‘Disappointment’ at 13th UTC closure

Leaders of a university technical college (UTC) in Hertfordshire have spoken of their “disappointment” after the government confirmed it will close due to low student demand.

The Watford UTC will see its current students in years 11 and 13 through to the end of the academic year before it closes. New starts for years 10 and 12 were suspended last year.

Its closure means an uncertain future for the college’s 22 staff members.

Watford UTC will be the 13th UTC to cease operation since their inception in 2010.

Year-end accounts at the college for 2022 indicated that its governing body had agreed “by mutual consent” with the Department for Education to close. A “solvent winding up” of the organisation is to be completed within 12 months of its accounts being filed. 

The college has not attracted as many students as projected since it opened in 2014, with lower funding as a consequence.

Financial figures showed a net revenue deficit of £103,000 in 2021/22, with a net book value of fixed assets valued at £7.7 million.

The Baker Dearing Trust, which issues licences and advocates for UTCs, said efforts to stabilise the college had included bolstering numbers by applying to lower its entry age and a proposal to join a multi-academy trust.

A spokesperson from the trust said those efforts offered “promising results for the long-term sustainability,” to both the school and education provision in Watford.

“We are disappointed in this outcome, especially considering the UTC’s ‘good’ rating from Ofsted and the high-quality destinations the UTC students have been able to achieve with staff,” the spokesperson added.

Ash Patil, chair of governors at the UTC, said: “We are disappointed with this outcome, as staff, governors and stakeholders have been working hard on a solution to safeguard the future of the UTC.”

Patil added that “every effort will be made to ensure students are supported to complete their studies successfully”.

The UTC’s website said it offered full-time and technically orientated courses for up to 600 students aged 14-to-19, but the college has failed to hit those numbers in recent years.

At the time of its Ofsted inspection in March 2017 it had 169 students, about half of whom were on 16-to-19 programmes.

The college currently has 54 students – 39 in year 11 and 15 in year 13. New enrolments stopped last year while the DfE considered the college’s future.

In May 2018, the Education and Skills Funding Agency handed the college a financial notice to improve because of budget concerns.

Officials tasked the UTC’s governing board with securing a balanced budget and growing student numbers at a realistic rate.

More than 50 UTCs have opened since they were launched in 2010 by former education secretary Lord Baker. Many of the colleges have, however, faced financial difficulties and struggled to attract students.

The Baker Dearing Trust shared figures last year that showed student recruitment was improving across most UTCs, but FE Week analysis found that while five are oversubscribed, more than half are less than two-thirds full. BDT has said that UTCs must be two-thirds full to be financially viable.

In November, trust chief executive Simon Connell said there were plans for three new UTCs.

Two of those were submitted in the most recent round of free school bids – one for a new UTC in Southampton being led by UTC Portsmouth, while the existing Doncaster UTC has applied for a health sciences and green technologies school.

Work on a third bid for Suffolk is ongoing with the aim of being lodged in a future application window.

Conservative MP for Watford, Dean Russell, who is also a governor at the college, paid tribute to Watford’s staff and governors and said that UTCs “have an important role to play in the country’s education”.

He added: “That being said, following exhaustive efforts to find a route to keep the UTC open with every option examined and explored, I accept the Department for Education has had to come to this decision.”

The four Ps that will ensure your external governance review brings value for money

As every FE corporation, governance professional and principal knows, under the Skills and Post-16 Education Act there is a mandatory requirement for colleges to commission an external review of governance (EGR) by July 2024 and every three years going forward.

The DfE sets out the expected terms and it is heartening that they state the focus of a review should not only include compliance, structures, policies, and processes, but also “the effect of board culture and behaviours on decision-making, including facilitating appropriate challenge and contribution, and on the culture and tone of an organisation”.

This is against the backdrop of an unfortunate narrative that seems to lay the failures of colleges at the door of governing bodies. While there are undoubtedly examples of weak governance, no board operates in isolation from its senior leadership team (SLT) or the sufficient (or otherwise) allocation of adequate resources to support governance, including in its governance professional. A governing body can only be as effective as the relationships and culture that underpin it.

On a practical level, EGRs require colleges to spend thousands of pounds at a time when there are more pressures on already stretched budgets than ever before. It is essential, therefore, that the EGR brings real value and a set of recommendations that, when implemented, will have a positive impact on the quality of the learner experience and the success of the college.

To achieve this, it is vital that everybody involved in governance — governance professionals, chairs, governors, and senior leaders —  agrees the purpose, understands the value and is prepared to contribute to the process.

The DfE guidance requires any EGR to take into account the Code of Governance (most usually the sector’s Code of Good Governance for English Colleges). The Code provides an excellent checklist of statutory, regulatory, and good practice markers to follow (namely, the process). In isolation, however, it cannot tell us how effective a college’s governance is. A board could comply fully with the Code and, arguably, still have meetings that fail to do their job.

A board could comply fully and still fail to do their job

Anyone who has worked with boards will recognise the scenario where agendas, papers, procedures, and processes are all in place, yet somehow there’s a disconnect in the boardroom. Maybe the meeting has gone rogue, the discussion has become fractious or has veered off at a tangent from the main purpose and valuable time has been lost. Or maybe proceedings are stilted, individuals are disengaged and decisions are made on the nod. People leave the meeting feeling dispirited and frustrated. All this despite having a diverse group of highly qualified, talented, and experienced individuals around the table.

The answer, to me, lies in the first P: People. People make a culture where the shared purpose (the college mission, vision, values and strategy) drives everything and strong performance oversight becomes the norm. Relationships at all levels are key: between the chair and individual governors; between governors and the SLT individually and collectively; and between the chair, principal and the governance professional. I’m not talking about being ‘mates’ — a relationship between chair and principal conducted in the pub or on the golf course is not good governance (and believe me, it happens!).

Through getting relationships right, a truly inclusive and dynamic governance culture can be built, based on mutual trust, strong communication and an understanding of and respect for each other’s roles. Within such a culture, every individual is confident to perform their role, and individual contributions — including those that don’t conform to the norm — are valued. Expectations are set and communicated, and strong challenge is part of the package when these are not met.

There is no doubt that in organisations where governance is most effective, any sense of ‘us and them’ has been eliminated and a ‘one team’ approach is evident. Governors operate true strategic leadership in pursuit of the college’s common purpose, leaving the principal and SLT to run the college, implement strategic goals and mitigate strategic risk (the performance).

Colleges should invest in developing relationships (including induction and training) not only for chairs and governors on their roles, but also for senior staff on the importance of good governance and their roles in supporting this.

Apprenticeships diversity still lags and now is the time to act

The latest data from the Department of Education on apprenticeship starts  show that Asian, Black and mixed heritage people are still significantly underrepresented in apprenticeships.

Together, these groups account for only 13.6 per cent of all apprenticeships starts though they make up 16.8 per cent of the population according to the 2021 census (not including Arab and Gypsy/Traveller communities, who also experience significant racism). The disparity is greatest for Asian people, who make up 6.4 per cent of apprenticeship starts, 3 percentage points lower than their representation in the general population (9.6 per cent).

While there has been an overwhelming drop in apprenticeship starts as a whole – a whopping 69 per cent fall between 2015/16 and 2021/22 – it is disappointing to see that so little progress has been made to improve apprenticeships uptake by ethnic minority groups.

Barriers to apprenticeships

Ethnic minority young people are twice as likely to be unemployed compared to their white peers. They are under-represented in higher paying sectors and over-represented in sectors with lower pay.

According to the Youth Futures Foundation’s 2022 survey of 2,296 ethnic minority young people, 44 per cent of young Asian people and 57 per cent of young Black people see their ethnicity as a barrier to career success. Seven in 10 have experienced some form of workplace discrimination, 2 in 5 have experienced discrimination when applying for a job or at interview, and more than half (55 per cent) of young Black people feel that employers underestimate their abilities because of their ethnic background.

Back in 2021, Lewis Hamilton’s commission found that out of 60,000 apprenticeship starts in engineering across all skill levels, just 2 per cent (1,120) were taken up by Black students and 3 per cent (1,980) by Asian students. Overall ethnic minority representation totalled a meagre 9 per cent, which compares very poorly with the school population, where some 34 per cent of students are from ethnic minority backgrounds.

Our own findings chime with the commission’s conclusions. In 2021, we found that low participation of ethnic minority young people in apprenticeships was not due to lack of interest but knowledge about career opportunities. We also found that London had the largest population of ethnic minority young people and the lowest number of apprenticeship places per capita. Meanwhile, young people told us they were not aware of where to find information about apprenticeships and were not engaged by government awareness campaigns or agencies.

Time for change

Many initiatives are trying to address some of these barriers to apprenticeships. For example, Action for Race Equality has been working with a range of top employers to hire more young Black men in construction, finance and tech roles, including apprenticeships.

Now, we are calling on the Department for Education to do more. We need ministers to work proactively with employers in the construction, digital and engineering sectors to improve the recruitment and retention of ethnic minority young people into apprenticeships, and support them in their routes to employment.

When this is done well, we know it makes a significant difference.

WTW, Thames Water and HS2 are examples of leading firms who form part of a network of Employer Champions. They are working closely with two employment initiatives, our own Moving on Up and the Mayor of London’s Workforce Integration Network to tackle the lower employment rates for Black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi people in London.

We now need more employers in multicultural cities across the country to take action to address ethnic disparities and set higher ethnicity targets to make apprenticeships reflect their communities. We believe these should be between 40 and  55 per cent of the apprentices recruited.

The government will be publishing new Positive Action guidance for employers later this year, but they must explore ways of incentivising employers, including how the levy could be used to promote positive action for under-represented groups.

This year, National Apprenticeship Week coincides with Race Equality Week. Amid a volatile economic climate, this is a crucial moment for policy makers and employers to address ethnic disparities in apprenticeships so that everyone can benefit from all they have to offer.

Why apprenticeships can be key to supporting learners with SEND into employment

We need to better understand potential barriers if we are to attract more apprentices with Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities (SEND), explains Suzanne Slater, Director of Operations for Apprenticeships at the educational charity and leader in vocational and technical learning NCFE.


When it comes to providing opportunities for learners with SEND to find jobs, as a country we’ve historically been very poor. For example, data released by the Office for National Statistics in 2021 showed that only 22% of autistic adults are in any kind of employment.


If we examine some of the reasons behind this, what’s clear is that there’s a fear among employers around SEND – particularly when it comes to supporting people in the workplace.


The National Autistic Society’s report – The Autism Employment Gap – highlighted that the majority (60%) of employers were worried about getting support for an autistic employee wrong, and the same proportion didn’t know where to go for help or advice about employing an autistic person.


These fears or concerns, even if unfounded, have led to inaction – which ultimately leaves learners with SEND missing out on all-important opportunities to thrive.
This is where I believe apprenticeships can really make a difference and, with the right guidance, employers can gain invaluable experience as well. It’s a chance to educate managers and colleagues and ensure their workplace is on the right path to becoming SEND-friendly.


If we look at the latest apprenticeship statistics, it’s a mixed picture. In 2021-22, apprentices with identified Leaner Learning Difficulties or Disabilities (LLDD) made up 14% of starts in England. This represented a yearly increase from 2020-21 of 23%, but an overall decrease of 7% since 2016-17.


Within those with identified LLDD, Dyslexia was the largest group with 17,890 learners. Autism Spectrum Disorder had 1,830 but, despite overall apprentice starts falling, this did represent a 173% increase since 2016-17 which is positive to see.


Finally, in 2020-21, overall achievement rates were 58.1%, however for apprentices with LLDD, it was lower at 54.6% and represents an overall decline since 2018-19 of 12%.
By the sector (training providers, FE colleges and awarding organisations) working closely with employers and community groups, to align thinking and resources, we can ensure any lack of confidence doesn’t continue to lead to the inaction that we’ve seen to date – and those who do become apprentices are supported to succeed.


A great example of this sector-wide collaboration is the Supporting Autistic Individuals into Apprenticeships project led by the Greater Manchester Learning Provider Network (GMLPN) in partnership with NCFE. The project is designed to equip learners with the technical and employability skills to progress into apprenticeships or other destinations.
GMLPN is a network of over 115 training providers, including independent, FE colleges, universities, and voluntary providers. It works alongside key partners, such as the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Jobcentre Plus, and the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce, to achieve closer alignment between the needs of employers, individuals, communities, and the suppliers of skills.


Since launching in 2021, the project has seen 46 referrals and GMLPN, together with NCFE, is actively supporting a number of these to find and maintain their apprenticeships or other vocational pathways. This includes providing an individualised package of support to prepare learners for their next steps, as well as support for providers, including guides and best practice.


Charlotte Jones, Operations Manager for GMLPN, said: “There are many barriers that autistic individuals face when it comes to progressing into the employment and skills system, but these barriers can be alleviated when collaboration and partnerships are in place.


“The project has enabled us to bring together the key stakeholders involved in the progression of the autistic individuals referred to the project, to discuss challenges, develop solutions and learn from one another. Apprenticeships are a great option for some autistic individuals, but other options including Supported Internships, Employer Pre-Employment Programmes and Traineeships have also proven to be a great first step to support their progression.


One learner, Sam*, had been referred by a career advisor at their sixth form college. After being partnered with an Independent Training Provider, Sam received in-depth support to prepare them for progressing onto an apprenticeship.


This included help with confidence and independence and led to Sam creating a CV and actively searching for an apprenticeship. After moving to a second provider, Sam started a Level 3 Business Administration apprenticeship and is doing well in the role.
Asked about the experience, Sam’s parents said: “It really spurred them on to actually create a CV, look for vacancies, and ask for adjustments. Something they were worried about doing previously.


“[The provider] was incredibly helpful in highlighting how different work environments might affect how an apprenticeship standard would work in practice. For example, how a business admin apprenticeship in a construction site would compare to a doctor’s surgery.”


This is only one person’s story but an incredibly powerful example of ‘right support, right place, right time’ – as outlined by the Government’s SEND review. By bringing multiple stakeholders together in one supportive environment, it’s easier to overcome barriers that are often very individual to the learner with SEND.


When it comes to autistic adults, there are common traits that both providers and employers must keep in mind when implementing recruitment policies, such as interviews, and in the day-to-day working environment.


Often autistic people will find it hard to understand what others are thinking or feeling and get very anxious about social situations, preferring to be on their own or finding it difficult to make friends. It’s important for employers to be clear that this doesn’t mean they ‘don’t fit in’ or ‘aren’t a team player’.


When it comes to managing an autistic apprentice, they can find it hard to say how they feel and take things very literally so adapting communication style accordingly is paramount to a successful working relationship. Having the same routine every day is also very important – something even more crucial as organisations adopt hybrid models.


None of this is reason enough for employers to avoid taking on an autistic apprentice or someone with SEND. In fact, autistic apprentices and employees can bring many benefits to the workplace.


Autistic employees have been found to have fewer absences, are more likely to arrive at work on time, are more reliable, and have dramatically lower turnover rates than neurotypical employees. They can also have strengths such as focus and memory, and the ability to offer a unique perspective.


If we are to ensure another generation of learners with SEND aren’t lost or left behind, we need to do more. Having only one in five autistic adults in employment is a shameful statistic. Through apprenticeships we have the opportunity to offer true equity – recognising that each person is individual and therefore has different circumstances, needs and requirements.


It’s down to all of us to ensure everyone receives the support and resources they need to reach an equal outcome and achieve their personal aspirations.


*Name has been changed


Suzanne is the Director of Operations for Apprenticeships at the educational charity NCFE. Having formerly worked at the North East Chamber of Commerce, she moved into Further Education through roles at two colleges in the region before taking up her current position. Suzanne is passionate about the transformative impact apprenticeships can have on disengaged and disadvantaged young people.
To learn more about apprenticeships at NCFE visit https://www.ncfe.org.uk/apprenticeships/

Online learning: Placing efficiency and quality at the AI revolution’s heart

In an era of tightening budgets and an ever-increasing requirement to demonstrate high-quality learning, online and blended approaches have a central role to play. Accordingly, The Skills Network have been considering the potential efficiency benefits of delivering effective learning in this new landscape.

Benefits for all

Online learning offers a raft of benefits for learners, teachers, colleges and providers. Chief among them are the following:

  • Flexibility: It allows students to access course materials and participate in activities at their own convenience – a great advantage for those who are balancing work, family, or other obligations.
  • Cost-effectiveness: It eliminates expenses associated with travel, accommodation and facilities.
  • Scalability: It allows for the delivery of education and training to a large number of students at once.
  • Pacing: It allows students to move through the material at their own pace, which benefits those who are more advanced as well as those who need more time.
  • A wider range of resources: Multimedia, interactive simulations and online libraries among others can improve the efficiency of educational delivery.
  • Collaboration: Discussion boards, chat rooms and virtual meetings can improve collaboration and communication among students and teachers, which can enhance the overall learning experience.
  • Tracking and assessment: It can track student progress and provide assessment and feedback, improving teachers’ efficiency.

Cost and investment

However, the development of good quality online learning is not cheap because it requires a significant investment of time, resources and expertise.

To truly benefit from all online learning has to offer, we have to consider curriculum development, content creation, developing and maintaining the technologies themselves, supporting and maintaining a high-quality and accessible student experience, accessibility, quality assurance and professional development.

In effect, moving into the world of online learning requires using the kinds of expertise we already have within our teams – such as subject knowledge, instructional design and communication skills – but in a totally new environment. And to that, we need to add whole new areas of professional knowledge:

  • Technological expertise,including knowledge of evolving platforms, tools and resources.
  • Project management, including the ability to plan and organize tasks and resources, set timelines, and monitor progress.
  • Graphic design, including the ability to create visually appealing content that can be navigated across different devices and screen sizes.

What Ofsted wants

Meanwhile, there is an expectation that online learning providers demonstrate their ability to provide an outstanding education that is equivalent to traditional face-to-face learning.

This means online learning should have a clear intent that should be reflected in the curriculum, course content and assessment methods. Online learning should then be implemented using technology and resources that are easy to use and reliable.

The impact of online learning should be regularly evaluated and monitored to ensure that all students are making progress and achieving their learning goals and are prepared for higher education, training or employment.

Where to start?

As with all good teaching the starting place is always a clear learning objective. After that, things diverge quickly.

Engaging interactive content requires using a variety of multimedia such as videos, images, and audio as well as interactive activities like quizzes, simulations, and discussion boards. That’s not unlike an effective classroom, but teachers will need to know how best to present this content so that it is easy to use, reliable and accessible for students who are spread out geographically and completing work in their own time.

This increases the challenge of encouraging student engagement. Online participation relies on providing students with regular feedback, support, and opportunities to assess their progress and creating opportunities for students to collaborate and communicate with each other, such as discussion boards, chat rooms, and virtual meetings.

All of which may sound intimidating, but, as with all good teaching, the key is to get started and then continuously evaluate and improve. One clear advantage is how easy technology makes it to gather feedback from students and instructors and to roll out improvements.

And if that’s not reassuring enough, there’s more good news. With nothing more than minor editing, this whole piece was written by asking ChatGPT some simple questions.

The online revolution in education is only beginning, and I’m already feeling the benefits of improved efficiency.

The Staffroom: Helping learners develop their writer’s voice

For my chapter in Great FE Teaching, I explored teaching adult literacy in a women’s centre. Here, I want to show that the ideas I set out about learners developing their writer’s voice are relevant to any setting, and that we can use writing about the familiar to remove some of the learning burden when learning new or different ways to write.

Within functional skills qualifications, learners are expected to be able to write in different styles, such as business writing (emails and reports), personal writing (emails and letters) or persuasive writing (blogs and articles). Therefore, an important aspect of teaching writing is a consideration of the format of a text, as well its purpose and audience.

When an adult learner first joins a class, as they may have been out of education for some time, there could be a significant amount of learning and adjustment to make, in terms of teaching and learning practice. This could then be further compounded by being asked to complete unfamiliar classroom writing tasks.

This is true for any new learner, as well as for those who are not exposed to these formats in their daily lives. There is a significant learning burden – or cognitive load – when thinking not only about what to write but how to write it. If we remove the burden of the content, by asking learners to write about familiar things, then that can reduce the load and enable learners to focus solely on how to write in that particular style or format.

This is scaffolding: as learners gain in confidence and as they develop their own voice, they can be asked to write on less familiar topics. The scaffold is removed as they develop their writing ability.

Eventually they come to believe in the value of their voice

As learners gain confidence in their writing skills and ability, they start to develop confidence in their own style, often known as ‘voice’. If we think about literacy as an ability we use in our everyday lives and which is shaped by our everyday lives, we can understand that our use of literacy changes depending on what it is we want to achieve. In turn, this encourages us to think of learning literacy as more than just developing a skill.

As we started to engage in real practices in my women’s centre classroom, the value and worth of all of our everyday literacy practices, such as poetry, sermon notes and reading for pleasure became more important. Something far deeper than just ‘skills’ was being developed. The women were able to develop their ‘voice’, to move their writing through genres and styles, writing for different purposes and for different audiences. This meant being able to more confidently access different types of reading and learn different types of writing.

This, I think, is useful frame for any teacher’s understanding of how we can support learners to develop literacies that are meaningful for their understanding of all subjects. Literacy is often described as a ‘gateway’ into other subjects, hence the need to be able to write in different ways and different styles, known as writing ‘realms’.

This isn’t just relevant to thinking about what we use literacy for, but also how we carry what we have learned into different domains. For example, my adult learners might want to progress to a higher education programme, yet there is no ‘academic writing’ element of the functional skills qualification. Nevertheless, learning different styles of writing by starting from low cognitive load exercises focused on familiar subjects and building confidence in their individual voices enables learners to develop their own academic writing.

Eventually, they come to believe in the value of their voice and in the power of their literacy. They can use academic reading as a model, and experiment with ways of writing effectively in an academic style.

This approach reminds me of the saying about empowerment. Teaching literacy as a remote set of skills is like giving a man a fish or two. Enabling learners to develop their voice is like teaching them to fish for themselves. The key is to start in familiar waters.

This article is one of a number of contributions to The Staffroom from the authors of Great FE Teaching: Sharing Good Practice, edited by Samantha Jones and available from SAGE.

Keegan should stick to her guns and show BTECs both barrels

Six past education secretaries have spoken. They all agree that Gillian Keegan’s decision to stop funding BTECs and other vocational courses is horrendous. It [to channel my inner Liz Truss] … is … a … disgrace. Six! Blimey. They must be right.

In other news, six people who all did A levels and degrees have decided that our technical education system is doing swell.

The government’s decision to stop funding a load of technical education courses is making some people cross. Why is this? Maybe it’s because technical education in this country is already so good. That’s why people around the world speak of the ‘UK Technical Education system’; I mean you can hardly move in the DfE for Germans coming to learn from our model.

No, I don’t think so. The truth is that we have continually underfunded technical education for years. While we have protected the schools budget, we have cut away at the budget for FE and for technical training. We have a workforce that works incredibly hard and is often incredibly skilled, yet they remain underpaid without some of the investment that has gone into the school workforce. We have also failed to give them the tools to do the job. Teachers have to ultimately cover the curriculum and prepare students to complete their qualification.

The qualifications that teachers have to work to are not good enough. (Yes, BTECs, I’m talking about you.) Why is this? It’s because for too long technical education has been for “someone else’s children”. Those in power have not been serious about reform and it pains me to see normally wise ex-politicians continuing to make this mistake.

For too long technical education has been for ‘someone else’s children’

So what exactly is wrong with the existing qualifications? Here’s the thing, good technical education does one thing: it prepares young people to get a skilled job. BTECs have not been designed with this goal in mind. They do not even include a mandatory on-the-job element. Instead, they have become a general-purpose qualification that gives children some job knowledge, but also doubles as a source of UCAS points to getting into university. (Whisper it: They do have another purpose, which is to make Pearson quite a lot of revenue.)

If you travel the world and visit really world-class technical education systems, this is not normal. Instead teachers work with qualifications that are designed to prepare young people to get good jobs.

It is time for change. That change is to T levels – a qualification designed for a good job, with a work placement required.

I know what you’re going to say. Why not keep them both? If T levels are so great, why not allow them to out-compete BTECs? If students want to do them, they will.

It sounds like a winning argument. But here’s the issue. Most colleges won’t be able to offer both T levels and BTECs in all subjects. Class sizes would be too small and the costs too high. And so the choice won’t be made by the child at all, but the college.

If you’re a college principal – one who has learned to survive and hopefully thrive in a world of unpredictable low funding – what will you choose? The qualification you have been delivering for years, or the new one? The qualification that children and parents recognise, or the new one? The qualification that doesn’t require you to find a work placement, or the new one?

I would want to choose the T Level, but I think I would choose the BTEC.

Thankfully the present education secretary also has a choice. She can listen to her six predecessors and keep the existing qualifications in place – the ones that most of us (in our heart of hearts) suspect are not quite good enough.

Or she can strike out on her own and start to build a technical education system to be proud of by turning off the existing qualifications. I know what I hope she does.

Spring budget: Time for politicians to put money where their mouth is

The end of 2022 was a difficult time for college leaders to be optimistic about the future. Like leaders in every sector, they were trying to deal with soaring energy costs, high inflation, industrial unrest and political tumult. For colleges, though, it was worse than that, with the chancellor using his autumn statement to talk about the need for investing in skills – while then only increasing school funding.

The anger and dismay this caused was only topped by the unnecessarily hasty imposition of new borrowing controls, following the ONS decision to reclassify colleges as part of the public sector. Over 50 projects were thrown into abeyance as colleges were instructed to seek consent for commercial borrowing in the middle of well-thought-through and strategically important capital programmes. Many are still waiting for the green light.

None of this is new. Many warm words have been spoken about skills in the past few years. In 2018, Teresa May launched the review of post-18 education and funding at Derby College, resulting in a report which simply and lucidly concluded that post-18 education in England is “a story of both care and neglect, depending on whether students are among the 50 per cent of young people who participate in higher education (HE) or the rest”. The next prime minister pledged to support more people to learn technical skills and launched the misleadingly-named Lifetime Skills Guarantee, which sounds a lot better than it really is.

Liz Truss didn’t say much about skills, but then she didn’t have much time to. Her successor, on the other hand, has said lots. In his new year speech he (rightly) said that “….we need to stop seeing education as something that ends aged 18 – or that sees university as the only option. With more technical education, lifelong learning, and apprenticeships.” The chancellor also got into the spirit of warm words when he set out a clear need to do a lot more for “the 50 per cent of school leavers who do not go to university” and for the “nine million adults with low basic literacy or numeracy skills”.

Hope springs eternal that politicians will face up to the realities

Hope springs eternal that one day, one of these politicians will properly face up to some of the realities. Realities which show how far backwards we have gone over the past decade on investment in all of the things the government says it wants to prioritise. At today’s prices, the adult education budget was around £4.4billion in 2010. Today, it is around £1.5billion. Even the poster-boy apprenticeship programme has seen what the Sutton Trust called a “staggering decline” in numbers, falling by almost a quarter between 2017 and 2018, with higher falls in areas of high deprivation. There are many more similar statistics.

At the same time as the drop in overall funding, the funding rate per learner has not changed in over a decade. The average funding per adult learner in colleges is about £1,000 (compared with around £9,000 in universities). If that had risen with inflation since 2010, it would now sit at over £1,400.

No wonder we can all agree that “more needs to be done”. Our submission to the treasury ahead of the spring budget sets out the case and asks for actions in four areas: staffing challenges, financial viability, capital financing and borrowing, and realising the opportunities created by public sector status.

It’s a realistic and proportionate set of requests at a time when, quite simply, we want the chancellor to put his money where his mouth has been for some time now.

Colleges are vital, efficient and effective anchor institutions that need proper long-term investment. Yet they have been starved, overlooked and squeezed for 12 years. It really is time to do more for them, so that they can do more for the millions of people who rely on them for achieving their ambitions, realising their talents and getting on in life and work.

Digital skills: Gaps and shortages mean it’s time to scale up to level up

We’ve heard a lot about levelling up in recent years, and politicians of every colour appear committed to addressing social mobility in regions considered to be lagging behind. Ada, the National College for Digital Skills, recently submitted views to the All Party Parliamentary Group enquiry on the Levelling Up White Paper, setting out how we believe high-quality technical qualifications and apprenticeships hold the key.

According to Tech Nation, tech pay is on average 80 per cent higher than salaries for other jobs in the UK. And there are certainly jobs to go around: currently, around 600,000 tech jobs go unfilled every year due to a gap in digital-trained workers.

One key problem is supply. Over half of secondary schools in the UK were not even offering computer science as a GCSE in 2021, and the number of 14-to-19 students taking technical IT or computing qualifications has fallen by one-third since 2015. We should not be surprised that fewer than half of British employers believe young people are leaving education with sufficient digital skills to access the industry.

Another is access. Just 19 per cent of the sector’s employees come from a lower socio-economic background.

So what can the government do to ‘level up’ tech and how can apprenticeships play a role?

Nurture the pipeline

Since our launch in 2016, Ada has been on a mission to fill the tech skills gap overall, and to empower young people currently who are underrepresented in the industry.

We run targeted outreach activities at schools and work with local authorities where we feel change needs to be made. We use industry experience days to give students opportunities to build networks they could not typically reach. And we offer students coaching to build confidence and tailored support to navigate company recruitment processes and access high-quality employment opportunities that might otherwise not be available.

These tactics are bearing fruit: 38 per cent of our students come from lower income backgrounds and we are the top of the country’s BTEC computing results. If other providers could emulate our approach, this impact could be amplified.

A role for industry

Dismal job vacancy rates indicate tech training is not meeting sector needs. So there’s an obvious opportunity to get industry more closely involved in qualification design.

Ada works intensively with employers’ technical teams on the design and delivery of our education programmes. Our degree-level apprenticeship programmes, validated by the Open University, are designed with dozens of the biggest names in the tech industry – including Salesforce, Deloitte, Bank of America, Siemens, Cazoo and Clear Score.

As a result, these apprenticeship programmes are seen as an aspirational alternative to university. And they lead to high-quality jobs: 95 per cent of our apprentice alumni are in permanent employment in the tech sector or enrolled in higher education courses.

Prioritising industry partnerships in the design and delivery of tech qualifications is clearly something worth building on.

Expand the footprint

Talent exists across the UK, so we need to expand tech training out of London.

Under the umbrella of the Greater Manchester Institute of Technology (GMIoT), Ada has ambitious plans to refurbish a former free school and create a new hub in the north west. Identifying under-utilised public buildings like this means we can establish new campuses more cost-effectively. And the investment is a no-brainer: at capacity, we will be able to work with around 1,300 young people a year and deliver a quick return to the local and national economy, as many learners will be salaried apprentices earning over £20,000 a year.

This expansion does not need to be unique to Manchester, or Ada. Where there is a good volume of employers with technical teams, there is an opportunity for Ada to establish a hub, or for others to emulate our success. The aim must be to open up pathways for aspirational young talent by putting opportunities to learn and work within their geographical reach.

This National Apprenticeship Week, when the power of technical training is top of mind, we need to scale up to level up. Technical skills are in demand everywhere, and we must support a wider pool of young people from every region to access these rewarding careers.