford, and everyone’s like ‘oh that’s amazing, that’s great’, so you’re on this treadmill.”

Once there, however, she felt “like a fish out of water” and left after her first year. “I was a state-educated, northern girl doing science. I couldn’t have been more a fish out of water, really.

“I’m sort of glad I went to see how the other half live in a way, but I didn’t thrive there at all.”

She transferred to King’s College London, where she completed her degree.

5. She spent time outside of politics

Powell reportedly considered a PhD but instead went into politics. After leaving university, she worked at Labour’s Millbank headquarters during its triumphant 1997 general election campaign, before spending two years working for MP Beverley Hughes.

She went on to spend the best part of a decade in public affairs, PR and campaigning roles at the Britain in Europe group and the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta).

6. She’s been an MP since 2012

Powell first ran at the 2010 general election as Labour candidate for Manchester Withington, but came second to incumbent Lib Dem MP John Leech.

She was elected as Labour MP for Manchester Central in a by-election in 2012 – a role she has held ever since.

She joined the opposition frontbench, holding roles as shadow childcare and early years minister, and later shadow minister for the Cabinet Office under Ed Miliband.

In 2015, Miliband made her vice-chair of the 2015 UK general election campaign. It would be one of Labour’s heaviest defeats in decades. Powell later described it as “crushing and gutting”.

7. She backed Burnham as leader a decade ago

In the 2015 Labour Party leadership election, she nominated Andy Burnham in his second attempt at the job. But he was beaten by Jeremy Corbyn.

Powell has been a staunch advocate of Burnham and has praised his record as Greater Manchester mayor.

8. She was shadow education secretary

Powell has experience with the education brief.

Corbyn appointed her shadow education secretary in September 2015, replacing Tristram Hunt, who had served under Miliband.

During her tenure, she said investment in, and focus on, post-16 education is vital for young people getting decent jobs and for creating a productive economy.

She resigned from this role in June 2016, along with many other shadow cabinet members, to oppose Corbyn’s leadership.

9. Powell beat Phillipson in deputy leader race

Powell was appointed Leader of the House of Commons in July 2024, when Keir Starmer formed his first cabinet.

She was dismissed in September 2025. But a month later, in October 2025, she beat Bridget Phillipson in the race to become deputy leader of the Labour Party, following the resignation of Angela Rayner (her friend, and fellow Manchester MP).

Powell secured 87,407 votes – almost 14,000 more than Phillipson.

10. She loves Glasto

She lives with her two children, Katie and Tom, and adult stepson Joe, according to her interview with Vogue. Her children attend the same state school she did.

Her husband James Williamson is a doctor who works in emergency medicine. They have been married since 2009.

Her Vogue interview also revealed she’s been to Glastonbury 23 times.

‘I don’t teach English as a subject, I teach it as a lifeline’

From a Syrian refugee turned business graduate to a nursery worker who once lacked the confidence to try, FE Week revisits last year’s Mayor of London adult learning awards winners as nominations for the fifth edition close on Monday

When Hamzeh Moullem arrived in London from Syria in 2019, he spoke barely any English. Separated from his parents, he took on a paternal role when his younger brother joined him two years later while working full time in a restaurant to fund his studies at City of Westminster College. He rarely missed a class.

In November, he was announced in City Hall as the Mayor of London’s inspirational adult learner of the year, having completed a business HND with a distinction and secured a place at the University of West London to top it up to a degree.

“The learning has had a huge impact,” he said. “I now speak English with confidence, and I understand the UK business environment in a way that opens real opportunities for me.” His brother has since enrolled at college, which Moullem counts among the most rewarding parts of the journey.

Moullem (pictured, centre, above) was one of ten winners at the adult learning awards, the Mayor’s flagship celebration of the capital’s adult education sector, delivered with the support of Ascentis and FE Week as sponsors.

Nominations for this year’s awards have been extended to close on Monday, July 27 ahead of a City Hall ceremony in the autumn.

Over its first four years, the awards drew more than 1,000 nominations and recognised over 90 winners and finalists. Last year‘s round alone attracted 252 nominations across ten categories, whittled down to ten winners and ten highly commended runners-up.

Second chances

Judith Guarte Lee, who won the learning for professional progression award last year, moved to the UK from the Philippines five years ago after meeting her husband online in a support group for people with cerebral palsy. Attitudes to her disability had held her back from pursuing a careers at home. After ESOL classes and level 1 and 2 childcare qualifications at Redbridge Institute of Adult Education, she is now a childcare practitioner at an Ilford nursery with her sights on nursery management.

“I want to show my son that if you put your heart and soul into something, good things can happen,” she said.

Pictured left to right: David Coleman, assistant principal, Redbridge Institute of Adult Education, William Pickford, principal, Redbridge Institute of Adult Education, Judith Guarte-Lee, Maria Sotiriou, assistant principal, Redbridge Institute of Adult Education, Rachel Harris, tutor, Redbridge Institute of Adult Education and Judith’s husband

The category was so competitive that the judging panel took the unusual step of awarding all three remaining shortlisted nominees with highly commended status.

Among them was Shukria Wisa, denied schooling in Afghanistan, who taught herself how to read and write before joining Lewisham College’s entry level 1 functional skills English course. Another, 74 year old Rukiya Mukadam, a former GP living with dementia, rebuilt her digital confidence through Open Age courses ranging from touch typing to an introduction to AI.

Jennifer Flanigan, highly commended in the learner of the year category, took up British Sign Language in her fifties, despite eyesight problems and little confidence with technology, so she could hold meaninful conversations with her non-speaking son for the first time.

“Before I learned BSL, most of our communication was nods and pointing,” she said. “I felt shut out of his world.” She now sits as co-chair of governors at his Deaf school.

Keighly Luff took the learning for good work award after a facilities management apprenticeship at Chelsea FC, delivered by Capital City College, have her the confidence to speak up in meetings and mentor the club’s second apprentice. “This apprenticeship hasn’t just just changed my career,” she said. “It’s changed how I see myself.”

Teachers who’ve lived it

Several of the staff winners know their learners’ circumstances first hand. Iryna Hura arrived in London as a refugee from Ukraine and joined the ESOL teaching team at Hammersmith and Fulham’s adult learning and skills service. She researches trauma-informed teaching strategies in her own time and helps students with visa renewals and employability skills.

“I understand my students’ struggles, fear, loss, isolation, because I’ve lived them too,” she said. “I don’t teach English as a subject, I teach it as a lifeline.”

Darren Avery, strategic workforce development manager at London Ambulance Service, won the inspirational professional award for building apprenticeship pathways that have brought more than 2,500 apprentices into the service since 2017, including over 350 paramedics trained with a 90 per cent completion rate.

Employers and providers

Highways contractor Marlborough Highways took apprenticeship employer of the year for a programme targeting people not in education, employment or training, with all apprentices paid the London living wage.

West London College, where adults make up roughly 70 per cent of the student body, won the inclusive provider award, while Kundakala, a Camden charity teaching tailoring and sewing skills to women from ethnic minority and low-income backgrounds, won the outreach category.

More than 150 women have been through its co-designed programme, many launching businesses or returning to education.

What’s new for 2026

Higher education institutions are now eligible through the new participation and excellence in higher education award, recognising universities widening participation, strengthening progression pathways and supporting Londoners through higher education.

To make room, the two employer categories have been merged. The standalone apprenticeship employer of the year award, won by Marlborough Highways last year, has been folded into a single champion employer for skills and apprenticeships award covering training programmes, early careers engagement and apprenticeships.

The ten categories for 2026 are: inspirational adult learner of the year, learning for good work, learning for personal progression, the Ascentis award for distinguished provider of adult education, inclusive provider of adult education, inspirational tutor in adult education, inspirational professional in adult education, champion employer for skills and apprenticeships, participation and excellence in higher education, and the inclusive talent award for outreach and engagement into learning.

Nominations are made online at www.london.gov.uk/london-adult-learning-awards and close at 11.59pm on Monday 27 July. Winners, selected by a judging panel drawn from the capital’s adult learning sector, will be revealed at City Hall in the autumn.

Lucy Powell appointed education secretary

Lucy Powell has been appointed education secretary by prime minister Andy Burnham, returning to government less than a year after she was sacked by Keir Starmer.

The Labour deputy leader succeeds Bridget Phillipson, who had held the role since Labour entered government in July 2024 and who will remain in cabinet as minister for women and equalities.

Powell previously served as shadow education secretary between 2015 and 2016 and was a member of the Commons education committee from 2017 to 2020. She later served as leader of the House of Commons before being removed from government in September 2025.

In a post on X, Powell said she was “thrilled” to have been appointed education secretary.

“For me there’s no more important job for any government than making sure young people have the best education, the best opportunities and the best future they can. Lots to do and I look forward to getting started”.

During a debate on the technical and further education bill in 2016, Powell warned that “pernicious and deep cuts” to FE and technical education had caused lasting damage and left England behind international competitors on post-16 funding.

She also raised concerns about creating a binary divide between academic and technical education that would force 16-year-olds to choose between the two routes. Burnham has repeatedly stated his intention to raise the parity of technical education in his role as mayor of Greater Manchester and in the run-up to becoming prime minister.

As an education committee member, Powell worked on inquiries into apprenticeships, college funding and adult skills.

She will now inherit responsibility for colleges, 16-to-19 education, technical qualifications, major SEND reforms and higher education.

Her immediate post-16 challenges include overseeing the introduction of the first V Levels from September 2027, implementing new level 2 qualifications and managing continuing pressure over college finances, pay and workforce shortages.

Pepe DiIasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “Prime minister Andy Burnham has said that a ‘complete rethink’ of education is needed which builds parity between academic and technical routes and provides every young person with great opportunities. This is particularly important as we currently have one million young people who are not in education, employment, or training.

“However, a great deal of policy detail is needed about how to turn those aspirations into reality. School and college leaders are absolutely ready and willing to be part of that process and we look forward to working with the new administration to shape a fairer future.”

Responsibility for adult education, apprenticeships and Skills England was transferred from the Department for Education to the Department for Work and Pensions last September.

Powell will work alongside Pat McFadden, who has been reappointed as work and pensions secretary, to deliver the government’s post-16 education and skills reforms.

Appointments for ministers of state and junior ministers are expected in the coming days. Baroness Jacqui Smith currently holds the skills brief as a joint minister across DfE and DWP.

Powell was elected Labour deputy leader last year following her dismissal from government, with Burnham publicly supporting her campaign.

She studied for A Levels at Xaverian College, a Catholic sixth-form college in Manchester.

A spokesperson from the Sixth Form Colleges Association said: “Lucy is a longstanding champion of sixth form education and is a former sixth form college student. We know that the new secretary of state values, understands and appreciates the transformative power of 16-19 education and we look forward to working with her in the years ahead”.

McFadden reappointed work and pensions secretary

Pat McFadden has kept his job as work and pensions secretary in new prime minister Andy Burnham’s government.

McFadden, MP for Wolverhampton South East, has held the role since September 2025, when he took charge of apprenticeships, adult skills and Skills England in the machinery-of-government change that shifted the brief out of the Department for Education.

Writing on X, he said: “I’m honoured to have been reappointed as secretary of state for work and pensions. As the prime minister said, our mission as a government must be to support people into work and spread opportunity. That’s how we’ll reform the welfare system in a way that is fair & sustainable.”

During his tenure, he oversaw the repurposing of the apprenticeship levy into the growth and skills levy, expanded foundation apprenticeships into hospitality and retail and defunded 16 apprenticeship standards, including popular leadership and management courses, in a bid to free up cash in the apprenticeships budget for young people.

He commissioned Alan Milburn’s review into youth unemployment and expanded the youth guarantee into a £2.5 billion package of programmes and incentives aimed at tackling high levels of youth unemployment.

He will now see through the outstanding final report of the Milburn review, due in the autumn, along with apprenticeship co-investment and levy changes taking effect from August.

It is not yet clear whether education secretary Bridget Phillipson will keep her job.

Burnham became prime minister earlier today and is appointing members of his cabinet.

In the run-up to his coronation as Labour leader and prime minister, Burnham said he wanted to use public procurement to increase apprenticeships and end the “university-first” approach to education.

Earlier this evening, former defence secretary John Healey was appointed chancellor of the exchequer. Healey served as adult skills minister between 2001 and 2002, his first government post, before moving to the Treasury.

Appointments for ministers of state and junior ministers are expected in the coming days.

Specialist FE belongs in Burnham’s Britain

Andy Burnham believes in a place-based delivery model. Natspec has argued against place-based inclusion.

We are using the same phrase to mean two different things; we mean setting and he means geography. Once that distinction is clear, our positions are much closer than they first appear – but if we are to understand each other, one of us will need to shift our language – and I doubt it will be Andy Burnham.

‘Place’ has both positive and negative connotations. Nobody wants to be ‘put in their place’ or told to ‘know your place’. But having a ‘place at the table’, seeing things ‘fall into place’, and feeling part of a place are essential to wellbeing and growth – personal, organisational, economic and communal.

Natspec has challenged the concept of ‘place-based inclusion’ because it prioritises setting over access to appropriate expertise, a mutually supportive peer group and learner preference. We argue that inclusion isn’t about place (setting) or the preserve of mainstream.

It is wrong to expect everyone to thrive in the same type of school or college. Above all, inclusion is a sense of belonging, feeling valued and heard, and not being overlooked or drowned out by louder voices or other priorities.

That same sense of belonging and agency sits at the heart of Burnham’s “Manchesterism” and the politics of place, with its emphasis on community connection and bottom-up growth. This is a much broader understanding of ‘place’ than the one currently dominating the inclusion debate, and it is one that Natspec feels much more comfortable to sign up to.

This creates a timely opportunity for us to work with new ministers on a richer, more meaningful understanding of inclusion – one shaped by young people’s experiences, aspirations, sense of belonging and voice.

It is an opportunity for specialist colleges to show that belonging, connection and place are already at the heart of their work.

Within college, individualised programmes help learners feel valued and achieve their goals; they form deep and lasting friendships, sometimes for the first time; and they experience a profound sense of being in a place that is right for them.

Beyond the college gates, learners contribute visibly and meaningfully through local projects, volunteering, engagement with community issues, work-based training and disability awareness training for local businesses.

The new politics of place, devolution and local accountability also creates a wider opportunity for specialist FE. Burnham sees place-based development as a route to growth: giving local areas the power, responsibility and funding to shape their futures, rather than relying on short-term, centrally imposed solutions.

Meanwhile, Natspec has long argued for an inclusive system in which specialist colleges are recognised as essential partners in education and the wider economy.

Both these positions see colleges as outward-looking, collaborative partners, like that proposed in a recent Centre for Young Lives report.

The report says that education should pivot away from competition and towards community development, and argues for education settings to be held accountable for how well they collaborate and contribute to communities.

Rather than a narrow set of (largely academic) performance measures, it proposes a much broader accountability framework covering attendance, exclusions, inclusion of learners with SEND, NEET rates, employer engagement, wellbeing, safety, and economic participation.

Devolution gives specialist colleges a chance to cement their place as valued local and regional partners, including as hubs of specialist expertise supporting mainstream providers across groups of local authorities.

Treloar’s disability employment report in Hampshire, produced as part of the Local Skills Improvement Plan, shows what contributing to regional planning can look like.

As devolved bodies are judged on social and economic outcomes, specialist colleges should be recognised for their contribution to employment, independence and reduced long-term reliance on public services. In fact, specialist colleges are already a microcosm of Burnham’s place-based collaboration – they work across employers, housing, social care, health and community organisations around the needs and aspirations of young people.

It is disappointing that this contribution is too often overlooked, with specialist colleges excluded from policies and programmes because of their legal status.

Our challenge is not to abandon our position, but to explain it more clearly. With this in mind, Natspec will no longer be resisting ‘place-based inclusion’ but instead working with government, mayoral authorities and local partners on a concept of inclusion that sits comfortably within place-based politics.

A positive version of place-based inclusion would see all partners across education, health, care, employment and community life working together.

Ministers, mayoral authorities and local partners would design specialist FE into systems from the outset, not treat it as an exception, an afterthought or a distant placement of last resort. Everyone would recognise that an inclusive place is not one where every young person follows the same route, but one where they can access the support, expertise and opportunities they need to belong, progress and contribute.

If the new politics of place is about giving communities power to shape better futures, specialist colleges must be supported to take their rightful place as essential civic and economic partners.

Preston College appoints Burnley deputy as next principal

Preston College has appointed Burnley College deputy principal Kate Wallace as its next principal and chief executive.

Wallace will take up the post in late August, succeeding Simon Nixon, who is retiring after three years as principal and more than a decade at the college.

Nixon joined Preston as executive director of resources in 2015 and spent a year as interim principal before taking on the permanent role in 2023.

Wallace lands her first permanent principalship after serving as interim boss at Burnley during one of the most turbulent periods in the college’s recent history.

She took over in March 2025 after long-serving principal Karen Buchanan stepped aside shortly before an Ofsted inspection.

Buchanan was subsequently suspended pending an investigation, then quit in July.

Wallace was leading Burnley when it was downgraded to ‘requires improvement’ after Ofsted found inaccurate learner records had inflated achievement rates for young people on level 3 vocational and A Level courses.

Inspectors said the data had misled learners, parents and the local community and criticised leaders and governors for failing “for too long” to question exceptionally high achievement rates.

Wallace remained interim principal until February this year, when Jason Faulkner took over the permanent role, before returning to her deputy principal post.

She began her career as a lecturer at City of Liverpool College and went on to hold senior curriculum, apprenticeship and employer engagement roles at Accrington and Rossendale, Myerscough and Bolton colleges.

Wallace joined Burnley in 2022 as assistant principal for apprenticeships, adult and commercial provision and was promoted to deputy principal the following year. She has also worked as a contracted Ofsted inspector since 2021.

She will move between two sizeable Lancashire colleges, although their student populations differ significantly.

Burnley was allocated funding for 3,770 16-to-19 students in 2024-25, compared with 2,107 at Preston, and reported 623 higher education learners against Preston’s 145.

Preston had the larger adult education cohort, with 2,444 learners compared with Burnley’s 1,627. Their apprenticeship numbers were almost identical, at 1,186 for Preston and 1,181 for Burnley.

Burnley was also the larger employer and institution financially. It employed the equivalent of 608 full-time staff and recorded income of £45.5 million, compared with 444 staff and £34.7 million at Preston.

However, Preston recorded the larger annual surplus in 2024-25, at £2.4 million compared with Burnley’s £1.7 million.

Wallace said it was a “real privilege” to join Preston and that she was “incredibly honoured” to have the opportunity to lead it into its next chapter.

“While I still have a few busy weeks ahead at Burnley College, which I will be very sad to leave, I am already looking forward to this next chapter,” she added.

Preston chair Jose Sedano-Martinez said Wallace had demonstrated a “clear vision for the future of the college” and the collaborative leadership style and strategic ambition needed for it to “continue to thrive”.