FAB Tim’s Cheeky past

The new chair of the Federation of Awarding Bodies, Tim Bennett-Hart, comes across as the perfect English gentleman, with his self-professed “posh accent”, refined demeanour and royal connection (last month he played guitar in Saudi Arabia for the country’s Crown Prince).

But he has a cheeky side too. As a teenager he was in a band with such a naughty name – referring to a body part – that he dare not say it aloud, and later was part of a team that wrote songs for noughties TV pop talent show stars, including The Cheeky Girls.

Bennett-Hart’s eclectic musical background paved the way for him to become chief executive of RSL Awards, a specialist awarding organisation (AO) for the creative arts.

He is very deliberate in his choice of location for our interview. We meet in the grand interiors of London’s Royal Society of Arts, a precursor to modern awarding bodies. RSA Awards offers graded exams in performing arts such as dance, drama and music, the first of which he says were created in this building more than 150 years ago. Much of what AOs still do stems from that era; NCFE was created in 1848 and City & Guilds in 1878.

But unlike any other time in its history, the awarding sector is facing a crisis of purpose over what assessment should look like, given the impact of AI, acute skills shortages and a mental health crisis some blame on exam pressures facing young people.

On top of this, AOs have lately felt like a “political football being kicked from one place to another”, caught in a fast-moving tide of reform announcements: new V Level qualifications, the lifelong learning entitlement, the growth and skills levy, apprenticeship units, the Office for Students regulating higher technical qualifications, functional skills adjustments and the end of EPAs.

Bennett-Hart shakes his head at the upheaval. “You’re thinking, ‘how much of this do I actually pay attention to, or do I just keep on my trajectory and see where we go?’”

He is particularly concerned that the government should apply the brakes on V Levels, currently set for rollout in 2027. Revisions of GCSE and A Level content, which are “just an evolution of standards”, are not expected to be completed until 2031.

“If we’re doing a revolution of qualifications, giving it more than 18 months would be wise,” he says.

It has also been a period of change for FAB’s leadership. In 2024 the body took on its third chief executive in under a year with the appointment of Rob Nitsch, who Bennett-Hart believes has been a “really constructive agent of influence” for awarding bodies.

FAB’s chair since 2024, Lifetime Training CEO Charlotte Bosworth, had been set to hand the baton to NCFE chief executive David Gallagher until he stepped down last month for health reasons.

Bennett-Hart praises Bosworth for doing a “really good job at keeping things calmer”, because when it comes to qualifications there is a “real tendency to get a bit uncalm about things sometimes”.

He hopes to use his voice through FAB to change perceptions of AO qualifications as being “just about BTECs”, which he says is a hindrance for niche AOs like his. Around 1.5 million people take graded music or performing arts exams each year, all Ofqual-regulated, but they “get lumped in with lots of other things”.

In contrast to RSL Awards, his new vice chair Kelle McQuade is COO of the AQA-owned Training Qualifications UK, which boasts more than 240 qualifications.

“Between us, we feel like we really cover the breadth of awarding,” he says.

Musical roots

Bennett-Hart spent his formative years in the Surrey village of Chobham, which explains his accent, although he assures me: “I’m not as posh as my voice makes out”. His dad was a land surveyor – a maker of “very detailed maps” – and his mum a teacher.

At school he “struggled quite a lot” with English language and was placed in a remedial group. Rather than putting him off, it made him determined to express himself well through language. He began writing poetry and later discovered songwriting, having played the violin since he was four.

As a self-conscious 14-year-old he sold the violin “in a fit of panic” over friends’ perceptions and bought an electric guitar. His first band’s name cannot be uttered because it refers to a “really rude, anatomically interesting part of the body”.

“We were trying to be rebels at the time but failing miserably,” he explains.

At 15 he submitted a mixtape of his songs to a competition for young musicians on Radio 1’s Jo Whiley and Steve Lamacq show. He was picked to attend a residential course run by Norton York, founder of RSL Awards, who had set up the AO after feeling irked that funded university pathways were available to classical musicians but not electric guitarists or drummers.

Bennett-Hart had forgotten about the course until, after joining RSL Awards as a director in 2018, he spotted a familiar photograph in the office and realised the scruffy teenager pictured with York was him.

He had long been convinced his destiny lay in becoming a rock star and spent four years as a “jobbing musician”, involving “staying up late” and “sleeping in the back of a van”.

It was hardly glamorous, but touring Europe with a swing band specialising in Glenn Miller songs was “brilliant – my gran came to see me”.

Crazy Frog

At 22, Bennett-Hart experienced the first of two “epiphany” moments. While spending six months in India learning the sitar and living at a spiritual retreat, he realised he wanted to become a teacher – partly, he admits, because “you can’t just sleep in the back of a van forever”.

He went on to study music at the University of Surrey, where he began writing songs seriously, partly as a way “to tell girls that I fancied them”.

This led to work with Jiant Productions, composing songs for contestants on talent shows including Pop Idol, Popstars, The X Factor and the BBC’s Fame Academy.

He specialised in the kind of pop music that sticks in your head all day – like it or not. Jiant’s credits include the Cheeky Girls’ album Party Time.

He also wrote music for the computer game Crazy Frog Racer.

“That was a low point in my life if I’m honest with you!” he says with a smile. “We made some music that we loved, and some resigned to the ‘what was that about?’ category.”

He later wrote music for TV adverts, including reworking Food, Glorious Food into “Chips, glorious chips” for McCain oven chips.

But the industry was changing: instead of being paid to write, songwriters increasingly had to pitch songs and were only paid if they were used.

Lecturing life

Bennett-Hart returned to his ambition to teach, first at Brooklands College in Weybridge and later at the University of Sussex. Academic life was a “shock” after freelancing, far slower paced, and he observed a “clash” between academics focused on research output and students concerned about their futures.

Then life took a dramatic turn when he was diagnosed with stage-four kidney cancer, which was initially thought could be terminal. Coming close to death shifted his outlook and made him, he says, “an eternal optimist”.

He later worked at the Academy of Contemporary Music in Guildford, helping expand its provision from music into media industries and computer games, eventually supporting the launch of campuses in London and Brighton.

Bennett-Hart argues specialist arts colleges often use degrees primarily as a mechanism to access funding rather than as “their paragon of what they believe somebody needs for that industry”.

He is also an advocate of accelerated two-year degrees delivered through trimester models, although institutions currently receive only two years of funding for them.

“If the outcome is the same as a three-year degree, you could give a really great experience. But at the moment the institution has to bear the financial brunt,” he says.

Global footprint

Since joining RSL Awards in 2018, Bennett-Hart has travelled widely. The London-based organisation operates in more than 50 countries and certificates over 100,000 candidates a year in music, performing arts and creative subjects.

But these days he is reluctant to spend too long away from home – he has a nine-year-old son.

He was recently in Shanghai launching a partnership with China’s state-controlled People’s Music Publishing House, and shortly before we met was in Saudi Arabia, where he played an original blues composition for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

AO market movements

Back in England, the AO market appears buoyant at first glance. The number of Ofqual-regulated awarding organisations has risen steadily from 164 in 2019-20 to 255 in 2023-24.

But a growing minority are loss-making, and offshore investors are gaining a foothold in both training providers and the AO sector, highlighted by the purchase of City & Guilds.

Bennett-Hart says RSL Awards is approached “all the time to sell up”. “That’s lovely,” he adds, “but we don’t need to.”

He worries consolidation could erode specialist expertise.

“If only large generalist AOs deliver most UK-funded qualifications, we’ll end up with privately funded people going down one route and publicly funded people forced down another. That won’t lead to the fairest system.”

He notes that Ofqual is increasingly scrutinising governance and financial sustainability. In recent years, the regulator’s annual compliance checks have involved “more questions about financial sustainability than about the validity and reliability of assessments”.

Given market turbulence, Bennett-Hart believes government policy must provide greater stability.

“Assurance and stability are exactly what our customers expect from AOs.”

AI optimism

When it comes to music qualifications, the declining numbers taking GCSE and A Level music contrast sharply with the growth of vocational music courses.

“It’s not that music or the creative arts are dying in schools,” he says. “Teachers are moving away from GCSEs and A Levels because they’re not relating to the students they’re working with.”

While headlines about AI and the creative industries often sound bleak, Bennett-Hart remains upbeat.

He believes AI is “more helpful than harmful” in creative work because it speeds up processes such as music mastering, enabling more people to produce their own work. AI-powered engines are also speeding up visual effects and other creative processes.

If AI eventually replaces some jobs, he suggests it might even trigger a wave of creativity as people search for new meaning.

“In the pandemic when everybody had loads of free time, people painted and learned instruments. Music sales tripled.”

Bennett-Hart believes awarding bodies are right to be cautious about using AI to mark work, but warns that if AOs fail to adapt, colleges could replace them with their own AI assessment systems.

Although the rapid growth of AI short-course platforms feels like “a bit of a Wild West”, he believes most people in the awarding sector are technology optimists.

After all, he says, “it’s inevitable” that qualifications will have to assess the use of AI.

The challenge now is embedding AI skills into qualifications and moving away from assessment questions that can easily be answered by chatbots.

“Those AOs thinking successfully about AI are thinking about the methodology of assessment in the first place,” he says.

Call the Doctor… our tutorials are being treated like a TARDIS

For some providers, tutorials and enrichment sit in a neat little box in the corner of a study programme. A timetabled hour. A checklist. Something that fits around “the real curriculum”.

The reality is different. Open the door and you find a TARDIS-like interior: a vast, expanding universe of expectations, responsibilities and competing priorities. It is somehow expected to be far bigger on the inside than the timetable space it occupies.

Safeguarding, British values, Prevent, independent living skills, employability, enrichment, wellbeing, digital skills, behaviour, attitudes and soft skills. Each new priority arrives like a new regeneration but rarely replaces what went before, and materialises in the tutorial system which quietly absorbs everything else.

I am no student services expert, but it does not add up. The list of expectations continues to grow, yet the time, space and funding available to deliver them remains stubbornly finite.

Tutorials are treated as elastic – stretched to deal with every emerging risk, crisis or policy shift, as if they exist outside the normal laws of time and space.

If there were any doubt about their importance, Ofsted has made its position clear. The latest inspection framework places inclusion, personal development and learner support firmly at the heart of judgments. The curriculum and assessment review recognised the importance of skills development beyond the qualification, and the need to free up sufficient learner hours to develop them properly.

Recently, I have attended events run by the FE Tutorial Network and the National Association for Managers of Student Services (NAMSS). This was a world I had not ventured into before. What I found was a community of professionals who were dedicated, expert and fiercely committed to their learners.

They are doing an extraordinary job. But it was equally clear that the demands being placed on them are becoming extremely challenging, despite their ingenuity and goodwill.

An effective tutorial and enrichment programme requires contextualisation by geography, industry and learner level. Layer on the post-Covid mental health crisis, the increasing complexity of SEND needs and the reality that learners arrive with vastly different life, school and work experiences, and it becomes obvious why no two learners share the same starting point or follow the same path through the system. Tutorial teams are constantly recalibrating the controls while the ship is already in flight.

Alongside this sits a debate as old as FE itself: should tutorials and enrichment be delivered by specialist staff, or by curriculum teachers? Tutorial specialists may lack subject context, while curriculum staff may lack confidence in areas such as the manosphere. Many teachers are excellent at employability, but not everyone is equipped to deal with the darker corners of the internet.

Can anyone realistically be an expert across such a broad and evolving mix of requirements?

The Skills Network has over 200 online tutorial and enrichment resources. Realistically, every learner could benefit from at least half of them. That represents more than 200 hours of expert-led content – an impossible demand within a traditional timetable.

Part of the solution lies in rethinking delivery. An individualised blend of online provision, combined with face-to-face support, can enable a flipped learning approach. Used well, this can free up scarce tutor time for what really matters: personalised, human support for learners who need it most.

Government may expect providers to deliver an ever-expanding range of support on around £5,000 per learner, but, as my finance director likes to say, “I want Villa to win the Champions League – that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen, especially under financial fair play rules”.

Perhaps over the next 12 months, more policymakers might consider putting their out-of-office on and attending a few of these events themselves – not to announce new initiatives, but simply to listen.

With Sir Martyn “Davros” Oliver and his inspection Daleks, ministers and their Cybermen, and the Weeping Angels of regulation waiting to strike when you blink, FE can feel permanently under siege. Our tutorial teams are the Doctors of this system, piloting their TARDIS through impossible terrain.

SEND reforms are another burden that could make teachers boil over

On reading the proposed SEND reforms, I couldn’t help but think yet again of the frog in boiling water analogy – you slowly turn up the heat and the frog doesn’t realise it’s being cooked.

The reforms are symptomatic of the way more responsibility and accountability have been heaped on the education system.

Although you’d be hard pressed to find someone who believes the current system works well, you’ll also find lots of people nervous to see what may come next – especially parents.

What we have now isn’t sustainable. The growth in education health and care plans (EHCPs) and support costs have pushed things (including council budgets) to breaking point.

We must approach the reforms with an open and positive mind. But it’s hard not to think they are about saving money and displacing responsibility and accountability onto our education system.

A legal duty on schools and colleges to produce new individual support plans (ISPs) for SEND learners will create lots of work, and become yet another thing for regulators to scrutinise for compliance and quality.

Consider the workload created in recent years through the increase in exam access arrangements. How far will the new £1.6 billion of funding to support inclusion go when the education sector – not least colleges – is already creaking?

Current thinking seems to be that these reforms represent bigger implications for schools than colleges.

An intended consequence is that by having less EHCPs, more children will remain in mainstream school settings and receive support through targeted or targeted plus tiers

Conversely in colleges, learners with EHCPs accessing “mainstream” provision are already the norm rather than the exception.

There is a wonderful phrase in the newly published consultation which states “we will build an education system where inclusion and high standards are two sides of the same coin.” Many FE colleges are already very close to achieving that aspiration, if not already there.

However, colleges are inclusive partly because of the lack of alternatives in post-16 settings. For many in specialist provision pre-16, transitioning to a general FE college after key stage 4 is the right thing. Equally, for many it is not, but the paucity of provision means it’s the only solution.

A key element of these reforms will be on transition, but that must not lose sight of a focus on the right setting for each individual.

Along with the aspiration to keep more students in mainstream settings is the intention to make every teacher a teacher of SEND, supported through £200 million of CPD investment over three years.

Again, it’s a great sentiment and something we’d already started to push at TSCG.

However, we need caution. In recent years we’ve asked more and more of FE teachers – embed maths and English, act as counsellors, become digital experts, turn your learners into oven-ready employees etc. Let’s not underestimate the task of becoming a teacher of SEND, given everything else that’s asked of them.

Which brings me back to the frog in the pan. Often, FE colleges are the default organisations to take ownership of complex safeguarding matters (reduction in social services); we continue to be at the brunt of the mental health crisis (pressure on health services); we have the statutory duty to meet local skills needs (but other parts of the education system do not).

The intended strength of EHCPs was the multi-agency approach (care and health along with education) with the local authority at the centre as the convener and statutory body. It hasn’t worked.

I genuinely believe the government is committed to getting the very best for every child and young person. Yet, by pushing much of the responsibility and accountability onto the education system, yet again we’re picking up the tab for failings elsewhere.

I’ll say it in plain English…cutting ESOL damages us all

Greater Lincolnshire’s decision to defund its ESOL provision, with limited exceptions for just two groups (Ukrainians and Hong Kongers), is shortsighted.

English for Speakers of Other Languages can be a lifeline for many, and is important for both community cohesion and skills development, so this decision risks weakening both.

The move stands in sharp contrast to the practice of other countries such as France and Denmark, where learning the language is expected, facilitated and subsidised for new residents.

Making it expensive and difficult to access serves no one, especially in England, where adult skills and ESOL provision have been underfunded for many years.

Upskilling UK citizens

Recent Home Office data shows that the number of people claiming asylum in the UK fell 4 per cent in 2025. However, a significant number of those needing English for integration or work are not asylum seekers but people who have been in the UK for many years.

According to the most recent census, of the one million adults in the UK who report not speaking English well or at all, over one-third are UK citizens.

While the government’s Immigration White Paper contains the promise to make the acquisition of English language easier for people already in the UK who don’t speak English well or at all, there are no proposals forthcoming from officials about this.

Within Lincolnshire itself, Boston and South Holland are two of the areas with the highest number of people with limited or no English proficiency in the whole country.

Implications for other regions

Will we see progressive policies elsewhere, or ESOL being defunded in other areas?

Ultimately, adults who have high English proficiency are three times more likely to be employed – so prioritising ESOL offers a good local investment, leading to better social cohesion and integration. 

People who speak English well have a 78 per cent employment rate (almost the same as first-language English speakers) while those with low proficiency have a 35 per cent employment rate. 

As recommended by the government, the dropping of the three-year waiting period to access adult courses has been helpful for other regions, enabling “people to become work ready” as one authority put it.

So, Greater Lincolnshire’s plans to reintroduce the three-year rule to access provision will simply delay learners’ ability to integrate, get a job and start contributing to the economy.

Although many people come to the UK with high-level professional skills, they often end up in lower-skilled roles, for example building work, driving taxis or cleaning.

If regions can develop and fund specialist language learning which is integrated into skills provision, learners with a high skills level can contribute more rapidly to the economy.

While we have already seen the beginnings of interesting practice in this area, we need to see more of it. 

Literacy vs language

For those needing English language for daily life, Greater Lincolnshire’s proposed one “literacy qualification for all” is unlikely to be able to address their language learning needs. 

Literacy and language learning are fundamentally different. The literacy curriculum has been designed to address the learning needs of first-language English students but does not address the distinct language learning needs of those who speak languages other than English.

Suggesting that learners acquire English language only through online, private or voluntary provision is unrealistic. Private provision is expensive, voluntary provision is limited, and online provision won’t suit everyone and is of variable quality.  

The government needs to realise its promise to facilitate the integration of those already here in the UK with limited English, and integrate ESOL into skills provision to address labour market needs.

It needs to consider how to do this in the context of devolution and whether certain minimum entitlements should be met when devolving funds.

We were pleased to see skills minister Jacqui Smith indicating this week that she wants to look at how to ensure ESOL provision is “available everywhere”.

If we can get English language teaching right, there can be substantial benefits for society as a whole.  

David Bell to lead independent review on antisemitism in colleges

Former Ofsted and Department for Education boss David Bell will lead an independent review into how colleges identify, respond to and prevent antisemitism, government has announced.

Bell will examine how well colleges are supported to handle incidents of antisemitism, including through their own policies and relevant government guidance.

He will look at processes for when incidents are “not handled well” and the role external campaigning organisations have in “influencing institutional decision making,” the DfE said.

External factors that can “contribute to antisemitism within education settings”, such as protests outside college gates and wider geopolitical events, will also be explored.

A call for evidence will open in the spring, with Bell’s recommendations following in the autumn. It will cover all education settings including colleges, schools, and universities.

Bell is vice chair of Skills England and vice-chancellor at the University of Sunderland.

He was DfE permanent secretary between 2006 and 2011 and chief inspector of schools between 2002 and 2005.

‘Open and independent mind’

Bell said he will have “an open and independent mind”, adding: “I will review both policy and practice to ensure that everyone can learn free from prejudice and hate.

“I am also keen to know more about those institutions who are tacking antisemitism effectively so that lessons can be shared widely across the education system.”

He said antisemitism is “a scourge and no child or young person or teacher should be subject to it, not least when attending school or college”.

This review forms part of the government’s wider commitment to strengthening social cohesion.

Data from The Community Security Trust recorded 204 school related antisemitic incidents in 2025. This was lower than 266 in 2024 and 325 in 2023, but above the 98 incidents in 2022.

A NASUWT teachers’ union survey last year found 51 per cent of surveyed Jewish teachers had experienced antisemitism in the workplace.

Education secretary Bridget Phillipson said: “As Jewish families across Britain celebrated Purim this week, a festival that speaks to the power of courage over hatred, I am reminded of the cost of staying silent in the face of prejudice.

“This review will help to ensure schools and colleges have the confidence and support to tackle antisemitism.”

The DfE said the review will not look to blame, or place undue burdens on colleges or schools. But it will identify areas for improvement.

It will not make recommendations directly related to core college funding or workplace supply issues.

The DfE is also carrying out an internal review of the decisions and recommendations framework of the Teaching Regulation Agency.

It followed a decision to not ban Ronan Preston from teaching. He had posted on social media “glory to Hamas” and called them “defenders of humanity”.

Year in construction is teaching me how we can build up women

I finished medical school and realised I couldn’t go straight into work. I was 24, burnt out and I needed to feel well again.

Burnout is widely discussed in medicine. National training data shows that a significant proportion of trainees are at high risk of burnout and find their work emotionally exhausting, so my experience isn’t rare.

That’s the bit people often miss when they hear I’m now on an adult construction course at Bradford College. They reach for a neat story about switching careers or rejecting medicine.

That isn’t what happened. I stepped sideways for a while, because I needed something physical and grounding.

This is my ‘year out’, a construction skills course. I could’ve gone travelling but I needed to reconnect with my community and do something fulfilling.

At the end of a session, I can look at what I’ve done and know whether it’s good work or not. It’s been unexpectedly steadying.

When people talk about construction, they often talk about it as if it’s rough or basic. That hasn’t been my experience. The work is precise and physical at the same time.

Watching a hip replacement being done properly is like that too. It’s careful, methodical work. Someone is rebuilding part of a body.

On this building course, you’re measuring, fixing and working with materials, and if you get it wrong, it shows. There’s craft in it.

For me, these are skills for life. You stop thinking you can’t touch anything without breaking it, you trust yourself a bit more.

I’m the only woman on my course, and people have been respectful and supportive. But I’ve become more aware of how language shapes whether women feel they belong.

I remember being told that I’d be ‘the only girl on the course’. It wasn’t meant badly; it was meant as useful information. But, if I’d been younger, or less confident, I might have heard that and thought, ‘this course isn’t for me’.

Women are still underrepresented in construction, particularly in manual trades. They make up around 15 per cent of the workforce, and far fewer work in site-based roles.

These figures are often used to explain why things are difficult, and less often used to look at how everyday interactions either invite women in, or quietly signal that we’re out of place.

Further education sits right at that point of contact.

Belonging is built through small, ordinary signals. At Bradford College, there are basic practicalities that make a difference. You’re treated as a learner, not as a novelty. You’re not asked to perform gratitude for being allowed into the room.

Even at the construction centre, things like having sanitary products available in the toilets tell you that someone has thought about whether women will be here and decided that we should be.

I’m working class, and that shapes how I experience education. On this course, I haven’t felt like I have to perform or explain myself. It’s hard to learn new things if you’re wasting precious energy trying to fit in.

Since starting this course I’ve had so many women say, ‘I wish I could’ve done that when I was younger’. My mum has looked for similar courses. A friend’s mum has too.

There’s appetite here for practical skills among women of all ages, not just for work, but for independence and confidence in everyday life.

On International Women’s Day (on Sunday), there’s often a focus on exceptional stories. I don’t think my story is exceptional. I think it’s instructive.

If we are serious about routes into male-dominated trades for women, the work isn’t only about recruitment campaigns or telling us to be brave. It’s about designing learning environments that assume women belong, rather than treating us as anomalies who need special handling.

This construction course has been my year out, and it’s helped me to become well again. The college didn’t just give me skills. It gave me a place where I could learn without being reduced to what I’d done before.

Teacher training reform is being built with genuine collaboration

Amongst the noise that accompanies reform in the FE and skills sector, one truth consistently cuts through: meaningful change only happens when the sector is not just consulted, but genuinely listened to.

The government last October set out its pledge to address what it described as “unacceptably poor quality’ training in FE initial teacher education and eradicate “contested or outdated theories” being taught to trainee lecturers, by introducing new statutory guidance. 

As FE’s ITE reforms continue to take shape, it’s important to recognise that the most valuable aspects of the delivery guidance and emerging curriculum content guidance (currently published in draft form and subject to parliamentary approval) have not come from policy rooms or distant strategy papers. They have been informed by the expertise, critique and lived realities of those working within FE and skills and FE ITE.

What has set this reform process apart is the depth and breadth of collaboration underpinning it. Rather than redesigning ITE in isolation, the Department for Education has drawn extensively on sector knowledge.

The public consultation attracted thoughtful and challenging responses that sharpened the proposals and ensured they reflected the complexity of FE and skills teaching.

A range of stakeholders offered insights that pushed discussions beyond abstract principles and into the practical territory of what works in classrooms, workshops, and more specialist learning settings.

A key pillar of this collaborative approach has been the expert advisory group I was privileged to be a part of.

Members of the group brought with them the nuance that only comes from years of navigating the unique pedagogical and organisational landscape of the FE and skills sector.

The group acted as a critical friend, interrogating assumptions, highlighting unintended consequences and helping shape guidance that aspires to raise standards without increasing burdens.

Their work helped keep the reforms anchored in reality and was framed around core pillars that align to occupational standards. But collaboration did not stop there.

Engagement with professional bodies, such as the Universities’ Council for the Education of Teachers and the FE ITE Special Interest Group, was invaluable in surfacing diverse perspectives.

Here, stakeholders had the opportunity to explore the implications of reform through the lens of their specific contexts and give honest feedback to support refinements.

The sector’s ongoing dialogue has also been enriched by the Education Training Foundation. I am consulting editor for its membership journal inTuition, which its 22,000 members access.

Regular policy updates from DfE officials have become essential reading for many of us. These have been clear, timely and unafraid to articulate the tensions, as well as the opportunities for the reforms.

Importantly, inTuition provides a platform for the sector to respond, challenge and build on ideas.

Various ‘responding to’ pieces have extended the debate, demonstrating that policy development is at its best when it becomes a conversation rather than a monologue.

This public, iterative engagement has helped the reforms evolve more transparently while strengthening collective ownership.

Together, these strands of collaboration have helped shape curriculum guidance that adds genuine value.

The guidance, built around five core pillars, emphasise not only what FE and skills teachers should learn or recognise, but also what they should learn how to do.

These foundations matter for high-quality, inclusive education. They foreground professional behaviours, evidence-informed teaching, subject expertise, learners’ progression and, where relevant, technical and vocational integration.

These priorities resonate because they have emerged through shared thinking with the sector and have not simply been imposed upon it.

The FE and skills sector has shown, once again, that when practitioners, policymakers and professional bodies come together with honesty and commitment, reform can be something done with us rather than to us.

As we move into the next phase of implementation, it’s essential we hold onto that spirit of collaboration. It is the best guarantee that the reforms will fulfil their promise: strengthening FE ITE in ways that genuinely enhance teaching, learning, and life chances across our sector.

As we enter age of agentic AI everyone becomes a manager 

As generative AI evolves into agentic AI, the skills we need to focus on are changing. If the last few years have been dominated by prompting and evaluating outputs, the next phase is likely to be dominated by goal setting and delegation.  

Before we go on, let’s start by unpicking what I actually mean by agentic AI. 

I’m talking about AI tools that work towards a goal without the user giving them the exact steps to get there. To do that, these tools may have access to your files, a web browser and even other agents.

If generative AI is largely about producing content, then agentic AI is about actions.  

This doesn’t make the things we currently focus on with AI literacy less important. We still need a broad understanding of how these systems work, and of ethical and legal concerns.

To this we can add a new set of skills: the ability to clearly set goals and define outcomes, delegate effectively and remain accountable for work we did not do ourselves.  

Goal setting in an agentic world  

Let’s start by looking at goal setting. Agentic AI shifts the emphasis from specifying how a task should be done to being clear about the outcome you want to achieve.   

Are we good at this? I’d argue, often not.   

For every great example, there are thousands of weaker ones. Goals that are so vague they are closer to aspirations than outcomes.

 “Our goal is to transform lives” is well intentioned, maybe, but unclear about what success would look like, for whom, and over what timeframe.  

An AI agent is likely to take a goal at face value. It might ask for clarification if it has been developed to do so, but it may equally just work towards the goal.   

So to make the most of agentic AI, we need to get much better at this, much earlier in our careers. We need to build it into our curriculum.  

Delegation as a lived skill  

The second skill is delegation, and this is one that really hit home. Whilst delegation might be normal for senior staff, it can be quite unrelatable to many of us, especially those just starting out in their careers. 

There is, of course, always a risk of anthropomorphising AI and drawing too close a parallel between delegating to people and delegating to code.

But it is still worth reflecting on what good delegation involves and how it relates to AI.  

It means making deliberate choices about what not to delegate, being clear about constraints and authority, and knowing how to monitor progress without micromanaging.

It also means recognising when things are drifting off course and being willing to step in when needed. Above all, it means understanding that accountability remains even when tasks are delegated.  

So how do we normally learn to delegate? As with goal setting, it is usually from a mix of experience and development over time.  

Implications for curriculum and assessment  

For both skills, if AI has even half the impact on entry-level jobs that is often predicted, learning by observing more experienced colleagues will not be enough.

We cannot assume that students will ‘pick up’ delegation once they become managers, because in an agentic world, they are managers of systems from day one.  

By the time people encounter these expectations in the workplace, it may already be too late.

Alongside critical thinking and digital literacy, goal setting and delegation need to be explicitly woven into our curriculum and assessment frameworks.

If we want our learners to lead in the age of AI, we must teach them not just how to use the tools, but how to take responsibility for the outcomes they produce.  

If prompting was the skill of the generative AI era, delegation and accountability will be the defining skills of the agentic era. 

FE needs senior women to share their real stories

Joanna Stokes:

I regularly work with capable, ambitious women who tell me, “I want to step up into senior leadership, but I’m terrified of what I’ll have to give up.”

These are women who have led successful teams, who look at senior leadership and think, “I could do that.”

What holds them back is rarely capability. Instead, it’s the stories they’ve absorbed about what leadership demands. Stories about not being ready, not being the right kind of leader or needing to choose between professional ambition and caring responsibilities. These narratives shape decisions before a role is advertised.

One client, a head of department with over 20 years experience in FE, feared senior leadership would make her “hard, cold, corporate.” She rarely heard senior women talk about getting home for their children. She saw evening events, long hours and little space for real life.

In Rebecca’s research on senior leaders in FE, women downplayed their family commitments while male leaders more freely shared how fatherhood shaped them. When women don’t hear the full story, they draw their own conclusions. To lead, you hide who you are.

Beneath these narratives sit deeper worries. ‘What happens if there’s a family emergency during a board meeting? Who will cover the care?’ ‘What will break if I stretch myself further?’

These concerns aren’t always about children. Many relate to ageing parents, siblings needing support, or being the emotional anchor in a family. The mental load is heavy, and the cost of ambition can feel too high.

One client described it as “the emotional burden I carry.” Even with a supportive partner, she held the mental load. 

DfE workforce figures show that women make up 65.5 per cent of the FE workforce, yet representation drops to 62 per cent at manager level and 54 per cent at senior leadership level. This 8-point drop between managers and senior leaders tells its own story. Women are capable, yet the pipeline narrows at the point where influence increases.  It isn’t a glass ceiling. It’s an invisible exit.

Dr Rebecca Gater:

International Women’s Day 2026 invites us to reflect on this issue through its theme ‘Give to Gain’. In FE, this theme lands with force. Women already give extraordinary amounts of time, emotional labour, and logistical expertise. Yet there is one thing many women do not give, even though it would make the biggest difference to others. Their stories.

The honest ones. The ones about navigating ambition and caring responsibilities, facing guilt, setting boundaries, and negotiating flexibility. When senior women talk openly about the realities of their lives, they give something powerful. Permission to be ambitious without guilt. To lead without losing themselves, and to believe that senior leadership can support family life, not conflict with it.

Women do not need another leadership programme. They need role models who talk openly about sports days, parents’ evenings, caring for relatives and the boundaries that help them thrive. Authenticity is not a liability. It’s a strength.

When women share their real stories, not the polished versions but the human ones, we don’t just support individuals. We strengthen the entire sector.

Leadership rarely begins at work.  It begins in the everyday. Women develop significant transferable strengths through caring for children or elderly parents, coordinating households, supporting others emotionally and navigating difficult life events that require resilience and diplomacy.

In my case raising four daughters meant learning to manage logistics and negotiate competing needs, skills that shape her leadership every day. Every woman has her own version of this story. 

These strengths are leadership assets. Mentorship sits at the heart of “give to gain.” Women in leadership have a responsibility to support others through guidance, sponsorship and generosity of experience.  Women rising through the sector have a role too, which is simply to ask. Most leaders will feel honoured to be approached. 

Our joint call to action

FE cannot afford outdated narratives about who leads and how. We need to:

  • Share our lived experiences openly
  • Mentor generously
  • Champion authenticity as a leadership strength

Who could you support, encourage, or mentor this week, simply by sharing a little more of your story?