A pay deal has been struck in a long-running clash between sixth form teachers and bosses of their large London college group.
The agreement ends a dispute between Capital City College (CCC) and teachers at its sixth-form campus in Angel – formerly known as City and Islington College – over whether their pay should match national rates recommended by the Sixth Form Colleges Association (SFCA) or put in line with their general FE college colleagues.
This week, CCC management agreed that pay for teaching staff at the campus will increase in line with other sixth form college teachers, but for the rest of the academic year only, in exchange for strike action ending.
National Education Union (NEU) members have accepted that from September 2026 pay will be negotiated locally, without the expectation that SFCA pay scales will apply automatically.
Terry Sullivan, joint branch secretary of Islington’s NEU branch, said: “We can’t pretend that this aspect of the deal isn’t a setback.
“However, in voting to accept the deal our members remain resolute that we will continue to fight for pay justice in future negotiations.”
It ends a dispute that is understood to have resulted in 19 of strike days since October.
Terms of the deal, agreed via ACAS negotiations on Tuesday, mean that a 4 per cent pay increase has been backdated to September, followed by SFCA rates for the rest of the academic year, equivalent to a 7 per cent rise.
NEU members balloted for strike action last year after the CCC management dropped a commitment to the SFCA bargaining framework for its Angel campus, which it had followed since the sixth form joined the wider group in 2016.
The college group instead awarded a 2.5 per cent pay rise for all teaching staff, ignoring the nationally bargained 3.5 and 5.5 per cent award for sixth-form teachers.
It also emerged that management was discussing plans to “harmonise” salaries across the group, by freezing sixth-form teacher pay until the “discrepancy” between their higher pay and other teaching staff disappeared.
At the time, union called the prospect of real terms pay cuts “levelling down” while management argued that the wider teaching staff body should not be “disadvantaged” compared to their sixth form colleagues.
A CCC spokesperson said: “We have reached an agreement with NEU resolving the current dispute involving employees on sixth-form contracts.
“We have agreed that, in addition to the 4 per cent pay award offered for all staff for the current academic year, we will also match the Sixth Form Colleges Association (SFCA) recommended pay scale from January 2026 for this academic year only.
“The NEU has agreed that: From the academic year 2026/27, pay will be agreed locally.
“This means that national pay recommendations for further education and sixth forms will be considered, but they will not automatically apply to the college, the same as for all teaching staff at Capital City College Group.
“There will be no further strike action, with immediate effect.”
Assistant Principal: Business Growth and Skills, Solihull College and University Centre
Start date: January 2026
Previous Job: Director of Adult Skills, Solihull College and University Centre
Interesting fact: Kelly was a professional dancer before beginning her career in FE as a part-time performing arts teacher at Stratford-upon-Avon College in 2004
Mike Crowhurst
Skills Strategy Director, Historic England
Start date: January 2026
Previous Job: Director, Public First
Interesting fact: Mike asked a question about education in the 2010 prime ministerial debates when he was a history teacher in Birmingham
The UK stands at a pivotal moment for vocational education and skills. With the government’s post-16 education and skills white paper setting out ambitious measures to close skills gaps and support economic growth, and MPs calling for urgent investment to “power growth and boost young people’s life chances”, the message is clear: skills are the engine of our economic future.
As someone who has dedicated their career to education and assessment, I understand the weight of this responsibility. Collectively, we serve more than 53,500 leading organisations (including 82 per cent of the Fortune 500), 800 government agencies, and 7,500 partners across more than 200 countries and have provided more than 5 million certifications worldwide.
PeopleCert is the custodian for PRINCE2 and ITIL – both UK government-created global best-practice frameworks – now stewarded by PeopleCert since 2021, alongside LanguageCert, our English language certification portfolio and, of course, City & Guilds, one of Britain’s most recognised and respected names in vocational qualifications.
This gives us both a privileged vantage point and a profound obligation to lead, which I accept personally and seriously.
The changing skills landscape
Our work with thousands of the world’s biggest employers shows us that the nature of work is transforming and at unprecedented speed.
Employers no longer simply seek workers with static qualifications – they need adaptable individuals equipped with skills that evolve alongside technology and market demands.
This evolution demands that learners can “upskill throughout their working life with access to short, modular courses or longer periods of training”. For awarding organisations such as City & Guilds, this isn’t simply a policy shift to accommodate – it’s a fundamental reimagining of what we do and how we do it.
The imperative to modernise
At this week’s City & Guilds leadership conference in London, I shared our vision for transformation and presented the start of our evolving roadmap for how we will meet these challenges. Our vision is clear: to build a future-ready, financially strong organisation that scales impact through people, performance, and technology, as part of an AI-enabled, innovation-led, global business.
This means embracing new technologies – particularly artificial intelligence – as enablers, not threats. AI has the potential to revolutionise how we create qualifications, deliver learning experiences, and assess competence. When deployed responsibly, it allows us to personalise learning at scale, provide faster feedback to learners, and free up educators to focus on the human elements of teaching that no algorithm can replicate.
But technology alone isn’t the answer. We must also be commercially viable, accountable and a great employer. Financial sustainability enables us to invest in innovation, attract talent, and deliver consistent impact over the long term. This is not about profit for its own sake – it’s about building the resilience to serve learners and employers for generations to come.
Putting customers at the centre
Central to our transformation is an unwavering focus on customers – the learners, employers, colleges, and training providers we serve. Every decision we make must start with their needs, with the ultimate goal of empowering people to achieve what they are capable of and enhancing the lives and careers of people.
This customer focus extends to collaboration. No single organisation can address the skills challenge alone. We are committed to being a genuine partner – listening, adapting, and co-creating solutions.
Governance, standards and accountability
In a rapidly changing landscape, learners, employers and policymakers must also have confidence in the qualifications they trust and the organisations behind them. This requires transparent governance, an absolute commitment to maintaining high standards and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements.
That’s precisely why we have promptly commissioned our own internal investigation into publicity raised after the sale of City & Guilds, including the individual conduct of executives, and why we will cooperate fully with the Charity Commission’s own statutory inquiry if required.
At PeopleCert, we hold ourselves accountable to the highest standard. We welcome scrutiny because we believe that robust oversight ultimately strengthens the entire system. Providers that resist transparency do a disservice to learners and undermine public trust in vocational education.
Looking ahead
The opportunities before us are immense. With the right investment, innovation and collaboration, we can build a skills system that delivers on the government’s growth mission while genuinely transforming lives. The £8.5 billion allocated for 16 to 19 programme funding in 2025-26 signals serious intent – now providers must match that ambition.
City & Guilds, with the support of PeopleCert as a global, UK-rooted partner inskilling, upskilling and reskilling – is ready to play its part: anticipating change, strengthening its role and leadership in the UK, scaling its impact globally, flying the flag for UK assessment standards throughout the world and, above all, never losing sight of the learners and employers it exists to serve.
Ministers insist no decisions have been made “yet” on streamlining England’s suite of apprenticeships, as employer anxiety grows over potential cuts to popular management courses and industry progression routes amid mounting budget pressure.
Skills England and officials at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) held a series of meetings with businesses before Christmas to discuss a review of the more than 700 apprenticeship standards currently available.
Several attendees told FE Week they left with a “real fear” that ministers would strip away employer choice by removing programmes that are not directly linked to government priorities.
The review was signalled by the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, in November’s budget, when she reiterated that the government would refocus apprenticeships on young people and simplify the system to ensure better value for money.
England has more than twice as many apprenticeships approved for delivery compared with Switzerland and Germany – two countries that are often referred to as having world-class technical education systems.
Baroness Alison Wolf, who served as an adviser on skills to the prime minister from 2020 to 2023, said rationalising the number of apprenticeships is “way overdue”, adding that the “trailblazer” system adopted by the former Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education “outlived its usefulness a decade ago”.
But critics fear the current streamlining effort is motivated less by simplification and more by the need to free up funding in England’s already stretched budget for new, untested initiatives such as foundation apprenticeships and short courses dubbed “apprenticeship units”.
Management cull?
FE Week understands that officials are scrutinising apprenticeships that resemble continuing professional development instead of discrete occupations, and are questioning whether employers should pay for them outside the levy as part of normal learning and development.
Employers and sector bodies fear that widely used management apprenticeships could be among the casualties, such as the level 5 operations manager and the level 5 people professional standards.
The Chartered Management Institute (CMI) launched a petition last week to act as an “evidence gathering tool” to show the removal of management apprenticeships would undermine productivity in industrial strategy sectors as well as other critical areas such as retail and hospitality.
The petition argues that “we must not ‘streamline’ away the very leadership skills that drive productivity and support the next generation of workers” and includes statistics from a Skills England assessment that shows “management is a critical occupation – accounting for 25 per cent of all roles in ‘critical demand’”.
It has over 4,000 signatures so far, including testimonies from big-name employers such as Amazon, BAE Systems, Heathrow, Barnardo’s, John Lewis, Kier, Lloyds Bank and Marie Curie.
The soaring popularity of management apprenticeships has, however, been controversial since the introduction of the apprenticeship levy in 2017, with critics arguing that companies are spending money on apprenticeships that might otherwise come from a regular training budget.
Tom Richmond, a former adviser to education ministers, published a briefing paper last year which showed that three management courses for existing staff that have been “rebadged” as apprenticeships – level 3 team leader, level 5 operations manager and level 7 senior leader – used an estimated £150 million of funding in 2023-24.
Richmond claimed the training offered by these management apprenticeships is “already available through standalone qualifications that are considerably cheaper and more flexible than an apprenticeship, yet they offer the same outcomes in terms of upskilling and reskilling the workforce”.
Industry casualties
Streamlining concerns extend beyond management. Employers in individual industries, such as hospitality, say they have been asked by officials to justify why senior-level apprenticeships should continue to attract levy funding.
UKHospitality skills director Sandra Kelly said officials have questioned, for example, whether standards such as the level 3 senior production chef and level 4 senior culinary chef apprenticeships should remain in scope.
She told FE Week the hospitality sector had 12 apprenticeships in total, and the proposed removal of the two senior standards would “dismantle a critical progression point”, adding that total funding committed for the two apprenticeships in 2023-24 was less than £4 million.
Kelly argued that defunding the two senior standards would deliver “disproportionate damage relative to the savings achieved”, saying: “This is not efficiency; it is false economy.”
Several employers, including catering giant Elior UK, are now lobbying the DWP to retain all hospitality apprenticeships.
They also warn that replacing senior apprenticeships with short courses in the form of “apprenticeship units” would “dilute quality and undermine professional standards”.
The power of ‘yet’
Labour MP Lauren Edwards brought the issue to the House of Commons during education questions on Monday. She said industries such as hospitality are a “key means” by which the country can tackle its NEET (not in education, employment or training) challenge, but to “deliver positive long-term change, we must have an apprenticeship system that allows young people to progress, not just give them a foot in the door”.
She added: “So may I urge the minister to continue to support these apprenticeships, which should be a high priority for both our labour market and our economy.”
Josh MacAlister, the Department for Education’s children’s and families’ minister, responded by saying “nothing has been decided on defunding apprenticeships, yet”, and added: “We share her ambition that the apprenticeship system in the future is entirely designed around progression as well as one-off learning.”
Stretched resources
The review comes as pressure on England’s apprenticeship budget intensifies. The budget has been fully spent in recent years, with officials now scrambling to manage costs following a surge in the number of people starting level 7 apprenticeships ahead of levy funding being withdrawn at this level for people aged 22 and over this month.
Further strain is expected as foundation apprenticeships and shorter “apprenticeship units” are introduced through the reformed growth and skills levy from April 2026 – intended to give employers more choice over how they spend their levy pots in line with Labour’s manifesto commitment.
READ MORE: The 24-25 apprenticeships budget was overspent for the first time
Rob West, former head of skills at the Confederation of British Industry and now associate director at the Education and Training Foundation, attended a meeting with the DWP in December and heard how the government “is struggling to stretch limited apprenticeship resources to meet the needs of learners, employers, providers, and the economy”.
He said “earlier engagement” with the skills sector as policies develop “is welcome”, but added it can also “draw providers and employers into responding to ideas that are still speculative, rather than addressing the real, immediate pressures in the system”.
West added: “What’s needed now is clarity, stability and a shared focus on the practical issues holding apprenticeship delivery back.”
The government has released minimal information about apprenticeship units, despite their impending introduction. Skills minister Jacqui Smith has previously said they could be as short as one week.
Wolf said she did not “understand the point of apprenticeship units other than to make it easier for levy-payers to use even more of the levy for existing staff”.
She added: “If the government really thinks this fragmentation of training is the answer to the declining number of young apprentices, I think they are in for a nasty surprise.”
Surplus required
The levy is generating more cash contributions than expected and is estimated to raise £4.4 billion this financial year.
England’s apprenticeship budget for 2025-26 is set at £3.075 billion, while the devolved nations receive over £500 million. It means the top slice the Treasury takes between how much the levy generates and how much is dished out for apprenticeship spending hits close to £840 million.
Forecasts for 2026-27 show the levy intake should rise to £4.6 billion. If the Treasury fails to increase apprenticeship spending budgets the Treasury margin will hit £1 billion.
The chancellor’s budget did announce an extra £725 million over the rest of this Parliament to be injected into the apprenticeship system, but £140 million of this will be going to mayors to help to connect NEETs to local employers.
Some of the additional cash will also go towards fully fund apprenticeships for under-25s in small and medium-sized businesses.
The DWP, which took over control of apprenticeships from the DfE last year, refused to tell FE Week what England’s apprenticeship budget is for 2026-27, claiming it hasn’t gone through final processes.
Meanwhile, Reeves’ budget red book also revealed the government will remove a 10 per cent uplift for levy payers, halve the time levy payers have to use their levy funds from 24 to 12 months, and slash the co-investment rate offered to big businesses when they exhaust their funds to 75 per cent. The changes will kick in from the 2026-27 academic year.
Matthew Percival, the CBI’s future of work and skills director, said businesses were “frustrated about continued speculation that apprenticeships could be further restricted or defunded, particularly as we know that the government is making significant profits on the growth and skills levy”.
He added: “Taken together with the immigration skills charge, hundreds of millions of pounds more is currently being raised for skills than is being spent on it.
“This money should urgently be released for its intended purpose so that businesses aren’t forced to ration the training opportunities they offer their staff.”
Watch out for heritage skills
Officials are understood to be considering removing apprenticeships with low starts as part of a housekeeping exercise that will also involve slashing apprenticeships in areas where there is too much overlap and duplication between standards.
An analysis by FE Week shows that there are 162 apprenticeship standards that have been approved for delivery for at least a year but which recorded fewer than 50 starts.
Experts have urged DWP officials to recognise that there are heritage skills and niche apprenticeships where small numbers were to be expected and which they said must not be disproportionately affected.
David Poole, education officer at the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, said specialist apprenticeships such as the level 3 watchmaker, for example, are “fundamental to the public”, adding that this training route must be kept open to meet demand as industry professionals retire.
Wolf added that simply taking out apprenticeships based solely on their number of new starters would be “lazy and counter-productive”.
She said: “Many key small occupations need apprentices and we are facing skill crises in them. The problem tends to be the impossibility, in our pseudo-market system, of finding a good local provider. Sorting that out is another core government responsibility, as other countries recognise.”
A DWP spokesperson said: “We are committed to creating an apprenticeships system that addresses the nation’s skills challenges head on and are simplifying it to give businesses the flexibility to develop the skills they need.
“We have been working intensively with businesses on the next stages of reform and will consider their feedback before making any decisions about changes to funding apprenticeship standards.”
A senior civil servant has been appointed Ofsted’s new permanent deputy director for post-16 education, training and skills, FE Week can reveal.
Jonathan Childs is set to move across from the Department for Education in March to fill the role vacated by Paul Joyce last year.
He will oversee FE and skills inspections under Ofsted’s new-style report card model, which was rolled out in November, and spearhead the watchdog’s post-16 strategy.
Childs is a career civil servant having worked across government since 2002, with roles at the Home Office and Ministry of Justice (MoJ).
He moves into the Ofsted role from the DfE, where he has worked since 2019, most recently as deputy director for further education workforce.
Childs previously held positions as deputy director for apprenticeships strategy and funding policy, and he led the DfE’s apprenticeships response team during the pandemic.
An Ofsted spokesperson said Childs brings valuable experience to inspections of prison education, having worked on youth justice and probation reform at the MoJ, where he led Charlie Taylor’s review of the youth justice system.
It is not clear whether Childs has any experience working in FE providers or on inspections. Ofsted could not provide this information at the time of going to press.
Ofsted’s job advert for the role said it was “desirable” but not “essential” for the new post-16 education, training and skills deputy director to have “experience and understanding of inspection within the education sector, as it relates to post-16 education, training and skills remits”.
Childs said: “I am honoured to be joining Ofsted at such an important time for further education and skills.
“High-quality post-16 education transforms lives and strengthens our economy, and I look forward to working with colleagues across the inspectorate and in the education sector to support providers in delivering the best outcomes for learners.”
The role reports to the national director for education, Lee Owston, and was advertised with a salary of £108,574.
Owston said: “We are delighted to welcome Jonathan to Ofsted. His understanding of further education and skills will be invaluable as we continue our work to help the sector raise standards across post-16 education and training.”
The FE deputy director post was last permanently occupied by Paul Joyce, who quit Ofsted after 20 years to become deputy principal at North Warwickshire and South Leicestershire College last year.
The inspectorate appointed Denise Olander as temporary deputy director for FE and skills in March while it advertised for a permanent replacement.
The first batch of new-style FE inspection report cards was released last week.
The Department for Education’s most senior skills official is set to leave the role to take charge of schools and SEND reform on an interim basis, FE Week can reveal.
Julia Kinniburgh, who has been the DfE’s director general for skills since December 2022, will step in as interim director for the schools group, replacing Juliet Chua who has a new role as director general for the economic and domestic secretariat in the Cabinet Office.
Sinead O’Sullivan, the DfE’s current director for labour market skills and funding, will temporarily take on the director general for skills role.
It’s not clear when the top officials will start their new roles.
The shuffle follows a major machinery of government change for skills last year which saw responsibility for adult education and apprenticeships move to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The lead official at DWP is Katherine Green, director general for labour market and skills.
Kinniburgh (left)
The Department for Education remains responsible for 16-19 education and higher education, including a raft of reforms set out in the October 2025 post-16 education and skills white paper which introduced new V Level qualifications, a 16-19 funding formula review and new level 1 “stepping stone” English and maths qualifications.
O’Sullivan
Kinniburgh’s appointment to the schools brief comes as ministers are poised to unveil another white paper covering schools and the SEND system.
Susan Acland-Hood, the DfE’s permanent secretary, said: “As interim director general, Julia Kinniburgh will bring a breadth of knowledge of the business of the department and strong leadership at a crucial time, ensuring continuity and momentum in the delivery of our reforms.”
O’Sullivan was director of delivery and accounting officer of the National College for Teaching and Leadership before it was abolished in 2018. Some of its functions were transferred to the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA), which is set to have its remit expanded to include further education teachers later this year.
She then became the DfE’s director for career learning, analysis and skills and then in 2021 was appointed director for labour market skills and funding, overseeing adult skills programmes like skills bootcamps and Multiply.
Software testing and quality engineering have evolved drastically over two decades. But nothing compares to the pace of change driven by generative AI across business workflows, and the skills needed to deliver quality software.
The government digital service’s recent blog post illustrates how AI is rapidly speeding up development and engineering lifecycles.
Meanwhile, 49 per cent of engineering and technology businesses report difficulties with recruitment due to skills shortages, which is estimated to cost the UK £1.5 billion annually.
This tension between increasingly efficient pipelines and a shrinking talent pool raises the question: are training and education systems aligning with what modern engineering actually demands?
In a rush to encourage young people to use AI tools, further and higher education providers and businesses should not overlook giving young people the foundational understanding so they know when and why those tools are wrong.
Experienced engineers have the knowledge and contextual understanding to spot flawed AI outputs almost immediately. However, employers are finding that though their graduate candidates can swiftly prompt AI models, they struggle with debugging and differentiating good test coverage from poorly written output.
This is because the foundational exposure to coding and test design that once came naturally through education and early projects is being skipped in favour of vibe coding and an increasing dependence on large language models (LLMs).
Without learning how to validate outputs and understand the principles behind the code, graduates struggle to rely on judgment when automation falls short.
Strong foundations in coding, data literacy, testing principles and system design remain essential to understanding how data quality and manual oversight influence every step of a project.
For higher-level apprenticeships and technical programmes, this means rethinking curriculum design.
It’s not enough to add an AI module to existing content or teaching case studies without practical exposure. Rather, programmes need to ensure apprentices still get meaningful hands-on experience with coding, debugging and test design principles, even as they learn generative AI tools. They need to learn not just how to write tests, but to evaluate them so they can spot when something is over-engineered or likely to raise issues down the pipeline.
Employers, too, need to create environments where early-career engineers are mentored properly, exposed to complex problems gradually, and encouraged to question outputs rather than accept them at face value.
Take the importance of embedding quality at every stage of the engineering pipeline, for instance. Businesses increasingly demand a holistic approach, so graduates don’t have the luxury of applying judgment in some areas while relying solely on AI for the rest.
Training young talent to build quality into every stage of delivery is essential, and this is where higher education providers need to play a vital role.
Through carefully designed apprenticeship schemes and on-the-job placements that incorporate low-risk projects, learners can experiment in fail-safe environments.
These structured experiences allow them to make mistakes, understand consequences, and refine their critical skills and practice without high-stakes pressure.
It’s true that the challenge cuts both ways. Apprentices and graduates struggle to find roles that match their skills because employers are looking for capabilities that traditional education is yet to effectively prioritise.
Similarly, employers struggle to fill positions because the talent pipeline hasn’t adapted to how rapidly the work itself has changed.
Caught in the middle, education providers must rapidly adapt their curricula for a job market that is more brutal than ever for young workers.
The industry is evidently in an experimental phase, figuring out where AI adds genuine value and where it introduces risk. But education and training cannot afford the same luxury of trial and error.
Intentional curriculum design and business partnerships that give the next generation the foundations of balancing cutting-edge tools with timeless principles are essential.
That means ensuring speed never comes at the expense of understanding, and that apprentices leave programmes equipped not just to use AI, but to work alongside it.
AI is transforming education faster than expected, and its impact is impossible to ignore. While 92 per cent of UK students report using generative AI tools, educators are struggling to adapt.
Confidence in spotting AI-written work has plummeted, with a survey by online training provider Coursera claiming just 26 per cent of teachers feel capable, down from 42 per cent in 2023.
And AI tools like ChatGPT are evolving fast; In November, a ChatGPT update enabled users to prevent its notorious overuse of the em dash (—), thereby making AI-generated content even harder for people to detect.
AI versus human writing
AI-generated work typically appears polished and technically correct, but lacks the depth, intent and personal perspective that only human writing can bring.
Human writers draw from lived experiences, vocational knowledge and individual reasoning to shape meaning and purpose, elements AI cannot replicate.
Human writing is intentional. It starts with an idea, and each word is chosen to shape a story, build flow and add meaning. From sentence structure to grammar, human writing shows purpose.
AI writing, by contrast, operates on probability, not perspective. Large language models do not think or understand; they rely on predictions and statistical patterns.
They imitate human language, but lack genuine comprehension and creativity, the subjectivity and insight that defines authentic writing.
These limitations show up in the text. AI-generated content often features repetitive phrases, uniform sentences, probabilistic word chains and overused clichés.
Over time, it reads more like a predictable pattern than something created with intent. While these traits can help identify AI writing, they’re not always obvious at first glance.
Advanced detection technology provides a more systematic way to surface these subtle patterns and give teachers confidence in their assessments.
Using AI detection tools
AI detection tools analyse the underlying structures of a written piece. Rather than relying on quirky punctuation, such as em dashes, for clues, they examine how sentences are formed, how often certain words appear, both independently and in phrases, and whether the text feels more mechanical than deliberate.
Detection tools typically break text down into sections and compare each sentence for the tell-tale signs, assigning probabilities rather than binary judgements to indicate whether it was likely written by a human or generated by AI.
Teachers need advanced tools to tackle the challenge of AI paraphrasing tools or “bypassers”, which allow students to rephrase AI-generated content to make it sound more human-like.
These tools allow the user to see the entire writing process and understand how the piece has evolved through the revision history.
This deeper layer of analysis provides granular insights, which are helpful when marking assignments for large groups or assessing extended written tasks.
It gives a clearer sense of when writing may have been shaped by AI, and provides context to support informed conversations with students about thoughtful and honest use of digital tools.
Responsible AI use
While detection software can help flag potential issues, it is only part of the solution.
What matters most is creating a culture where students feel confident talking about how they use AI and understand the importance of learning integrity.
When students understand that responsible use is about building skills for the workplace, like problem-solving and critical analysis rather than a false sense of competency, they are more likely to make considered choices.
Academic integrity is built on partnership, not just policing. AI detection is a valuable starting point, and teachers can use it as a bridge to an honest conversation, helping students navigate AI as a tool for the future, rather than a shortcut for the present.
By combining clear guardrails with professional insight, teachers can turn the challenge of AI into an opportunity for growth – preparing students for the modern workplace through meaningful dialogue rather than just detection.
With the arrival of gen AI, our relationship with the written word requires an urgent re-evaluation.
We are understandably worried about academic integrity, but the solution isn’t found in stricter policing. Maybe the answer lies in the 1500s, with the man who defined the form that many are struggling to protect: Michel de Montaigne.
He didn’t view the essay as a polished, static product. He called his writings essais – from the French verb essayer, “to try.”
For him, writing was a process of radical self-examination and learning through trial and error. His famous question, Que sais-je? (“What do I know?”), embodied an intellectual humility that is missing from the high-stakes, “one-shot” assessments that many learners now dread.
In FE over the last decade, the essay has lost this utility. It has become a generic proxy for learning, a stand-in that transmutes a student’s unique thinking into a computable sameness that a chatbot mimics in seconds.
When we set tasks that machines can finish instantly, we aren’t testing skill; we are testing the ability to follow a template.
I say this as a sceptic. Despite my job title, I am as addicted to these technologies as anyone else. At 43, I remember life before algorithms were designed to fragment our focus. These platforms are built for engagement and data extraction, not necessarily for learning.
Without intentional scaffolding from educational experts, technology becomes a crutch. We must choose depth over a superficiality designed to keep us scrolling rather than growing.
I am inspired by artists like Rosalía and Kendrick Lamar, who embody Montaigne’s essai – the long, reflective attempt.
For her album Lux, Rosalía described using tools such as Google Translate to explore phrasing across languages, before spending a year testing meaning, rhythm, and tone with human collaborators.
The technology was the sparring partner, not the substitute. The skill and knowledge were applied through rehearsal and then in the studio.
In 2024, the music world was transfixed by a renewed “rap battle” between Kendrick Lamar and Drake. Beyond the feud, it surfaced a deeper cultural tension about effort and authenticity.
Lamar – the first hip-hop artist to win a Pulitzer Prize – represents the “long game”; extended periods away from the spotlight to prioritise craft, community investment and local legacy.
By contrast, critics argue that Drake’s recent output reflects a high-volume, streaming-era strategy – a form of “cultural strip-mining” that personifies a dopamine-driven, instant-gratification model. It is a montage of fashion trends and phoney quick-fix shortcuts designed for algorithmic visibility.
In our classrooms, the same tension exists: the “Drake” method of fast, AI-generated shortcuts versus the “Kendrick” method of slow, transformative and authentic craft.
At BCoT, we are choosing the latter. In our travel and tourism department, students are moving away from extractive, generic tasks toward creating digital legacies.
They leverage vlogs to practise customer service and use podcasts to develop the skills of cooperation, problem-solving and vocal cadence required in the industry.
By building multimedia portfolios on Google Sites, they align their evidence with professional expectations.
Evidence of their skills and knowledge is captured through witness statements and recorded simulations, creating tapestries of proof that include annotated whiteboards, sketches and iterative blogs.
If an assessment is simple enough for a machine to do in seconds, it isn’t the learner who needs to change – it’s the assessment.
Wrestling with this article has reminded me why the written word still matters. I spent hours agonising over these paragraphs to clarify my thinking for an upcoming training session – voice-typing into Google Docs, editing and using AI to align my thoughts with formal conventions and my notes.
It was a challenging, deeply human process of clarification that no prompt could replace.
The essay as ‘default’ assessment in FE may be dead, but writing remains vital when it is used to shape the thoughts we are willing to be accountable for. By reclaiming the essai – the brave, high-effort attempt – we aren’t just making our assessments AI-proof; we are making them more human.
