Latest news from FE Week

Movers & Shakers: Edition 528

DfE gives 3-year commitment to looked-after children

A long-term multi-million pound funding commitment has been confirmed for a scheme supporting looked-after young people in post-16 education.

The Department for Education will pump £41.5 million into pupil premium plus post-16 funding over the next three years, after an evaluation of the pilot scheme found it was helping to “push back” the cliff edge of support at age 16.

The commitment until 2029 follows calls from pilot leads to extend the funding beyond one year so councils can strategically plan support for disadvantaged young people.

The funding forms part of the new ‘children, families and youth grant’, which will consolidate five funding streams, including the pupil premium plus post-16, into one grant worth £3.1 billion over three years.

Earlier this week, a report into the national rollout of the pilot was published, which had surveyed virtual school heads on how they managed to boost engagement and attainment among disadvantaged learners.

The research tracked three cohorts of local authorities that joined the pilot between 2021 and 2025 and found persistent gaps in funding and delivery.

Virtual school heads warned of a reliance on short-term projects in post-16 settings due to time-limited funding and inconsistencies in how the funding rate was doled out across England.

“Our school improvement plan is centred around three-year goals in our journey – unfortunately, the time-limited element means many plans we have for post-16 have often been short notice or one-off projects, nor can we enhance our structure further with permanent or longer-term posts,” one lead said.

The report also found a lack of parity with school funding was placing pressure on provision and called for an overhaul of the post-16 funding formula to mirror the statutory pupil premium plus in schools, alongside providing long-term funding certainty.

Some councils received as little as £110 per student, compared with £2,630 per pupil premium plus funding for looked-after children aged under 16.

But funding guidance from last month confirmed the DfE will not change the distribution formula used in 2025-26.

Two-tier system

The post-16 pupil premium plus pilot launched in 2021 with £3 million in funding for local authorities to appoint virtual school heads. These leads work with colleges, training providers and social workers to improve outcomes for looked-after young people and care leavers aged 16 to 18.

Thirty local authorities joined the first cohort, followed by an additional 28 in the second year and 94 from 2023-24. The DfE has spent around £40 million on the scheme so far.

The evaluation explored the programme up to the 2023-24 academic year and found earlier cohorts received higher overall allocations. Cohort 1 areas were awarded an average of £94,706, compared with £57,539 for those joining in cohort 3.

This reflected a funding cap that ensured councils in cohorts 1 and 2 did not see reductions of more than 15 per cent year-on-year. The cap was removed in 2024-25, meaning all authorities are now funded using the same formula.

Researchers said this change, alongside the expansion of eligibility beyond further education colleges to all post-16 settings, including apprenticeship providers, contributed to falling per-student rates.

Estimated funding per learner stood at £900 in 2021-22 and £920 in 2022-23, before dropping to £413 after eligibility widened in October 2023. Across the full 2023-24 academic year, this equated to an average of £355 per learner.

In 2023-24, average rates varied by councils depending on when they joined the pilot: £522 for councils in cohort 1, £440 for cohort 2 and £361 for cohort 3.

The report warned this was creating a “postcode lottery”, with allocations ranging from £110 to £1,257 per learner.

“This is despite DfE’s attempts to make funding allocation equitable across virtual schools and again suggests a postcode lottery effect in real terms,” it said.

Richmond residential college in cash crisis

The FE Commissioner will intervene in one of the country’s last surviving adult residential colleges after the government found “serious” cashflow pressures.

Richmond and Hillcroft Adult and Community College (RHACC), which teaches around 7,000 learners in south-west London, was issued a financial notice to improve by the Department for Education.

The intervention follows financial strains that include a near-£1.8 million DfE clawback, unsold campus sites and crippling country-wide cuts to adult education funding.

Leaders will be required to submit rolling cashflow forecasts to new FE Commissioner Ellen Thinnesen as well as plans to make staff savings and reviews of its curriculum.

The college incurred a deficit of £436,000 in 2025, a financial health grade of ‘requires improvement’, and £160,000 of unrestricted cash, according to its latest accounts.

RHACC’s chair Sharon Raj vowed in the accounts that the college’s cash balance would not fall below £100,000 and it would improve its unrestricted cash position. But she added the college was still reviewing staff and funded course cuts to offset drops in potential income from tuition fees.

Pressures on RHACC’s cash balances stem partly from a strict repayment schedule with the DfE, which made a £1,799,485 erroneous payment to the college in 2017.

Additionally, leaders had secured £5 million from Greater London Authority to redevelop its Hillcroft campus into a community learning hub, but the project collapsed in 2024 after planning permission for the residential element fell through.

The GLA is now clawing back around £45,000 of the £200,865 claimed to date for the project.

The college was banking on the sale of the campus to stabilise its finances and repay the remaining £200,000 owed to the DfE, according to its accounts, but the site still appears to be unsold.

The college has also anticipated “significant” funding reductions from its main funders, the GLA and DfE.

RHACC had received a flat rate of £5,088,948 in adult skills funding from the GLA for the past three years. London officials have indicated they will cut individual provider allocations by 1.65 per cent from 2025-26 due to a reduction in the overall ASF allocation it receives from the DfE.

College board minutes from last July show the GLA will slash funding by around £81,000 each year for the next two years.

Additionally, the college was locked out of extra cash from the DfE to help fund college staff pay rises last year because officials distributed the money through 16-to-18 funding.

RHACC and the GLA were contacted for comment.

A Richmond Council spokesperson said: “The council has not been approached either by the college or the GLA and therefore we regard this as a matter between those parties to resolve.

“RHACC’s provision remains very important to the borough, and we hope that the current financial challenges can be resolved so these communities continue to be served.”

Skills England’s new expert network will cut red tape, not corners

Over the last 11 months, since I started in my role at Skills England, I’ve seen first-hand how we’re putting employers at the heart of the skills system.

From engaging in place, where employers are based, to gathering insights and valuable feedback about assessment reforms and skills gaps, their guidance is vital to our work.

I’ve been so impressed with the excellent contributions made by thousands of employers who work closely with us. And I fully appreciate that their expertise will be vital to getting it right with upholding quality, simplifying the system and becoming more responsive.

Just this week Skills England announced our first ‘fast track’ apprenticeship unit, as reported by FE Week.

This battery manufacturing apprenticeship unit will help a new gigafactory in Somerset to deliver around 4,000 jobs and over £700 million in annual economic value to the south west.

To make this happen, we relied heavily on the expertise of the battery sector, mixing the knowledge of employers with data and the insight of academic experts in this field.

With their help and through our investment and infrastructure skills service, we turned this new apprenticeship unit around fast – hitting our target of meeting skills needs for major projects in three months, without reducing quality.

It’s a great example of how Skills England has been improving how we work with sector experts. Employers and learners in a key sector, right across the country, will ultimately reap the benefits.

We’re building on that through what we are calling our ‘expert network’. An important goal with this is to reduce the time burden for employers, speeding things up while keeping quality and enhanced employer expertise at the centre of our decision-making process. 

Existing stakeholders will become part of a wider community of more than 4,500 experts; employers, SMEs, providers, unions, regional partners and regulators, which means the knowledge we already rely on will now be complemented by an even richer, more diverse pool of insight.

We heard from employers and sector partners at summits and roundtables that they want to stay involved – but they would like to do this in a way that feels proportionate, not a return to long meetings, fixed cycles or heavy admin.

So, Skills England will take on the administrative burden and typically produce the first draft, giving members a proper starting point so that their expertise can land where it matters most.

The focus is now on sharing insight, not struggling with process. And if a full group isn’t necessary, we will keep it light, using quick conversations, short surveys or emails instead. The whole approach is faster and more flexible, which will give people a way to contribute without the time-consuming processes everyone was keen to move away from.

But it’s not just about technical and transactional updates.

We will also bring people together for bigger picture work, groups that look across sectors and regions, spot emerging trends, and help us understand what’s coming down the track.

These groups will give us the real-world intelligence we need to keep the system moving at pace, making sure we’re responding to what employers, providers and learners actually need rather than waiting for a cycle to tell us it’s time.

The expert network represents a natural progression of how we already operate and will build on a huge amount of good work that has already been done.

It will allow us to capitalise on employer expertise in a more focused way, which works better for them, while adding value from training providers and other key stakeholders.

If you’re interested in finding out more, please email us at expertnetwork.skillsengland@education.gov.uk.

Together, we will make a real difference. By improving on how expertise is used and valued, we will be better placed than ever to close critical skills gaps, help businesses grow, and support future generations to succeed in rewarding careers.

Apprenticeships for under-19s still sinking

Young people’s share of new apprenticeship starts plunged to the lowest level in five years during the first half of 2025-26.

Apprenticeship starts going to under-19s have hovered around 28 per cent since 2021. But this fell to 23.8 per cent this year as the rush to start higher-level apprenticeships before funding was withdrawn in January saw over-25s take one in two new apprenticeships between August and January.

Even discounting the level 7 spike, the number of year-on-year apprenticeship starts for under 19s fell from 56,470 in the first half of 2024-25 to 53,510 in the first half of this year, a 5 per cent drop.

Level 7 apprenticeships spiked 345% in final two months

The latest government statistics reveal 226,620 new apprenticeship starts recorded nationally between August 2025 and January, a 12 per cent jump on the same period the previous year.

The level 7 spike has also had an impact on the provider mix. Colleges saw their market share dip to 19 per cent, down from 21 per cent, even though they collectively started nearly 1,000 more apprenticeships than last year. Independent training providers increased their market share to 65 per cent, up from 62 per cent.

Across all ages, level 3 early years educator was the most popular apprenticeship with 11,500 starts. This was followed by level 7 senior leader, level 7 accountancy then level 5 operations manager. The latter three of these standards have been earmarked for defunding.

Foundation apprenticeships

Updated figures show 109 young people started a foundation apprenticeship between their launch in August and January. Of those, 40 started between August and October, up from the initially reported 36.

Onsite trades remained the most popular foundation apprenticeship, with 39 starts. Engineering and manufacturing followed with 33, then building services engineering with 30. Health and social care had six, while just one young person had started the hardware, network and infrastructure foundation apprenticeship.

There remained zero starts on the finishing trades and software and data courses.

New foundation apprenticeships in retail and hospitality are due to launch in April.

South Devon College claimed the highest number of starts (26) followed by GEM Partnership (18) and then Exeter and North Devon College (17).

Newbury’s PFI quadrupled build cost of campus

A college campus funded by a PFI deal will have cost four times the build price when the deal ends, FE Week can reveal.

Newbury College is thought to be one of only a few English colleges to have set up a private finance initiative, which it used for a £10 million campus that opened in 2002.

Under terms agreed at the outset, it will have repaid £40.5 million when the contract ends after 25 years in July next year.

In response to a freedom of information request, the West Berkshire college said annual PFI costs were between £1.2 million and £1.5 million for the first 15 years of the deal.

But since 2018 the annual charge has increased – hitting a peak of £2.5 million last July.

The costs include debt repayment for the construction project, interest, “lifecycle” payments for major building upkeep, and other bills such as maintenance, cleaning and security.

Last year the Department for Education placed the college in intervention due to its “fragile” financial position. Ministers also approved a £1.5 million emergency loan in December. Newbury is one of the country’s smallest colleges with an annual income of £15 million.

Assessments of the its financial problems pointed to “very high” PFI repayments, delayed payments from a 2023 land sale, and missed new learner targets in 2024-25.

The FE Commissioner’s decision on whether Newbury should merge with another college is due this summer.

Newbury has agreed around 130 PFI contract “variations” since 2002, altering terms that include what can be taught in classrooms and the exact days or hours buildings are accessible.

In the five-year run up to the college taking full control of the campus, it has faced separate costs of about £1 million for hiring in-house facilities managers, building surveys and external legal advice.

Value for money?

Estimates suggest PFI costs the public purse up to 40 per cent more than government-funded projects.

However, the Labour government is again considering using private capital to fund new projects “where value for money for taxpayers can be secured”.

Spencer van der Werf, managing director of facilities adviser Help for Schools, said Newbury’s charges appeared to be “within the normal range” of similar PFI deals and costs would have been made clear to management at the outset.

He explained PFI charges become unaffordable for a range of reasons, including energy costs going “through the roof”, reductions in government funding, and “poor management”.

However, the government has never paid Newbury College additional grant funding to meet PFI costs, known as “credits”, while some schools and local authorities have received support.

College minutes from 2023 show management was frustrated with facilities management contractor Mitie’s “unacceptable” service around security, landscaping and cleaning. These concerns are understood to have been resolved.

Newbury’s PFI contract was among early “pathfinder” deals launched under New Labour, funding its move to a new campus on the edge of the town.

Originally, the private finance partner was London & Regional, founded by billionaire property developer brothers Ian and Richard Livingstone.

Since 2014, the PFI contract has been owned by Equitix, which is part of global investment firm Tetragon Financial Group.

The final stages

Lee Probert, Newbury College’s principal since January 2025, said: “Visitors to our campus can immediately see the benefits that the PFI has enabled through the exceptional standard of our facilities.

“Alongside this, significant growth in student numbers in recent years and the implementation of an effective balanced budget, the college is entering the final stages of the PFI from a position of financial security and confidence.

“Our focus remains on delivering ‘careers, not courses’, providing excellent teaching and skills development for our students and communities, and ensuring a sustainable future for Newbury College.”

An Equitix spokesperson said: “It is acknowledged by all project parties that the Newbury College PFI has delivered facilities of an exceptional standard with unitary charge payments as were envisaged at the outset of the contract.

“We continue to be focused on ongoing service delivery and on working collaboratively to ensure the facility will be handed back in the required condition in 2027.”

A Mitie spokesperson said: “We are committed to providing the highest standard of services across our contracts.

“These minutes are from 2023, and since then we have continued to work with the College to strengthen service delivery.”

The DfE told FE Week it does not collect information on which colleges have PFI contracts and that its private finance team was providing “some direct assistance” to Newbury College.

ESOL results crash at under-fire Sheffield College

Sheffield College’s ESOL achievement rates have collapsed following investigations into claims of dodgy results.

Its level 1 regulated ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) achievement rate dived from 81.3 per cent in 2023-24 to just 28.4 per cent last year.

Meanwhile, the South Yorkshire college’s entry level regulated ESOL achievement rate fell from 92.4 per cent to 57.8 per cent.

The latest results, revealed in government data, follow claims of unreliable achievement rates and associated certification for ESOL students in the 2023-24 cohort.

In a statement released in February in anticipation of the statistics release, the college had said external investigations into unspecified discrepancies were ongoing, but admitted “maladministration” had been identified.

Angela Foulkes, chief executive and principal of Sheffield College, said “unsatisfactory” practices were found during an internal audit.

Major provider

The Sheffield College is the third largest ESOL provider outside of London – recording 5,350 leavers last year – and had some of the highest achievement rates of above 90 per cent.

The college’s non-regulated English language courses still achieve strong results.

In 2024-25, it scored a 96.2 per cent achievement rate from its non-regulated level 1 learners, which had 30 leavers. This compared to 98.5 per cent in 2023-24 when it had 470 leavers.

Meanwhile, non-regulated entry level ESOL provision for 1,320 leavers had an 89.7 per cent achievement rate in 2024-25, down from 96.4 per cent the previous year when 3,370 leavers were recorded.

Foulkes said: “We have completed a rigorous internal audit as part of our internal investigations into allegations affecting one curriculum area.

“We found some unsatisfactory practice within our ESOL provision which we identified as maladministration.

“Working with the awarding organisations, this has been addressed through rigorous quality processes which has resulted in a drop in achievement results in that area of the college for 2024-25.”

The college has set up a performance improvement board to prevent a repeat of the issue.

“One of the consequences of the work that we’ve done is strengthening our approach to quality assurance and compliance,” Foulkes added.

External investigations are ongoing.

When the ESOL malpractice claims emerged last July, Sheffield College reportedly suspended two senior staff members and opened an internal investigation. The South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority and awarding organisation City & Guilds also opened probes.

The combined authority funds the provision through the adult skills fund (ASF) and has repeatedly awarded Sheffield the largest share of its budget. It received a 13 per cent increase to its ASF income in 2023-24 to £11.58 million.

The same amount was allocated in 2024-25 and 2025-26, which accounts for more than one third of the authority’s £32 million annual ASF budget.

Teenagers aren’t googling your organisation, they’re asking AI

When a 15 year old starts thinking about where to go after school, they’re increasingly asking AI before they ask anyone else.

Research from the UK’s communications regulator Ofcom showed that around four in five teenagers who use the internet are already using generative AI tools such as ChatGPT or Claude.

This matters because generative tools don’t behave like search engines. They don’t just return links. They summarise, recommend and repeat the sources they appear to trust.

This is where GEO comes in: Generative Engine Optimisation. How generative AI tools find and reuse information so that what they say about your organisation is accurate and truthful.

In PR we’ve always said reputation is built on consistency, and GEO works on the same idea. If your organisation wants to be represented accurately in AI answers, you’ve got to take care about what gets cited, what gets reused and what becomes the default version of the truth, not just what gets clicks and views.

Here’s how to make that practical without a rebrand, new platform or an expensive campaign:

Step one:

Put together a list of questions people actually ask. Things like, “which college is best for catering near me?” “Can I do an apprenticeship if I fail English?” “Can I retake my A-levels at 22?” Or “what are T Levels really like?”. Run these prompts and make a note of who gets mentioned, which sources are named and what information keeps coming up. You’ll get a baseline as to where your organisation sits.

Step two:

Audit your footprint. Look at the domains that keep appearing in answers. Regulator pages, local authority hubs, sector press and major education publishers tend to show up repeatedly because they’re seen as reliable. Then be honest about where you appear in that ecosystem. Many providers have plenty of content on their own sites, but very little of it is referenced elsewhere. Much of it is written for marketing rather than as something another organisation would point to as evidence.

Step three:

Make parts of your website behave like reference points. This doesn’t mean building anything new or fancy, just choose a small number of pages that already exist and make them factual, dated and easy to cite. One clear page that sets out progression and destinations with a short note on how the figures are calculated. One plain English page that explains learner support, who it’s for and how to access it. One maintained page that lists apprenticeship employer partners. If someone outside your organisation could link to these pages with confidence, they’ll be far more likely to be reused in AI answers too.

Step four:

Make these pages easy to extract information from. Both AI systems and people reward clarity. Short summaries at the top, clear headings and bullet points help. A proper FAQ that mirrors real questions helps. Putting key information on web pages instead of hiding it in PDFs helps too. Keeping URLs stable (which means updating the content on the page each year, rather than creating a new page with a new address) and naming things consistently helps as well.

None of this is glamorous, but all of it improves accuracy and usability.

Step five:

Get mentions in places people already trust. This is something comms teams know how to do, it just needs a different lens now. Partner pages that name you as the delivery provider. Employer announcements that link back to your apprenticeship and support pages. Local authority and careers sites that point people to your guidance. Sector round ups that reference your outcomes and approach. These mentions matter because they don’t read like self-promotion. They read like other people saying you’re part of the picture.

Step six:

Governance. If you publish outcomes, keep them up-to-date. If programme names change, make sure old links still go somewhere sensible. If you launch something new, give it one clear page with a date, a summary and a contact point. The easiest version of your story to find is the one that’s most likely to be repeated.

With GEO, you don’t need to shout louder. You just need to make sure that the right information is what gets picked up and passed on.

This ESOL review is a rare chance – let’s not waste it

Various governments of different political persuasions have long promised a national English language strategy. The current government has undertaken to review English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) provision, as highlighted in both the skills white paper and the protecting what matters white paper. The immigration white paper also contains a commitment to support those who are already here to learn English, as well as proposing controversial new language proficiency requirements for settlement.

These various white papers go to show how policy for ESOL straddles different government departments, as it forms part of the skills agenda, the community cohesion agenda and the immigration agenda. On top of the continuous overall decline in adult skills funding, an added new complexity is the devolution of the adult skills fund to mayoral strategic authorities. While the devolution of funds presents opportunities, it also poses challenges, as seen by the planned ESOL cuts in Greater Lincolnshire from 2027.

Developing people’s English language proficiency is essential for community cohesion and enabling people to contribute their skills to the economy. Many learners credit ESOL with helping them to build lives as citizens in the UK: the right provision can facilitate learners’ social integration, make it easier to find a job or voluntary work, and access public services.

What are our hopes for the review?

One key opportunity will be to position and integrate ESOL better into the current skills offer and respond to local labour market needs. Currently much ESOL is at too low a level and doesn’t equip learners with language skills needed to enter the labour market. Some providers and regions are already addressing this issue. As sponsors of the Association of College’s Beacon Award for Excellence in ESOL, we have seen innovative programmes that are unlocking real progression opportunities for learners by embedding sector-specific English language tuition into skills provision.

This is the approach taken by this year’s Beacon Award winner, City of Liverpool College, whose new dual teaching model sees learners receive ESOL lessons tailored to their chosen vocational course, as well as attending practical classes where both an ESOL and vocational teacher are present. This model ensures that sector-specific language is embedded throughout various pathways, including plastering, culinary skills and science. Similarly at Oldham College, their community interpreting course offers a vocational pathway that empowers level 3 ESOL learners to become qualified interpreters, directly addressing the UK’s shortage of trained professionals and guaranteeing them work with local employers upon completion.

One point buried in the government’s announcements is the suggestion that digital provision may offer a solution to the scale of need. While digital resources can complement classroom provision, it cannot replace it. Access to appropriate classroom-based English language tuition, led by trained teachers and face-to-face collaboration, is considered to lead to better learner outcomes and accelerate people’s ability to participate in their local communities. This is reflected in the experience of Durham College, whose sports programme for ESOL learners has seen a substantial improvement in their confidence and communication skills because they collaborate with their teammates and coaches in English.

Entitlement to ESOL

Finally, following Lincolnshire’s recent decision to de-fund ESOL, we urge the government to address the question of minimum entitlements to provision when devolving funds to local regions. If we want people to be able to integrate and contribute to society, they need to be able to access quality English language learning.

While there is unlikely to be an injection of significant new resources for ESOL at this point, the sector must take a long-term view, argue for the economic benefits, and look towards the next comprehensive spending review for any potential funding increases.

Teachers of ESOL often tell us that their job is complete once learners feel confident enough to enter their local community and thrive in whatever they choose to do. This review is therefore a golden opportunity to redefine how English language teaching can actually reach all those who need it, whilst also offering provision tailored to the needs of every individual.