About 3 years ago, I was finishing college and trying to look ahead to a bright future. Finishing education and starting to look for work is daunting – every young person has been there and I was no exception. But my disability meant that the idea of getting a full-time paid job doing work I would enjoy, especially in the NHS, seemed nearly impossible. Only about 5 per cent of people with a learning disability like me have a paid job in the UK, so I was likely to become one of the 95 per cent who don’t.
Through my college, a mentor recommended doing a supported internship – a programme for young people with learning disabilities which is just like a usual internship in a workplace but with extra support from a job coach.
During my time at college, I was very quiet and often struggled to adjust to new environments, but my tutors helped my confidence grow and they could see my caring side; they already knew I could be a great care worker. They encouraged me to apply for an internship at my local NHS Foundation Trust.
One of the things I really wanted to do (but was also really scared to do) was to learn to use a defibrillator and the programme promised me that. Little did I know that learning to use a defib was going to be just a small part of the exciting, sometimes nerve-wracking but always important jobs I would get to do on a daily basis.
Doing an internship in the NHS is extraordinary – no two days are the same and no two people you meet, patients or staff, are the same. During my rotations (the internship allows you to try working in different departments on rotation), I met people and families I really wanted to help. Like the lady who was looking after her husband who’d had two strokes and was on her own without any family, to whom I lent a compassionate ear. Or the lady who never took part in any day activities because she only spoke Urdu and needed a translation sheet.
My colleagues can’t believe I was the quiet one in college
It turns out that not only could I work on the ward, but because I am compassionate and pay attention to needs, I could really help patients – sometimes better than any of the permanent staff on the ward. For listening to and helping patients and developing tools like translation sheets to improve our work, I was given a Calderdale and Huddersfield Foundation Trust star award. It’s a moment I am really proud of.
That’s not to say that every day at my job has been easy. It has been three years of ups and downs, but earlier this year I got a permanent paid position with the trust as an engagement support worker, and I could not be prouder. I am also a learning disability champion within the trust.
Nowadays, I am confident and chatty. In fact, I recently gave a speech at the nursing and midwifery conference. My colleagues can’t believe I was the quiet one in college. I have also been very lucky. The rest of the team really values my opinion, so while they have been teaching me how to work in the fast-paced ward environment, I have been teaching them to better understand patients and colleagues with learning disabilities. I think it’s a win-win for everyone!
This coming September, I will be speaking to other young people with learning disabilities who are coming onto the supported internship programme to tell them about my journey. I just can’t wait, because I know the internship will change their lives like it changed mine.
Toseef is an Engagement Support Worker at Calderdale & Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust and a former DFN Project SEARCH supported intern. Before his internship, he studied at Calderdale College.
In this time of crisis, and it is a crisis, there should be one message and one alone coming from our political leaders. That message is more funding.
To be specific, we need to see an increase by a minimum increase of 10 per cent across all FE funding, distributed through per-learner funding. This needs to happen now. Not in months. Not after another review. Not after a general election. Now!
Yes, we need a coherent government skills strategy, but that is not what the sector is crying out for. I talk to leaders across the sector and the message is clear: Current funding is not enough to meet the minimum expectations of employers, learners and Ofsted.
Providers are not asking for gold-plating here. They just want to offer a high-quality experience that boosts learning and transforms lives. But the cost increases everyone is facing make that impossible.
This is not news to anyone. There is no point feeding the public headlines about ambitions for the future while the system that delivers it collapses around us. Policy makers can design whatever skills system they like on paper; without funding, it will fail our young people, adult learners and the economy, hurting the most disadvantaged first.
There is not point trumpeting the amount of funding that is available either. However plentiful it sounds to the layperson, the sector needs more. It won’t be fobbed off with standard responses about numbers of billions or the biggest investment ever. There simply isn’t enough, and too much of what there is doesn’t make it to the frontline. The problem is the amount of funding made available per learner per course.
Providers can increase group sizes, reduce programme hours, increase staff delivery hours and wipe out other expenditures. But all that was already happening before we faced spiralling costs, increased regulation and increasing employer and learner expectations.
We have reached a critical point. Providers are going bankrupt, the range of provision is being slashed and all I hear as I travel the country is: “Mark, I have nothing left to cut”.
Generally, the learners that need FE the most are the poorest funded and the first to lose opportunity. Apprenticeships are part of the solution, but they are far from the whole solution. The whole adult skills system is in a perilous state.
There is no space left for innovation and efficiency
Funny enough, I don’t hear complaints about lack of opportunities for management degree apprenticeships, but I do hear plenty about the challenges faced by the care, childcare, hospitality and retail sectors – the very jobs we classed as essential during the pandemic and asked so much sacrifice from.
These are entry-level jobs that are vital for the overall performance of our economy. So let’s get real here. Yes, degree apprenticeships are fantastic and should be encouraged. And yes, far more university students should be doing a degree apprenticeship. But is the maximum funding of £27,000 really causing a crisis and the withdrawal of provision?
And by the way, in everyone else’s book, degree-level apprenticeships are HE, not FE. You can’t offer a degree apprenticeship without degree-awarding powers. So why aren’t HE putting their hands in their pockets?
I realise there is no ‘magic money tree’, so it’s time to compromise.
If there is no more money and the system needs more funding per learner, we have to lower the number of learners the sector caters for. If it seems crazy to be arguing for lower numbers when skills are at the top of everyone’s agenda, that’s because it is. But the mad reality we find ourselves in is that without it we will see providers continuing to go bust, colleges in deficit and the quality of delivery declining.
Ofsted have been explicit: Poor funding is already impacting quality. There is no point in further supercharging numbers if the price per learner does not allow for the expected quality of delivery to happen.
FE has always had a lower funding than the rest of the education system and it deserves praise for creating innovative and efficient ways of maintaining quality. But there is no space left for innovation and efficiency.
So if your skills strategy isn’t to fund the sector, it is no strategy at all.
Di’Iasio will replace Geoff Barton in April 2024. He is standing down after seven years in the post.
Di’Iasio said it was a “huge honour to have been selected as general secretary and to have the opportunity to represent our fantastic members across the UK in their work on behalf of children and young people”.
“I will speak truth to power, with the courtesy and respect that is a hallmark of ASCL, but with an absolute determination to produce a better settlement for education.”
Colleges ‘must have funding and staff they need’
He said schools, colleges and trusts “simply must have the funding and staff they need to produce the successful educational outcomes we want to see for all our children and young people”.
Geoff Barton
“I look forward to leading a superb team of highly committed and talented ASCL staff and working alongside our elected members on ASCL Council whose invaluable work ensures that the association is able to represent the voice of leaders accurately and authentically.”
Di’Iasio has previously been an executive headteacher of two schools and served as assistant director of education in Rotherham.
Barton said he was “absolutely confident that Pepe will take ASCL from strength to strength”.
“He is an outstanding leader with a deep belief in the power of education to transform lives, and a total commitment to support and represent our members in their vital work in the nation’s schools, colleges and trusts.
“He will be an eloquent advocate for the profession who speaks from the heart.”
ASCL has 24,000 members in total. Around 500 members work in colleges.
The rise in underspend follows an increase to the overall apprenticeship budget between those years: it rose from £2.466 billion in 2021-22 to £2.554 billion in 2022-23 to ease pressure being caused by soaring numbers of higher-level apprenticeship starts, which are the most expensive to deliver. There were also no employer cash incentives in 2022-23.
In response to a written parliamentary question from Lord Storey, DfE minister Baroness Barran stated that in the last two financial years, on average, 98 per cent of the English apprenticeships budget was spent.
She said that any underspends in overall departmental budgets by the end of the financial year are returned to the Treasury.
Barran added that as employers choose which apprenticeships they offer and when; annual spend of the apprenticeship budget is “subject to employer demand”.
The underspend for 2022-23 means that £2.178 billion of apprenticeship funding has been handed back to the Treasury by the DfE in the six years since the UK-wide apprenticeship levy was launched in 2017.
These underspend figures are for England only. The devolved administrations also receive funding from the levy to invest in their skills programmes separately.
The DfE’s apprenticeship budget is used to fund training and assessment for new apprenticeship starts in all employers. It means that levy payers’ unspent funds are used to support additional costs and apprenticeships in smaller employers.
The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education warned that the apprenticeships budget was heading for an overspend back in 2018. A National Audit Office report a year later said there was a “clear risk” the programme was not financially sustainable under current arrangements, and costs of training apprentices were around double what was expected in 2015.
But pressure was eased when the Covid-19 pandemic hit in March 2020 and numbers of new starters fell.
The government has committed to increasing England’s apprenticeship budget by £200 million to £2.7 billion by 2024/25.
See this week’s edition of FE Week for more analysis.
The government is planning to cut private providers out of the FE teacher training market due to “quality and value for money” concerns amid the college staff recruitment crisis.
Under proposals published today, the Department for Education said it wants to remove access to student finance for pre-service further education initial teacher training (ITT) courses from 2024/25, except where courses are delivered by, or in partnership with, HE providers with degree awarding powers.
The department also plans to force FE teacher training organisations to be accredited by the DfE to establish a “clearly defined quality bar” that providers must meet before accessing public funding.
Accredited providers would need to submit more robust and prescribed data relating to their ITT courses and students’ data to DfE to better manage the market.
Teachers on pre-service ITT courses complete their qualification before they take up a teaching job. The DfE said teacher training for the FE sector that is delivered in-service, or “on-the-job” will continue to have access to public money through grant-funded programmes, such as Taking Teaching Further.
Minister for skills, apprenticeships and higher education Robert Halfon said the proposals “should give people and providers the confidence that the quality of FE initial teacher training is top-tier and allow the FE sector to contribute towards its improvement”.
‘Unprepared to teach effectively’
In a consultation, the DfE said the overall volume of pre-service FE ITT delivered by private training providers – much of which is funded by student finance – has grown “significantly” in recent years, despite “increasingly acute” pressures on teacher recruitment.
Recently-published FE workforce data collection shows that, by the end of the 2021/22, 5.4 teaching posts per 100 were vacant. Vacancy rates were as high as 12.9 posts per 100 in construction, planning and the built environment, and over 10 posts per 100 in subjects as diverse as electronics, agriculture and horticulture, design, engineering and manufacturing, and accounting and finance.
The DfE claimed there is “emerging evidence”, including Ofsted reports, that gives “cause for concern about the quality” of some pre-service courses provided by private training companies.
It added that colleges have warned that pre-service students who have come to them from private training providers have “sometimes been unprepared to teach effectively in the sector and have required significant re-training”.
Latest government data shows there were 11 private providers delivering FE ITT in 2021/22. But the current figure is likely to be higher because the provider “market fluctuates rapidly”, the DfE said.
The department’s consultation said there was “no evidence” to suggest its proposed reforms would have a “significant negative impact” impact on the supply and availability of “appropriately trained” teachers ready to enter the FE sector.
It claimed that the “most effective way” to combat the teacher shortage in FE is through in-service training, where there is a direct relationship between the recruitment of a trainee and the filling of a teacher vacancy.
David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said he “welcomes” efforts to drive up the quality of ITT training in FE.
“It is vital that people moving into colleges to teach receive a high-quality training experience that prepares them to share their skills in our colleges, and that more people recognise that colleges are great places to work,” he added.
The consultation, which closes at 11:59pm on November 6, outlines plans to accredit publicly-funded ITT providers with the DfE. Currently, providers of FE ITT do not need to be accredited which means there is “no clearly defined quality bar” for providers, the DfE said.
That also means there is a “lack of stability and sustainability in the FE ITT sector” with new providers coming on stream and existing providers ceasing provision in a “largely unmanaged way, leading to significant capacity fluctuations in the system that do not necessarily reflect the wider teacher supply needs of the sector”.
The DfE also said “more regular and comprehensive” data collection from providers of FE ITT would mean it can “assess the size, performance, quality, and outcomes of the FE ITT sector”. Currently, there is “some usable data” on the ITT sector, but the DfE argued it “does not allow us to construct a comprehensive and robust picture” of how it is performing.
Halfon said securing well-trained teachers in high-priority FE subjects is “crucial”.
“Industry professionals know better than most the skills that employers need, and we recognise we need more teachers with specific expertise to share their knowledge and extend the ladder of opportunity to people from all walks of life,” he added.
Dr Jo Saxton will stand down as chief regulator of Ofqual at the end of this year, the organisation has announced.
She will take up the role of chief executive of UCAS in January. She will leave the exams regulator after just over two years in the job.
Ofqual will “soon” begin a public appointment process for a new chief regulator. However, it seems the regulator does not expect a replacement to be in place by January.
The organisation said the “existing senior leadership team and governance of Ofqual will provide continuity of leadership to the organisation and an interim chief regulator will be confirmed in due course”.
Ofqual could have sixth chief in four years
It means Ofqual faces potentially having its sixth chief regulator in four years. Sally Collier resigned in 2020 over that year’s grading fiasco, and was replaced on an interim basis by Dame Glenys Stacey, who was also her predecessor.
Simon Lebus replaced Stacey, again on an interim basis, in January 2021, and then Saxton took over in September of that year.
Saxton said it was a “significant honour to hold public office and I take my duties and commitments to students of all ages extremely seriously”.
“I am very proud of what we have achieved over the past two years. I fundamentally believe that a return to exams and pre-pandemic grading was the right and fair thing to do for students of all ages.
“I will be sad to leave so many brilliant colleagues and friends at Ofqual, but I know that the organisation has strong foundations and is extremely well positioned to continue to ensure public confidence in our qualifications system.”
Education secretary ‘hugely grateful’
In her role, Saxton has presided over the return to in-person exams following two years impacted by Covid, and a return to pre-pandemic grading this year.
Education secretary Gillian Keegan said she was “hugely grateful to Jo for guiding Ofqual through the challenges that followed the pandemic, ultimately overseeing a smooth return to exams and normal grading”.
“Jo’s knowledge and experience have been invaluable as we’ve navigated the past two years and returned to the exam arrangements that best serve young people.”
Ofqual chair Sir Ian Bauckham also paid tribute. He said Ofqual was “enormously grateful to her for her determined and principled leadership”.
The Liberal Democrats would increase per-student funding for colleges above inflation every year, widen the apprenticeship levy, and provide an annual tutoring fund to support those struggling with English and maths if they form the next government.
The party passed policies on further education and skills at its annual party conference in Bournemouth as it prepares for the next general election.
Among the policies is a new plan for a funding pot to support tutoring for students. The plan would see a £390 million fund established to support small group sessions in schools and colleges. The party said it could support up to 1.75 million young people a year.
Munira Wilson, the Liberal Democrats’ education spokesperson, pointed to analysis showing that 15.8 per cent of pupils who meet or exceed the “expected standard” in reading and maths at key stage 2 do not go on to achieve a grade 4 or “standard pass” in GCSE English and maths.
The “vital boost” from the Lib Dems would help those students to achieve those grades, the party said. It comes as the government prepares to switch off its tuition funding programme in summer 2024.
Julian Gravatt, deputy chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said he was “pleased” by the policy, and that next summer would be a “particularly bad time to end the 16 to 19 tuition fund”. He cited figures showing enrolment in colleges has grown, meaning that around 40,000 more students will need to resit their English GCSE than last year, and 20,000 more will need to re-sit their Maths GCSE.
The Lib Dems also committed to increasing per-student funding in schools and colleges above inflation every year. The party would extend the pupil premium, a grant provided to schools to support the attainment of disadvantaged pupils from reception to year 11 currently, to students aged between 16 and 18.
Its pledge for a £10,000 “skills wallet” for adults was also reiterated, which the party fronted prior to the 2019 election. The proposal would see every adult get £10,000 to spend on “education and training throughout their lives”, according to the party’s plans.
When it was first introduced as a policy, the party said they would put the cash into a “skills wallet” over a thirty-year period; £4,000 by the age of 25, £3,000 at 40 and another £3,000 at 55.
The Lib Dems also pledged to increase apprentice pay to “at least the minimum wage” to counter high dropout rates, and to expand the “broken” apprenticeship levy into a “broader and more flexible” skills and training levy. That is another reiteration from its 2019 manifesto.
Sarah Olney, the party’s treasury and business spokesperson said the plans to reform the apprenticeship levy are part of “a new industrial strategy to get our economy growing strongly again and tackle the cost-of-living crisis”.
Ofsted’s national director of education Chris Russell will retire at the end of this year after just over two years in the role, FE Week has learned.
It means that both Amanda Spielman, the current chief inspector, and one of her most senior officials will depart the inspectorate in December.
Russell has worked at Ofsted since 2006, initially as an inspector and then in various regional director posts before being promoted to national director in September 2021, replacing Sean Harford.
FE Week understands he had passed retirement age and saw the upcoming change in leadership as a good opportunity to stand down.
Sir Martyn Oliver, currently chief executive of the Outwood Grange Academies Trust, is due to take over as chief inspector in January.
Russell’s departure follows that of strategy director Chris Jones, another one of the five officials that sit below the chief inspector in Ofsted’s management structure. He joined the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities in June.
The advert states the postholder will be “responsible for the improvement and development of Ofsted’s inspection methodology for all stages of education”.
‘A clear focus on children and students’
They will ensure that Ofsted “maintains a clear focus on children and students and acts as a force for improvement”. They are also responsible for “inspector training and quality assurance of their work”.
Amanda Spielman
The job description added that the postholder will “ensure Ofsted maintains a clear focus on children and students and acts as a force for improvement, whilst ensuring the development of high-quality policy, guidance and frameworks across education”.
“As a member of Ofsted’s executive board, you will also be taking a full corporate leadership role influencing our strategic direction, policy and practice and through this, impacting the lives of millions of children and learners.”
Applications close on October 9.
It comes at a time of crisis for the watchdog, which has come under sustained criticism for its handling of the death of headteacher Ruth Perry.
Clare Howard, chief executive of Natspec, the body representing specialist colleges, is determined to get their voices heard. But she has been having a tough time of it lately.
Further education may feel overlooked by the DfE when compared with schools, but specialist colleges sometimes feel like the ultimate Cinderella service of the education world. Yet so much of the DfE’s SEND policy agenda depends on them, and it could make or break them right now.
Although around 10 per cent of the 80,000 16 to 25-year-olds with education, health and care plans (EHCPs) attend a specialist college, the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and alternative provision (AP) green paper, touted as the solution to fix the broken 0-25 SEND system, failed to mention specialist colleges at all.
The subsequent improvement plan, unveiled in March, did mention reviewing how specialist colleges could be more integrated, but Howard is now concerned that any commitment to recognise the part played by specialist colleges is being overlooked.
And, while national headlines have been focused on reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) in school buildings, the issue is of concern to specialist colleges too, but they have not all been able to report whether RAAC is in their estate.
Despite the DfE’s urgent plea for surveys looking for RAAC to be completed, specialist college staff have “struggled to access” the DfE’s survey portal. They also appear to be blocked from the capital funding for mitigation works provided to other education bodies.
“This is a major omission from DfE policy which needs to be rectified urgently,” says Howard.
She points out how, if their buildings did collapse due to RAAC, it would be harder for specialist colleges to evacuate their vulnerable students.
So far, only one specialist college, Royal College Manchester, has been recorded by the DfE as having RAAC on site. It was forced to move all students from one building to another over Easter.
But some 58 per cent of specialist college buildings need “urgent repair”. And they are also not eligible for the £1.5 billion FE capital transformation fund.
Clare Howard, Natspec chief executive
‘An afterthought’
Howard appreciates that hers is a complex sector for ministers to get their heads around, partly because of the wide mix of different types of SEND provision. Most settings, although called “colleges”, are charities or non-profit companies.
Although they are publicly funded, they have never had an official legal status of their own, so their governance arrangements vary.
Getting the DfE to understand how these colleges operate is not helped by the revolving door of ministers; the latest SEND minister, David Johnston, is the seventh to oversee the SEND reforms since a landmark review of the “broken” system was launched in 2019.
“Because the need in schools is so acute, a lot of policy and data collection is always focused on schools,” Howard says. “Officials are so focused on trying to solve the five to 16 and early years problems, they don’t have the capacity or expertise to look at [SEND in] FE. We’re a bit of an afterthought.”
While the DfE has been looking the other way, the specialist college sector has been rapidly expanding. When Howard was appointed to lead Natspec in 2016, it had 75 members. Now it has over 120, catering for around 8,000 students, reflecting the rapid rise in the number of young people with EHCPs.
And demand is only likely to keep soaring over the next decade as the young children currently being identified with SEND needs reach college age.
Visiting specialist colleges is the part of her job that Howard enjoys the most, and she was “desperate” to get back to those visits after Covid. She is on a mission to visit all Natspec’s members and has managed 95 so far. “The trouble is that new ones keep joining!” she says.
They range from newer colleges serving just 10 students to more established institutions with up to 400. It is “almost impossible” to describe a typical specialist college, she says, as they are all “so different”.
Some do significant outreach work in students’ homes or workplaces, with multi-disciplinary teams working across education, health and care. Some specialise in a particular need, like autism or visual impairment, while others have a particular therapeutic approach or a vocational specialism.
On Howard’s visits, she “could be arriving at a business park, a retail outlet, hotel, pub, farm, buildings in residential areas, heritage or visitor centres – or anything in between”.
Outgoing children’s minister Claire Coutinho and new schools minister David Johnston
‘False economy’ growth
Rather than celebrating, all these new specialist colleges are a cause of “concern” for Howard. Local authorities which hold the purse strings have been asking schools – and in some cases care providers, charities and even parent groups – to open post-19 centres which then become specialist colleges with an Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) contract.
Although councils assume “they’ll get it cheaper” that way, the set-up and recruitment costs make it a “false economy” and “not the best way of planning new provision”.
Natspec would rather see more outreach and satellite sites being built through existing providers. They have published advice on their website designed to warn those interested in setting up new provision “just to be really careful”.
“Quite often, when schools open [specialist] colleges, they get a shock how different FE is from school provision,” Howard says.
New specialist colleges only get inspected by Ofsted once the ESFA provides a contract.
But because so many councils are yet to put new providers forward for this, “we are discovering quite a few unregistered providers”. It is a “big issue … and makes it difficult to properly assess sufficiency. We want to have a decent understanding of specialist provision.”
And, when these providers are inspected, Howard says they “sometimes find it difficult to get up to speed quickly enough”, and whilst some do really well at first inspection (two have achieved outstanding judgements), “others take longer before they are graded good”.
Clare Howard, chief executive, Natspec
Transition turmoil
The pandemic hit specialist colleges hard, as they were scrambling to safeguard their vulnerable cohort and decipher changing guidance. It was also a challenging time in Howard’s life. In March 2020 she found a lump in her breast and spent much of the pandemic receiving chemotherapy.
Since then, the sector has been hit by staffing shortages, blockages in the SEND system, the energy crisis, late placements for students and councils increasingly reluctant to pay the high-needs funding that these colleges need.
One of the biggest challenges now is the mounting uncertainty over students’ transitions in and out of colleges.
Due to delays getting EHCPs updated, which legally should be done by March each year (but “that never happens”), colleges are unsure in August how many students to expect and so cannot then employ the right staffing numbers. This has been an issue since Howard started at Natspec, but higher demand and a national shortage of educational psychologists means the problem is getting worse.
On occasion, provision has been “lost” because “places aren’t confirmed early enough, and the colleges haven’t had time to recruit and budget for the staff they need”.
Then there is the transition out of college once students have achieved their educational outcomes, which is becoming harder because the services they require – social care, supported living or employment or volunteering opportunities – are “not coming together as they should”.
“Often, it’s the postcode lottery of local authorities. The pressures on local government are massive right now.”
Sport is Howard’s second passion after FE. She spent much of her early career working with organisations to boost its uptake.
Clare Howard in 1994 with her basketball team
Sports focus
But, as a keen basketball and netball player, playing sports has cost her dearly. She has had five operations since 2003 on her now “very well scarred” knees. The last one was in 2021 while she was recovering from cancer.
Knee trouble has not put her off sport, however. She is now running, skiing, open water swimming and even back playing back netball and basketball occasionally.
Howard says the need to be active was “engrained” within her from an early age. She has “no idea” whether she would have been labelled hyperactive as a child today, “but I’m very pleased that I wasn’t diagnosed with anything or put on drugs”.
Sport “definitely helped” her as an outlet for her “frustrations”. Her history and politics degree at Reading University, specialising in American racial violence, involved “few lectures”. This left her free to “play basketball all day”.
Clare Howard and friends at a Crystal Palace game (her favourite club)
Rebellious leanings
Rebelling against authority has also been a theme in her life. Despite coming from a family of teachers, she was not afraid to give her own teachers at school in Croydon a hard time. She challenged “poor decision-making” and “injustice” at a time when pupils were “still caned and thrown against gym walls”.
“I got into arguments with teachers if I felt they weren’t listening to me. My team giggle at me now when they hear my school stories.”
She set out to follow in her family’s footsteps and did a PGCE, but never got her NQT after getting a job with the Sports Council (Now Sport England) as a regional officer. She went on to strategic planning roles with different organisations and became fascinated by the interconnection of systems.
It all harks back to her love of Rubik’s Cubes as a child. “I love wicked problems, I love complexity,” she says.
She came to realise that, to find a solution, you must first define the complexity of the question.
Howard’s rebel leanings came out again while working for PMP Consultancy, which grew from a team of eight to a “corporate machine” in her seven years there. By then a mum of three, craving better work-life balance, she began “rejecting authority” at the firm, which has since gone bust.
She formed her own consultancy firm, Prospects4Sport, bringing on board some former colleagues. One project involved doing a national review of college sport, which led to her next career move, as head of sport policy at the Association of Colleges, just before the 2012 London Olympics.
Moving onto her current role was a “massive learning curve”, as Howard was the first chief to join Natspec without a specialist college background.
She has grown her staff from a single part-time post to a team of 11, and an additional network of more than 20 associates for training and development.
As well as undertaking lobbying and policy work, Natspec provides CPD and assistive technology advice and is one of four national Centres for Excellence in SEND.
Howard says that Natspec always strives to deliver for their members, but “the strength of the organisation is in the networks, and member colleges never cease to amaze me by how they support each other”.
