‘Difficult to swallow’: Leaders criticise exam fee hikes of up to 17%

Schools and colleges face having to pay out tens of thousands more in GCSE and A-level exam fees this year after boards hiked prices by up to 17 per cent. 

Both Edexcel, run by Pearson, and OCR have raised fees for all 2023 exams by a flat 6 per cent.

England’s largest exam board AQA has hiked prices by between five and 17 per cent, although it still has the lowest prices overall.

Exam boards, which will earn several million pounds more from schools and colleges after the rises, said they needed to cover rising costs.

But leaders said the increases were “inappropriate” as schools and colleges battle soaring energy and staffing costs. 

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and Colleges Leaders, said the rises constituted “another cost pressure on schools and colleges which simply cannot afford such increases without additional government funding being made”.

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Geoff Barton

“At a time when schools and colleges are under growing financial pressure, we would expect exam boards to restrain costs as much as possible. Certainly an increase that is above the pay award for most teachers is difficult to swallow.”

Frustration over fees grew last year after FE Week‘s sister publication and Schools Week revealed boards were raising prices despite exams being cancelled and teachers instead deciding grades.

AQA has hiked prices for A-level art by 17 per cent – from £89.65 to £105.10. Other subjects have seen rises of between 5 and 12 per cent.

The non-for-profit organisation said increases for the majority of its qualifications were “well-below inflation” – currently at 9.9 per cent.

Rises above inflation are to “better reflect the market and true costs of delivering these qualifications”.

Fees for A-level biology, chemistry and physics have risen by 10 per cent while GCSE geography and art have risen by 12 per cent. A maths GCSE now costs £41.20, up from £39.15.

The board’s fees remain the cheapest and last year were only raised 2 per cent after a backlash when exams were cancelled. 

Tracey Newman, AQA’s director of customer and sales, said her organisation understood “that no-one wants to see prices increase, but like many organisations we’re experiencing a rise in the cost of providing our services”.

“As an independent charity, we don’t charge more than we need to for our qualifications and services, and we’ve kept entry fee increases well below the rate of inflation for the majority of our qualifications.”

AQA aims to keep prices “fair and competitive” and fees are reinvested into developing qualifications, maintain a wide choice of subjects and help support and train teachers.

‘We recognise budgets are stretched’

Edexcel, owned by Pearson, has hiked fees by six per cent this year. The cost of a maths GCSE is now £46.80 compared to £44 last year. 

A spokesperson said they recognised school and college budgets “are stretched” and “we will always aim to keep fee increases to a minimum while providing as much value for money as possible”.

Likewise OCR, owned by Cambridge Assessment, is hiking fees by 6 per cent. A maths GCSE now costs £47, up from £44.25.

An OCR spokesperson said they knew schools and colleges were facing “several financial challenges” and “aim to keep any fee increases as low as possible”. 

They use fee funds to provide subject resources, training, access to subject experts and new technology. It is not-for-profit.

All three boards have hiked fees by around 13 per cent since 2020 – although some subjects for AQA have risen by between 15 and 20 per cent.

However, each board part-refunded schools and colleges when exams were cancelled.

OCR gave the biggest rebate of 42 per cent in 2021, while Pearson gave 33 per cent. AQA initially gave 26 per cent before refunding an extra £3.5 million this year.

NHS targets UTCs for ‘digital health’ skills shortfall

Health education bosses are piloting a new two-year programme at university technical colleges to help tackle a shortfall of 30,000 NHS employees skilled in “digital health”. 

Health Education England has teamed up with the Baker Dearing Trust – the body which supports UTCs – for a two-year trial of a digital health pathway for students aged 14 to 19 at 10 UTCs. 

Kate Ambrosi, director of innovation and learning at the Baker Dearing Trust, said the plan is to “improve the digital skills of health specialists,” and “also improve the awareness of the amazing health careers for our digital specialist young people”. 

Ambrosi added: “We are focused at the moment on improving the digital skills of our health students, the health knowledge and awareness of careers for digital students, and also forming this middle way which combines the two.” 

The pathway is available to all students on existing health and digital courses at levels 2 and 3 at the participating UTCs, according to HEE. Crucially, the project ties up with NHS trusts so that students can do projects and link up with industry early on in the process. 

For example, UTC Sheffield Olympic Park Legacy, which has been leading on the pilot, has partnered with Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, as well as Sheffield Hallam University’s advanced wellbeing research centre, to provide real-world experience and progression opportunities. 

Among the skills students are developing are areas such as data security or developing apps for helping monitor health. But other skills areas will also eventually be needed. 

Di Bullman, future workforce workstream lead at HEE, said: “We are going to need more people in terms of data and analytics, and certainly in some of the new technologies, such as the use of AI, simulation and virtual reality. We also know that we need to generally upskill the whole of the workforce.” 

HEE estimates indicate there will be a shortfall of 30,000 skilled digital and data health professionals by 2030. 

Workforce crisis 

It is just one part of the NHS workforce crisis, highlighted in a July report by the government’s health and social care committee, which found that England was short of 12,000 hospital doctors and around 50,000 nurses. 

Henrietta Mbeah-Bankas, head of blended and digital learning and development lead at HEE, said: “There are so many other young people that haven’t got any idea what other careers are in the NHS – it might be doctor, nurse and midwife as a lot of young people are concerned. So digital doesn’t come into it. 

“If you say the word digital, every young person thinks of Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft – it is those names that have become synonymously with digital, but what we are trying to say is ‘did you know there are over 30 digital careers you can do within the NHS?’” 

Project bosses also said more young learners have an awareness of ethical employment, and “wanting to be a part of the solution” to NHS staff shortages. 

She explained that this new pathway aimed to marry digital skills and health skills to a greater degree than existing provision, and while recognising that some university courses did do so, it was not widespread enough. She added: “There is some work to do to bring things together a bit more.” 

Data will be analysed across the two-year pilot and inform future provision, and if it works, expansion into further education colleges, sixth forms and secondary schools hasn’t been ruled out. 

But UTCs, according to Mbeah-Bankas, leant themselves to the course because they could catch learners earlier than most post-16 provision. 

She added: “What’s also very useful with the way UTCs are set up is they are already training young people for work, apprenticeships, and higher education, so the pathways are there. We have got the added value they are already linked to industry. 

“That is not something that is widespread with general secondary schools, so there is an element of all of this helping us to develop a proof of concept, to say that if we are to support young people to think about health and digital careers in the NHS, we have to start early.” 

If the model works, it could also expand into other areas of the NHS where less-obvious skills gaps remain. 

Ambrosi said: “We have had a little movement into health engineering. We find young people love F1, they love BMW and Jaguar Land Rover, they know a lot about Rolls Royce and the Royal Navy, but do they know there are engineering careers in the NHS? Not so much. So really for us it is to say to young people, look at all these amazing careers available, and so broaden their horizons.” 

Driving apprenticeship success together

Apprenticeships are a smart way for young people to enter the world of work and for employers to tackle skills gaps and place employees where they need them most in their workforce.

That’s why at Pearson, we believe in and champion apprenticeships. Our focus is on delivering excellence at every step of the apprenticeship journey. From our trusted on-programme qualifications and engaging learning resources to our unrivalled end-point assessment (EPA) preparation resources and flexible EPA service.

As well as providing apprenticeship solutions for employers, at Pearson we offer apprenticeships to support our own talent pipeline. As a Levy Paying employer, apprenticeships have given us the ability to expand our work in Early Talent and recruit a far more diverse workforce than we did before.  

With many years of experience in vocational training, we’re committed to working collaboratively with employers and learning providers to ensure that apprentices have the best experience throughout their journey and develop the confidence and skills they need to progress to the next steps in their careers.

We know that the key to success with apprenticeships is planning and preparation from the start. As an ESFA-approved end-point assessment organisation, we put end-point assessment (EPA) at the heart of apprenticeship planning. We offer a flexible, responsive and streamlined EPA service and will work with you to deliver apprenticeships that drive apprentice success whilst providing visible benefits for your business. We understand that EPA is not a moment in time event prior to Gateway but should be embedded in the on-programme delivery right from the beginning.

“I have been really impressed with the Pearson EPAO development team. They have been extremely thorough in ensuring that the EPAs work for all parties and there is plenty of guidance and support in place for apprentices to support their EPA experience”. Design & Implementation / Relationship Manager, Openreach

With a 97% apprentice success rate in 2021, the benefits of Pearson Apprenticeships EPA services speak for themselves. These include:

  • Hand on support – Dedicated and specially trained EPA support team on hand to respond to queries.
  • Everything you need for EPA planning – Comprehensive set of EPA specifications, EPA resource packs and online training events to help you understand and prepare apprentices for EPA.
  • Fast results turnaround – Rich feedback and quick results turnaround to support progression and learner development.
  • Visibility on EPA planning and progress – Simple and seamless administration through a single system to register, book assessments or access resources, therefore saving time.
  • Competent end point assessors – Occupationally competent and personable assessors who have the learners’ best interests at heart.
  • Flexibility in EPA delivery – Assessment can be done remotely or face-to-face to meet the needs of learners and employers.

“Pearson’s experience, resources and systems reassured us during the selection process that we were making the right decision. We have developed a strong and positive partnership and really value the on-going support and advice provided to us by all the Pearson team.” Apprenticeship Business Manager, Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

If you’re looking to change your EPA provider, then switching to deliver Pearson EPA is simple.  It’s a quick and easy three step process and our expert EPA delivery team will be on hand to help you every step of the way.

Find out more at go.pearson.com/switchyourepa

Revealed: 1 in 3 at risk BTECs saved from the chop

At least a third of the BTEC qualifications set to be axed in 2024 have been saved.

The Department for Education has today published the “final” list of level 3 qualifications that overlap with the first ten T Levels and face being defunded.

Of the 160 vocational and technical qualifications that were facing the chop, at least 106 will continue to be defunded in two years’ time. These courses account for around 38,000 current enrolments.

But a decision has been delayed on another 33 courses that overlap with health and science T Levels.

The content of these T Levels is being reviewed by the government after Ofqual found last year’s exams were not fit for purpose and led to results for over 1,000 students being regraded. The final outcome for these courses will be published later this calendar year.

It means the remaining 21 courses have been saved from the chop. They had been deemed to overlap with digital, construction and education and childcare T Levels.

Of these, 12 are BTECs offered by Pearson. A total of 38 BTECs were in line to be axed in the provision list.

Pearson’s popular BTEC national foundation diploma in engineering and BTEC national extended diploma in engineering, which both attract over 3,000 annual enrolments each, are among those to be saved.

A Pearson spokesperson said the company appealed to save 16 of its qualifications on the defunding list and was “pleased” that 12 were successful, adding that the DfE has “recognised that they are valued by learners, schools, colleges, universities and employers and are not replaced by T Levels”.  

“Schools and colleges should be reassured that they can continue to teach the vast majority of our BTEC qualifications into the future.”

OCR managed to make successful appeals for five of their seven qualifications facing the axe, while NOCN saved one of its seven, Excellence, Achievement & Learning Limited held on to two of their eight, and Engineering Construction Industry Training Board protected its only qualification in line to be defunded.

The DfE previously said there are around 2,000 existing courses in the vocational and technical qualifications space and in scope for the level 3 funding review, meaning just 5 per cent are so far certain to be cut.

The Sixth Form Colleges Association has been leading the #ProtectStudentChoice campaign to oppose the defunding process. Its deputy chief executive James Kewin said the list of level 3 qualifications published today suggests that the government is fulfilling its pledge to only remove funding for a “small proportion” of applied general qualifications.

He added that the decision not to defund any engineering BTECs “is particularly welcome”.

However, Kewin took issue with the DfE’s decision to continue reviewing courses that overlap with health and science T Levels.

He called on the government to “abandon its plans to defund these courses”.

“Their importance to the healthcare workforce, and the well-documented problems with the qualifications that are supposed to replace them, have greatly increased the risks associated with removing them,” Kewin said. “More broadly, requiring applied general qualifications that have been through this overlap process to now go through a further reapproval process is both bureaucratic and unnecessary.”

The DfE said its analysis of the final defunding list, excluding health and science, shows that students from special education needs and disabilities backgrounds, disadvantaged backgrounds, and those from white ethnic groups are “more likely to be disproportionately affected”.

More qualifications will be reviewed in future years as more T Levels roll out. A provisional list of qualifications that overlap with wave three and four T Levels in spring 2023 and awarding organisations will also be given the opportunity to appeal.

A DfE spokesperson said: “We are removing funding from a small number of qualifications that overlap with the first 10 T Levels so that young people have access to clearer, high-quality options, and employers can continue to access to the skilled workforce they need to thrive.

“This move, in combination with our wider review of qualifications, will make sure only qualifications that are necessary and lead to good outcomes are approved for public funding, delivering greater value for money for the taxpayer.”

David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said: “It’s good to see that the appeals were properly considered in a number of cases, and that the numbers being defunded is modest.

“But that should not distract from the fundamental issue here, that no qualifications which overlap with T Levels should be defunded until T Levels are fully tried and tested and we understand more about who can truly access and achieve in them.”

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 402

Ellie Churchward

Head of Lifelong Learning and Skills, Sheffield City Council

Start date: September 2022

Previous job: Service Manager – Adult Community Education, Sheffield City Council

Interesting fact: Ellie started out as a soldier in the Royal Signals and still loves outdoor life. You’ll often find her on a campsite, but these days in more luxury as a motorhomer.

James Pallister

Head of Sales (Education), Metaverse Learning

Start date: October 2022

Previous job: Senior Manager, University Relations, Leverage Edu

Interesting fact: James collects Star Wars graphic novels and has a whole bookcase of them in his home office.

Mark Trewin

Principal – Adult education and skills, Plymouth City Council

Start date: October 2022

Previous job: Chief Transformation Officer, City College Plymouth

Interesting fact: For the last 32 years Mark has played in bands and once made a living from music and technical roles in the live events industry. He still performs today, with a highlight being an annual David Bowie tribute show which raises funds for St Luke’s Hospice in Plymouth.

OfS touts tough registration rules on sexual harassment

Universities and colleges are set to face stricter registration requirements by the higher education regulator, in a bid to tackle sexual harassment and misconduct.

The Office for Students (OfS) plans to consult on a new condition of registration early next year, which means it could be in place before the start of the next academic year. 

Colleges and universities risk losing their registration with the OfS if they fail to meet the new requirement.

The requirement is set to be introduced after an evaluation of the OfS ‘statement of expectations’ found that there were serious shortfalls in how colleges and universities were tackling sexual violence.

Susan Lapworth, chief executive of the OfS, told MPs on the women and equalities committee this week: “We’re working on a condition of registration that we would consult on early in the new year and that would put, subject to the consultation, this area of work [sexual harassment and misconduct] onto a sharper regulatory footing. It would put in place mandatory requirements, and it would allow us to intervene when we saw concerns.”

In April last year, the OfS published seven “expectations” which set out how universities and colleges should prevent and respond to incidents of harassment and sexual misconduct, after 50,000 accounts of sexual violence were published on the website Everyone’s Invited.

The statement of expectations provided recommendations for the systems, policies, and practices that institutions need to have in place to prevent and effectively respond to harassment and sexual misconduct.

Earlier this year, OfS commissioned an independent evaluation to look at the actions universities and colleges had taken to comply with their statement of expectations. The evaluation, set to be released next month, is expected to show that universities and colleges have taken some steps, such as making it easier for incidents to be reported.

“Patchy and too slow”

But the evidence from students – given as part of the evaluation – suggests that progress has been inconsistent and too slow. Many students don’t know what to do if this happens to them or have a poor experience when they report an incident of harassment.

Lapworth said: “[Students] said there has been progress, but it’s been patchy, and it is too slow. So we’re not seeing the impact that we would have expected. We signalled to universities and colleges that if that didn’t do the trick and drive the process then we would impose a condition of registration.”

Julian Gravatt, deputy chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said this is the “right thing for OfS to do”. He told FE Week, however, that there are “complications, because college safeguarding procedures are already regulated by DfE, and Ofsted”. 

Gravatt added: “We look forward to discussing the details with all three organisations to ensure the rules work for students and staff in our part of the HE sectors.”

Intervention

A new pilot prevalence survey was also announced by the OfS this week, which will collect data on sexual violence in higher education settings, and is set to run within the same timeframe as the registration condition consultation.

Lapworth could not say how much the new prevalence survey would cost but confirmed the importance of “conducting a carefully constructed sampling approach across the sector” to determine which sort of students are experiencing sexual violence so they can intervene when they need to.

Drawing on evidence from surveys from the National Union of Students’, Revolt Sexual Assault and Everyone’s Invited, Lapworth corroborated that students with particular characteristics, particularly disabled women and minority ethnic groups, are impacted more by sexual violence.

When asked whether bystander training will make up part of the new requirement, Lapworth confirmed that the OfS’ focus will be on credible, evaluated training.

Third college to go through FE insolvency regime owes £8m

The country’s smallest sixth form college has become the third college to ever go through the further education insolvency regime, closing with £8 million of debt.

St Mary’s College in Blackburn shut its doors to students and staff this summer after it failed to find a viable merger partner.

The Catholic-run college, which had been open for almost 100 years, became financially unsustainable due to repeated years of falling student numbers, and has been propped up by emergency government funding since 2020.

Accounting firm RSM UK has been appointed to handle the insolvency and published its first report on the process last month.

A “statement of affairs” revealed that the college owes £8.2 million to six creditors. The Local Government Pension Scheme is owed most of the debt – £5 million – while Barclays Bank is owed £2.8 million. The Department for Education is also one of the creditors, owed £62,000.

The college’s property is currently on the market for an undisclosed fee to generate funds to repay the creditors. But the insolvency practitioners’ report suggests a book value of just £402,795.

Asked how likely it was that the creditors will be repaid in full, joint liquidator Diana Frangou told FE Week: “Any distribution to creditors in the liquidation will be made from asset realisations which are currently in progress and hence uncertain.”

The first colleges to go insolvent

The further education insolvency regime came in force in January 2019, from which point it was made possible for colleges to fail and be placed into an insolvency process for the first time.

Scandal-hit Hadlow College was the first to go through the process later that year after an investigation from the FE Commissioner uncovered how the college ran out of money through leadership and governance failures. There were also claims of financial irregularities which led to investigations into the former management.

Hadlow’s sister college – West Kent and Ashford College – was the second to go through the FE insolvency regime later in 2019. Between them, the two colleges went under with debts of almost £150 million.

Department for Education officials previously revealed that the cost of putting the two colleges through the insolvency regime cost the taxpayer around £60 million. Most of this related to capital costs that needed to be spent to bring Hadlow’s and West Kent’s estates (which had been left in “very poor condition”) up to “reasonable standards” to be sold or taken over by other colleges.

St Mary’s College’s cause of insolvency is different to Hadlow’s and West Kent’s. It was first warned in 2016 of its deteriorating financial position and urged at the time to find a merger partner or academise.

It continued to survive on its own largely thanks to its higher education income and its commercial pre-school nurseries, but its ability to continue doing so came to a head in 2020 after student numbers failed to improve. Against a capacity of 1,250, there was only 653 students on roll at the time of an FE commissioner visit in 2020.

Growth predictions wrong

The FE Commissioner’s intervention report said “inaccurate growth predictions” at the college, which led to “over-optimistic expectations for student recruitment”, were the primary cause of financial failure.

A structure and prospects appraisal process was subsequently launched and invited potential partners to express an interest in partnering with St Mary’s, but no viable partner was found.

Kate Hollern, the MP for Blackburn, said: “The loss of St Mary’s College, an institution that has been part of our community for so long, was cause for great sadness. The financial pressures and dwindling student numbers the college suffered under were, of course, unfortunate.

“[The college] was a place where students felt empowered to fulfil potential and it boasted a good academic experience.”

The Department for Education told FE Week that it provided St Mary’s College with the “minimum level of emergency funding” to “protect learners and enable them to complete their courses”, but refused to reveal the total figure.

Frangou said an orderly wind down of the college completed in August, with all remaining 225 students completing their studies.

She said all staff employed by the college were made redundant on July 31, 2022, and they all received their “contractual and statutory entitlements upon redundancy in full, and therefore do not have claims in the liquidation”.

College management also “ensured all suppliers were paid in full prior to the liquidation”.

Frangou added that protecting the students and minimising disruption to their studies has been the “paramount objective of the college and the Department for Education” and to ensure this, a number of college staff were retained by the liquidators on a subcontract basis and funded by the DfE to guarantee that exam results could be received “in the normal way”.

The Department for Education said its current expectation is that “only costs directly related to learner activities, outside of the statutory duties of a liquidator required post-liquidation will be funded by the DfE”, although it will not release these figures.

One of the most controversial aspects of the Hadlow and West Kent insolvencies was the costs charged by the insolvency practitioners BDO, which reached £6 million and was described by the DfE’s permanent secretary Susan Acland-Hood as “gut-wrenching”.

RSM would not reveal its time costs and charge out rates, stating that these will be included in its first annual report a year after the liquidation began. Frangou said RSM’s fees and costs are “subject to approval by creditors and payable from net realisations from college assets”.

There is no suggestion of impropriety from St Mary’s Colleges former leaders or governors, but RSM said that as with all insolvencies, there is a “duty to investigate and submit a report on the conduct of the directors to the Insolvency Service within three months of the appointment”.

RSM said the report, which is “confidential”, will be considered by the Insolvency Service who will “take any action it sees fit”.

DfE forced to finally reveal true amount of apprenticeship funding returned to Treasury

Over £2 billion of apprenticeship funding has been returned to the Treasury since the launch of the levy, FE Week can reveal after obtaining figures that finally show the true extent of apprenticeship underspend.

The clawback equates to 23 per cent of the Department for Education’s total ring-fenced apprenticeship budget between 2017 and 2021.

Ministers have repeatedly refused to reveal exactly how much of the annual apprenticeship budget has gone unspent after the whole system, including non-levy paying employers, has been funded. MPs, including former DfE adviser Richard Holden just yesterday, have even had requests for this information turned down.

FE Week, in partnership with the new Apprenticeships Data Insights service also operated by our publisher LSECT Ltd, has now forced the DfE to reveal the figures for the first time through a Freedom of Information request.

Tom Richmond, a former adviser to two skills ministers and now director of think tank EDSK, said: “We need full transparency over where the levy funding has gone and how effectively it has been used. On that basis, it should not have taken so long for such a simple but crucial piece of information about underspends to come to light.”

He added: “Now that we can see the scale of the underspend, it raises important questions about why the levy funding has not been fully utilised, particularly when there is still a cap on the number of apprenticeship starts in small and medium-sized businesses.”

Since 2017, businesses with a payroll of £3 million or more pay each month into a levy pot and have a rolling 24-month deadline to spend the funds.

The levy policy was designed so that large employers wouldn’t use all of their funds. The unspent money is recycled and made available to small businesses who do not pay the levy to use to train their apprentices. Unspent funds are also used to top up levy funds by ten per cent as well as pay for English and maths teaching for relevant apprentices, among other things.

But because the government refuses to share annual spending data, there are many misconceptions in the sector and national media that all apprenticeship funding that expires from levy accounts goes back to the Treasury.

The Financial Times, for example, reported in July that more than £3.3 billion of apprenticeship funding had been returned to the Treasury since 2019. But this figure was in fact the amount of funding that had expired in levy-payers’ levy accounts and did not take into consideration that part of this funding would pay for other parts of the system.

In each year since the levy was introduced FE Week has requested the true apprenticeships budget underspend from the DfE press office, and after receiving provisional figures to this effect from the department’s press office, published articles that showed £880 million had been returned to Treasury between 2017 and 2021.

The DfE has now revealed through an FOI that £424 million in 2017-18, £493 million in 2018-19, £550 million in 2019-20, and £604 million in 2020-21 was surrendered to Treasury.

The DfE said it could not share the figures for 2021-22 because its accounts for that financial year “have not been audited and published” yet.

John Cope, a board member of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, said the figures “highlight a real issue: the need for greater transparency on how the apprenticeship levy works”.

He added that the underspend figures “need to be taken with a massive pinch of salt as they are for pandemic years when many firms were unable to trade, and the government spent huge amounts on the Kickstart scheme as well as employer incentives to take on apprentices”.

Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief executive Jane Hickie said the reasons for an underspend on the apprenticeship levy “are complex – from the ongoing impact of the pandemic on learner numbers to wider trends in the labour market”.

She also called for “much more transparency and up-to-date information from government on the level of underspend”.

Mental health: 8 key priorities to take the sector forward

This Monday marked the tenth World Mental Health Day, an opportunity to reflect on the progress made, and the work still to do. And my first reflection is that, while WMHD is an important date in the calendar, supporting mental health is a 365-days-a-year job.

The Mental Health Foundation, a key partner of Good for me, Good for FE, wants “mental health and wellbeing for all to be global priority”. We know that the further education sector is at its best when it thinks globally and acts locally, and I’m proud of the progress we’ve made towards that end.

A few short years ago, mental health support felt marginal, at times even radical. Some saw it as overstepping our territory from the educational to the clinical. But a vanguard of colleges, my own included, pursued this area of support, recognising that our students needed good or at least well-supported mental health to study and achieve.

Hitting the mainstream

Fast forward, and now over 200 colleges have signed the Association of Colleges’ (AoC) mental health charter. Stigma is reduced across the sector. Our literacy around discussing mental health is thoughtful, our understanding deepening and being refined.

There are commitments on college-wide strategies, discussions among senior teams and governors, mental health first aid-trained staff are present in most colleges, with access to counselling, nurses, and tutorials common. Human resources teams have maturing policies, practices, and cultures.

Supporting student and staff mental health has now become mainstream.

One of the people the sector should thank for that is Richard Caulfield at AoC. We worked together with other ‘pioneers’ to connect with the Department for Work and Pensions and the NHS to bring resources into colleges while the education department was playing policy catch-up.

There are now teams at the DfE that have both mental health and further education in their job titles, which is an encouraging development and demonstrates a recognition in policy. Hopefully that will one day transform into funding. Meanwhile, Ofsted now has lines in the handbook about developing learner “resilience and knowledge so that they can keep themselves mentally healthy”. 

Pushing forward

But the development of mental health in colleges is far from the end. The time is now to move this work from a deficit model to one that is more proactive, and also supports wider sector ambitions. Right now, there are still areas of work in colleges which would benefit from a mental health lens.   

The cost of living crisis

External conditions are putting overwhelming pressure on individuals and families, leading to poorer mental health.

Staff wellbeing

That means enhancing support but also creating and maintaining better boundaries between work and life.

Inclusion

Broader sector ambitions around equality, diversity and inclusion mean recognising the lasting mental health effects of discrimination.

Off-site provision

We must ensure all employers are supporting students on placement and apprenticeships to the same standard we hold ourselves to. 

Leadership

The sector needs better support, research and training (already positively begun by ETF) to create inclusive and sustainable conditions for its leaders. 

Neurodiversity

There’s scope for big improvements in our recruitment practices for neurodiverse staff and learners.

Action

Increased demand for college services remains largely unfunded, putting pressure on the sector and affecting mental health across the board. We need to lobby!

A united front

Some curriculum areas have been slower to engage with the agenda due to sector culture. (We see you, construction and engineering!) That needs to change.

At East Coast College, we have declared this the ‘year of belonging’. We’re focused on how students might have felt socially, culturally and emotionally excluded following the pandemic. Mental health is the foundation for inclusion, and in turn for academic performance. It should be seen as such.

The sector has so much to be proud of, but challenges remain that are a key priority for us all. So, see you again next World Mental Health Day to celebrate more of our successes!