Latest news from FE Week

UCU turns screw on colleges with collective ballot

A collective nationwide ballot of college staff will be staged by the University and College Union to boost the impact of potential industrial action.

The UCU will adopt the strategy for the first time in its dispute with all FE colleges over pay and conditions.

Its congress backed the pooling of votes across England earlier this year to “strengthen our collective leverage” with employers and ministers.

The union told members it would take action following negotiations with the Association of Colleges earlier this month that resulted in a 3.5 per cent recommendation.

The five FE staff unions are demanding a 10 per cent pay rise or £3,000, whichever is greater, to reverse real-terms cuts over the last 15 years, as well as pay parity with school teachers and a binding national bargaining agreement.

The collective ballot means votes at each college are combined as a national pool and would have to surpass an overall 50 per cent turnout threshold.

As an example, three equally sized union branches with 65, 53 and 46 per cent turnouts would create an aggregate response rate of 55 per cent.

Last year’s ballots were held at branch level after an aggregated ballot was rejected in 2024. Teachers at 32 of 68 colleges passed the 50 per cent turnout threshold and backed strike action, but lecturers at only 17 colleges walked out after several branches settled pay deals above the AoC’s 4 per cent recommendation.

The UCU already uses the aggregate method in higher education. Its last two attempts in 2023 and 2025 both fell short of the turnout threshold, at 43 per cent and 39 per cent, although the majority backed action over pay and job cuts.

‘Surprised and disappointed’

David Hughes, AoC chief executive, said he was “surprised and disappointed” the UCU was “still” considering taking aggregated national action against colleges.

“Our last meeting with the staff unions was very constructive and reflected that we have been working together to secure the investment needed to improve pay and conditions in colleges,” he said.

“The pressure we exerted, together, this year led to the extra investment from the Department for Education which colleges will use to try to reach our recommended pay award of 3.5 per cent. That recommendation is in line with school teachers, and slightly ahead of school support staff.”

The government announced in July that FE would receive an extra £485 million over the next two years to help with college recruitment and retention.

Maximising branch numbers

A successful ballot would give the union the potential to call coordinated action across all the employers covered.

The union said it was taking legal advice to “maximise the number of branches that can lawfully participate” and intends to publish a timetable “soon”.

UCU guidance revealed that branches that agreed a deal for 2026-27 before July 1 were “highly likely” to be excluded from the national dispute. The union did not explain how branches that settled later would be treated.

Colleges are free to set their own pay rises locally. Several have already settled pay deals of up to 5 per cent.

Exeter and North Devon Colleges Group agreed to pay 3.5 per cent, backdated to September.

Group principal John Laramy said he hoped to make further improvements to pay later in the year, “particularly to our starting salaries for teachers”.

Nottingham College settled on a 5 per cent pay rise with unions in September. West Herts College Group recently awarded 4 per cent, with qualified teachers’ base pay rising nearly 11 per cent from £37,876 to £42,000.

The College of West Anglia has not yet decided its 2026-27 award, though its strategic plan has a target to “meet or exceed” the AoC recommendation.

Elsewhere, Barnsley College said it could not detail any offer as this year’s pay award would be effective from January 2027.

The UCU was contacted for comment.

Croydon poised to axe in-house adult education service

Budget and cost pressures have forced a council to consider switching its adult education services to a fully subcontracted model.

Croydon Council’s cabinet unanimously approved a 21-day consultation on plans to allow colleges, charities and independent training providers to provide Croydon Adult Learning and Training (CALAT) courses.

The council said its in-house service – one of London’s biggest – was no longer financially viable after forecasting a £500,000 overspend on CALAT this year, which reported achievement rates below the London average.

The decision follows a wave of cuts to adult education across the country, including centre closures in Cornwall and Derbyshire.

Croydon’s Conservative mayor Jason Perry tabled the proposal after a rapid review of the service recommended fully commissioning out adult education as having the “strongest potential” for long-term financial sustainability.

“This is not a proposal to cut adult learning funding, which is grant-funded through the [Greater London Authority]. It is about outcomes,” he said. “We cannot ignore these findings.”

CALAT, rated ‘good’ by Ofsted in 2023, faces financial pressure on its 2026-27 budget.

Consultancy Mime projected staff costs this year at £4.5 million, roughly equal to its grant income, and a doubling of property costs due to increases in service charges and rent.

Additionally, the GLA recently cut grants by 1.65 per cent a year for two years, which is expected to fall more heavily on tailored learning budgets than adult skills.

CALAT’s costs per successful learner remain among the highest in the capital at £819, against a range of £365 to £990.

Jason Cummings, the council’s deputy mayor and cabinet member for finance, said as one of London’s biggest adult learning services, its cost bill “should be one of the lowest per head”.

Mime’s analysis also revealed low enrolments – of 855 courses, 465 ran with fewer than 10 enrolments. Meanwhile, adult skills achievement was 84.6 per cent against a London local authority average of 87.3 per cent in 2024-25. CALAT’s Ofsted report said nearly 1,400 learners were enrolled at the time of its 2023 inspection.

New direction

The consultation will run from November 1 to 21, with procurement starting from December 1 if approved.

If a subcontracting model is chosen, Croydon would join Lambeth, Merton and Greenwich councils which have fully contracted out adult education. At least 13 other London boroughs partly subcontract provision.

The council considered outsourcing in 2016 but councillors rejected the proposal after finding it would cost rather than save money.

If subcontracting goes ahead, courses would be delivered through the existing facilities of “established” education and training providers in the borough.

“This should mean the courses are more accessible across the borough,” Perry added.

The council would also keep 20 per cent of its £4.53 million Adult Skills Fund allocation, or £907,000, for commissioning and quality assurance.

The largest share, 43 per cent, or £1.95 million, would fund accredited provision including ESOL, English and maths up to GCSE, digital and vocational courses.

A further 15 per cent (£693,000) would go to employment brokerage organisations, and 16 per cent (£726,000) to tailored learning, run by community and FE providers.

An additional 3 per cent (£136,000) would be directed to a learner support fund, and another 3 per cent (£122,000) would be “retained” as an innovation reserve to fund pilot schemes.

‘Deliberate scaremongering’

The council’s report lists 197 CALAT staff, of whom 49 are permanent, four are temporary, and 144 are casual or sessional tutors or support staff. Redundancy and TUPE implications would need to be considered early to mitigate employee relations issues.

Cummings said claims that 200 jobs were at risk were “deliberate scaremongering”.

“We are not cutting the courses, and we are not getting rid of staff,” he said.

Labour’s Brigitte Graham, shadow cabinet member for children and young people, said the matter had been “handled poorly” due to poor communication with staff and students.

She added staff were “essentially evicted” from CALAT’s central Croydon base the Clocktower, and that Strand House in Thornton Heath, where most classes have moved, was now overcrowded.

The University and College Union also recently reported Strand House had “unsafe temporary classrooms” and “a sense of chaos” across the service.

But Perry said the building was “underutilised” until the recent moves and that “consultations have to start somewhere”.

Sarah Jones, MP for Croydon West, urged the mayor to “stop this now”.

“CALAT is used by hundreds of people across the borough. I have received loads of letters and emails urging the mayor to act. Over half of the users of CALAT live in Croydon’s most deprived areas,” she said in a social media post.

“My plea to mayor is stop this now, talk to the people who work in CALAT and get a proper plan.”

The council has backed plans to convert Strand House into homes for care-experienced young adults, but said the timeline for CALAT moving out would rely on the consultation’s outcome.

The Tory mayor confronting a postcode lottery in opportunity

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough is a region of extremes. Home to around 934,000 people and one of the world’s leading universities, it also contains communities where young people face some of England’s greatest barriers to education and employment.

For Paul Bristow, the Conservative mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority (CPCA), closing that divide is an economic necessity.

I meet him at Peterborough’s youth employment hub, overlooking the football pitch at Peterborough United’s stadium, where CPCA is busy delivering the government’s youth guarantee.

From the balcony, Bristow points towards where he sits at home games. He explains he is careful not to cross into the hospitality area, lest anyone accuse him of enjoying special privileges.

“There have been too many times people have seen me there and said, ‘ah, look at him’.”

But Bristow is not afraid of attracting attention, or of challenging his own party.

A former political lobbyist who was elected Peterborough MP in 2019, Bristow was sacked as a ministerial aide in 2023 for calling for a Gaza ceasefire. After losing his seat to Labour by just 118 votes in 2024, he accused the Conservatives of making “some real mistakes” and said those responsible should apologise to defeated MPs.

Bristow’s willingness to break ranks is useful in such a politically divided region; parts of Cambridge are represented by Greens, the city council is Labour-run and Cambridgeshire County Council is controlled by the Liberal Democrats.

CPCA’s history shows what happens when political relationships deteriorate. In 2023, the authority was placed under heightened government scrutiny following serious governance concerns.

“We’re not going to make those mistakes again,” Bristow says.

“It’s just about remembering the two rules. Rule number one is be nice, and rule number two is remember rule number one.”

It is a softer approach than his mayoral campaign, which attacked diversity and inclusion officer posts, pronouns in official email signatures, four-day working weeks and what he called the war on motorists.

But his charm is disarming. In his home village of Wansford, where “everyone knows your business before you’ve left the front door”, he recalls his local pub landlady telling him: “you’re such a terrible Tory, but I’m going to vote for you anyway because you’re such a fine fellow”.

“What’s important are things like this youth hub,” he says. “There’s no party politics in something like this.”

The youth guarantee test

CPCA is one of eight areas piloting the youth guarantee, which the government pledged would ensure young people can access education, apprenticeships, employment or tailored support.

Its three-year trailblazer programme began in April 2025, targeting 16 to 21-year-olds who are NEET or at risk of becoming so, extending to age 25 for those with an education, health and care plan.

Bristow wants to “prove to the Treasury that doing preventative initial investment is better than having to act at the far end of the challenge”.

In its first year, more than 1,000 young people received support through around 30 projects involving approximately 200 businesses, including an expanded careers guidance service and work by the Education Development Trust with schools and colleges to identify alternative learning and employment pathways.

Trailblazer funding has also allowed Peterborough City Council, whose youth employment service had been cut back to little more than statutory tracking, to extend support to 18 to 21-year-olds and recruit more coaches.

The council says this has shifted its approach from simply recording disengagement towards identifying risks earlier and helping young people overcome barriers.

But so far, it has not made a dent in the city’s NEET figures. Peterborough’s NEET rate for 16 and 17-year-olds rose from 4.3 per cent in 2024 to 5.4 per cent in 2025 and 5.7 per cent this year, compared with 3.4 per cent nationally.

At the football stadium, the programme’s impact is more tangible.

Four CPCA staff work alongside four Department for Work and Pensions employees, providing what Bristow describes as a “one-stop shop” encompassing mental health, housing and employment support.

The stadium’s open-plan setting is more welcoming than “some boring office building with glass separating you from the person”.

Across the hub’s work, 170 young people have found jobs, with 60 to 70 per cent remaining in sustained employment.

“A few have come back,” hub manager Dean Watson acknowledges. But the door remains open.

Lack of confidence is often the biggest obstacle. Among those helped is Luke, a self-taught coder who had built his own computer games but struggled to find IT work. The hub connected him with a recruiter, and he is now undertaking a three-year junior developer course.

Jess, a gap-year student who lacked the confidence to promote herself to employers, secured a restaurant job after receiving support.

“I got promoted last week, so it’s just up and up since,” she says.

A second hub is due to open in Wisbech in December, which Bristow says demonstrates CPCA’s faith in the model and its willingness to fund it longer term.

Youth hub participant Jess, Dean Watson and Paul Bristow at the local football stadium where the hub is located

Internships and apprenticeships

The youth guarantee is not CPCA’s only attempt to tackle the transition into employment.

Its paid internship scheme, launched in June 2024 and initially supported through the UK shared prosperity fund, offers unemployed 18 to 25-year-olds placements lasting six to 12 weeks.

More than 940 residents have applied, and around 280 have started internships.

Three-quarters have moved into full employment, although Watson worries about the remaining quarter. He also acknowledges the potential risk of employers exploiting the scheme by taking on subsidised workers without intending to employ them permanently.

But Bristow is “really proud” of the scheme for providing experience and helping employers “access that talent which is so readily available”.

He intends to keep it running alongside the government’s new jobs guarantee, which launches locally next month.

“If we walk away from that now, that would be a huge waste,” he says. “It’s one of the great successes we’ve done, funded through the combined authority, not government.”

CPCA was also one of eight mayoral authorities piloting local apprenticeship brokerage services, helping keep its apprenticeship hub open after earlier support from the UK shared prosperity fund.

In the first quarter of 2026-27, the service administered almost £375,000 in apprenticeship levy-sharing applications, supporting 37 new apprenticeships.

But he believes intervention must start earlier.

As the government develops new technical pathways for 14 to 16-year-olds, mayors are expected to work with colleges and employers to shape provision around local economic needs.

CPCA’s current NEET strategy covers 14 to 25-year-olds, and Peterborough College already delivers school-linked vocational pathways for 14 to 16-year-olds. Bristow wants to expand this model across the region.

“That is about making sure we’re getting in there earlier, because by the time you’ve got responsibility as a combined authority for that level of education, it’s much more of a challenge to prevent the worst outcomes.”

Paul Bristow

FE cold spots

But new pathways mean little without somewhere to study.

CPCA has identified FE cold spots in St Neots and East Cambridgeshire, where people face long journeys to access courses.

It considered establishing two new FE colleges before concluding that smaller, targeted investments would be more practical.

But delivery has not been straightforward.

Bristow acknowledges a “challenge” with a new training centre in Soham, which has yet to open, and a planned green construction and technology project was shelved after its provider failed to secure suitable premises.

Under his Labour predecessor Nik Johnson, CPCA contributed £3.16 million towards the North Cambridgeshire Training Centre, an engineering and advanced manufacturing facility developed with Stainless Metalcraft and West Suffolk College.

Bristow visited this summer to celebrate its 500th apprentice.

He wants a similar employer-college partnership in St Neots, but CPCA members have raised concerns about whether sufficient ongoing revenue funding will be available to sustain new provision.

“Work has got to be done to make sure there is that talent pool of people coming behind, and the revenue stream to guarantee the building doesn’t become a white elephant,” Bristow says. “We can build shiny buildings, but there’s got to be a plan behind it.”

Dean Watson and Paul Bristow

Colleges running out of room

Meanwhile, growing demand for post-16 places is putting pressure on existing colleges.

CPCA has received approximately £15.4 million through newly devolved skills capital funding for 2026 to 2030, covering additional post-16 places and construction training provision.

But officers recently warned that, despite funding intended to support sufficient places, the lagged funding model and physical capacity constraints were creating difficulties.

Bristow says capacity is the “biggest issue” facing Peterborough College.

“They don’t just want to grow; they want to grow significantly. Every time I go there, I’m given master plans for new buildings and asked if there’s any funding for all this stuff.”

The consequences of limited local provision are apparent at the youth hub.

Scott Waddell, from Peterborough City Council’s education and employment team, has 58 young people on his caseload, close to his maximum of 62.

Some who cannot secure their preferred college course are directed towards level 1 construction provision from training provider TCHC.

There are also construction opportunities in Waterbeach, an hour’s drive from Peterborough, but “the drama with us is trying to get them there”, Waddell says.

Paul Bristow, youth hub participant Jess and dean Watson

Who controls the money?

Bristow’s frustration with funding restrictions extends to adult education.

He has commissioned a review of CPCA’s adult skills provision, including whether English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) courses are supporting progression into employment and further learning.

He criticises the government’s previously dictated outcomes for restricting their ambitions.

“There’s no point having a devolved system with exact parameters that has no relevance to the challenges that we face.”

CPCA has £14.6 million in devolved adult skills funding for the 2026-27 academic year, including £12 million in core adult skills fund (ASF) money and £1.1 million for free courses for jobs. Skills bootcamps get £1.5 million, down from £3.2 million under the previous grant arrangement.

Meanwhile, Bristow has kept the Tiger Pass, the discounted bus travel scheme for under-25s introduced under Johnson.

The scheme was partly supported by a mayoral council tax precept, which Johnson increased from £12 for a band D household in 2023 to £36 in 2024.

Bristow pledged not to increase the charge further, saying he had “managed to move budgets from other parts like skills, in part to fund this so it can continue”.

CPCA said the money came from its youth guarantee trailblazer, rather than the adult skills budget, as part of its plan to support transport for young people.

“I’m not prepared to leave young people cut off from those opportunities,” Bristow says.

He is also looking towards greater financial autonomy.

The government has designated CPCA as an established mayoral strategic authority, opening the possibility of an integrated settlement at the next spending review.

He hopes that would allow him to spend funding “in a different way”, including transferring some capital funding into revenue to address delivery capacity.

Paul Bristow

A Peterborough pearl

Bristow, 47, grew up in nearby Whittlesey and wants to establish a mayoral development corporation to accelerate regeneration projects he says have been “stuck” since his school days.

He describes Peterborough as “a grain of sand that can turn into a pearl”.

The city’s new university, Anglia Ruskin University Peterborough, is already an example of CPCA’s ambitions, as it was built with support from the combined authority and the government’s levelling up fund to address shortages of higher-level skills.

Bristow was proud to cut the ribbon as an MP in 2022, declaring: “We built that university.”

Original projections envisaged 2,000 students in 2022, rising to 5,000 by 2025. But by then enrolment stood at around 1,700, and CPCA had reduced its longer-term ambition from 12,500 students by 2030, to up to 7,000.

Nevertheless, Bristow calls the university a “real success” for social mobility, saying more than half its students come from local postcodes and might otherwise never have attended university.

Youth hub participant Jess

Labour mayors’ club

Four times a year, England’s regional mayors gather for meetings with government ministers. Bristow is one of just two Conservatives in a group dominated by Labour.

He describes Reform’s Hull and East Yorkshire mayor Luke Campbell as “very sweet”. But he accuses Labour mayors of operating as “a bit of a club”.

He recalls being the only non-Labour mayor at one meeting when his colleagues decided to hold a separate party gathering.

“I said, well then, should I just stand over here in the corner?”

The balance of power between mayors and government is changing now they have one of their own as prime minister.

Mayors face the prospect of more devolved funding and responsibility for strategic planning, housing and 16-19 education. Bristow’s team expects to take on more than £150 million of annual 16-19 funding.

He also faces uncertainty over local government reorganisation. Ministers have delayed a decision on whether Cambridgeshire and Peterborough’s seven councils should be consolidated into two or three unitary authorities.

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough is the only mayoral combined authority where constituent councils include district councils, and Bristow describes its voting arrangements as “complicated and annoying”. He believes “pork barrel” political considerations have influenced the delay.

For all his frustration with Westminster, however, Bristow knows that whereas now he can “blame the government” when a scheme cannot be funded, fiscal devolution means the buck could stop with him soon.

And his priority is transport. “There’s no point doing all the things that we’ve talked about doing if young people then can’t get to where the opportunity is,” he says.

You can deliver a pizza. You don’t deliver learning

A pizza delivery on a rainy night or the rare historical text I found online are great uses of delivery. Education is not.

Too often, teachers talk about delivering lessons. Leaders say they are delivering a talk. Even students say they are delivering presentations.

But this paints education as a ‘done to’, passive experience. One person imparts the content while others simply have it delivered to them.

In FE, lecturers, leaders, and learners need to reimagine how our sector explores learning. This involves mindset, practical and semantic shifts in order to improve student engagement, lecturer satisfaction and institutional practice.

Mindset shifts

For those who have long thought about ‘delivery’ as the best way to impart knowledge, a change in mindset is necessary. This involves shifting from the concept of an expert delivering to a novice to the idea of guiding learners to discover with us.

Trust me, after over 25 years studying and teaching history, I have a lot of fascinating anecdotes to tell my students. However, I might have to give up some weird trivia facts on US presidents or my hot take on the phrase ‘Remember the Alamo’ in favour of learners discovering these for themselves. For example, I can give context for a historical situation, provide primary sources with guiding questions, then facilitate a discussion. Throughout that process, I am still able to provide my expert knowledge, but I can learn their perspectives and even new insights I might not have had.

Along the same lines, we can think about ourselves as lifelong learners. We always have more to learn. It’s actually one of the joys of working in education – upskilling our techniques, learning new methodologies and diving into theories and content in our curriculum areas. If we are constantly pursuing new knowledge and skills, we are modelling that discovery for students.

A college that prioritises staff development and provides space for innovation creates engaged staff. That trickles down into co-learning with students.

Practical changes

After the mindset shift comes the practical changes. First, try incorporating more active learning. Active learning is an instructional approach that purposefully engages students in the learning process. Instead of passively receiving information, students participate in activities such as discussions, problem-solving, group work, and hands-on projects.

This methodology encourages critical thinking, collaboration, and the application of knowledge. When employed well, it engages students as well as facilitates knowledge and skill development. For instance, instead of lecturing for a full carpentry theory lesson, an instructor can bring out models for students to explore, assign peer-marking for exam-style questions, and employ game-based formative assessments.

This type of active engagement leads to deeper understanding and retention of concepts. And that leads to better achievement, which is of course good for colleges and the sector.

Further, let go of rigid routes to achievement and embrace more nuance and adaptation. We can lead students to their educational goals – such as passing their level 2 beauty exam or completing their T Level work experience in health – without putting each student on the exact same path.

Many awarding bodies have suggestions for assignment briefs, but allow for variation. Use that creative freedom. Start by defining the final objectives and backwards plan to make the assignments and activities engaging. This type of adaptation is also important to meeting the diverse needs of our learners. And it’s a lot more interesting for teachers!

Semantic tweaks

Changing the words we use to speak about education can communicate the difference of approach. When I was pregnant, a doula told me, ‘You deliver a pizza, not a baby.’ I’ve taken the same idea and applied it to teaching.

You don’t deliver learning. Instead, we should emphasise how our programmes and courses facilitate learning. They don’t do the work for us. We work with the students to create engaging and rigorous learning experiences.

Implementing these changes will help transform FE colleges into learning-focused environments that empower learners, rather than merely providing education.

My dyslexia diagnosis changed the way I teach

I was doing my PhD when I found out that I was dyslexic.

By that stage, I had already spent many years in education, but the diagnosis suddenly helped me understand why I had found certain things more difficult than other people seemed to. It did not mean I wasn’t capable – I was completing a PhD after all – but it helped me understand that I learned and processed information differently.

That experience has stayed with me throughout my teaching career.

Perhaps because of it, when I see a learner struggling, I tend to look a little deeper. Instead of immediately thinking they are not working hard enough or are not capable, I want to know: what is getting in the way?

There can be many answers.

A learner may have dyslexia, ADHD, autism or another additional learning need. They may have low confidence, difficulties with literacy, English as an additional language, or things happening outside college that we know very little about.

Working within a trauma-informed approach has made me particularly aware that learners do not simply leave their life experiences at the door when they enter our classrooms.

Sometimes we see the result rather than the reason.

We see poor attendance, missed assignments or a learner who has stopped engaging. But what is happening underneath?

Teachers are not there to diagnose. However, because we spend so much time with our students, we are often well placed to notice when something does not seem quite right.

As a science teacher, I might speak to a learner who can explain a difficult scientific concept perfectly well, yet their written work shows little of that understanding.

That difference should make us curious.

Teachers, however, need support too. We already plan, teach, assess, monitor attendance and progress, manage behaviour and respond to very different learners.

We cannot keep adding responsibilities without providing appropriate training and practical tools.

Teachers do not need to become SEND specialists. But we can be better equipped to ask simple questions when someone is struggling.

What have I noticed? When does the difficulty occur? Is there a pattern? What have I already tried? What does the learner say? Who else could help?

That is not diagnosis. It is simply taking the time to understand the learner.

And once a concern is raised, there must be an effective system behind the teacher. Supporting learners requires teachers, learning-support teams, SEND specialists, curriculum staff and learners themselves to work together.

I also think we sometimes concentrate so much on qualifications that we forget about the whole person.

Sport has become an important part of my own life, and it has changed how I think about education. As a competitive women’s cricket player and a qualified cricket coach, I have seen how sport can build confidence, resilience, teamwork and a sense of belonging. I would love to see more opportunities for all learners, including science learners, to experience sport and physical activity.

A learner struggling academically may discover confidence somewhere completely different. Sometimes helping a learner does not mean giving them another worksheet. It may mean helping them discover something that makes them believe in themselves again.

Too often, we intervene after things have already gone wrong: assessments have been failed, attendance has fallen or the learner has disengaged.

I know from my own journey that a learning difference does not determine someone’s potential. Being dyslexic did not stop me completing my PhD. Understanding my dyslexia helped me understand myself, and it has helped shape the teacher I became.

So when a learner is struggling, perhaps our first question should not be:

“Why aren’t they achieving?”

Maybe it should simply be:

“What is getting in the way – and what can we do to help?”

If lifelong learning is for everyone, it must reach our prisons

Without literacy, numeracy and digital skills, many people struggle to access opportunities most of us take for granted. Nowhere is this challenge more clearly felt than in our prisons, where around two-thirds of people struggle to read.

In September, adult education charity WEA held its essential skills round table in Parliament as part of its Lifelong Learning Labs campaign, which is bringing people and organisations together to build a stronger case for a national lifelong learning strategy.

Shannon Trust is one of the many cross-sector organisations supporting the change. We work in prisons across England, Wales and Northern Ireland to help people improve their reading and numeracy.

The impact of this support can be seen both in the scale of learning and in what it enables people to do next. In 2025, 11,380 learners engaged with Shannon Trust’s reading and numeracy programmes, taking part in more than 142,000 learning sessions.

Shannon Trust trains people who can read to support those who need help developing their skills. Many of the people we support have spent years believing education isn’t for them. Peer-led learning works because learners see someone like themselves succeeding.

There are no exams or classrooms. Instead, mentors work one-to-one with learners, progressing at the learner’s own pace. Learning from someone with shared lived experience helps remove stigma, builds trust and creates a supportive environment where people feel able to succeed. Mentors develop valuable communication, leadership and coaching skills that can support them beyond prison.

We know that learning to read changes lives. It opens opportunities and gives people more control over their future.

Many people in prison have had negative experiences of education. Some left school without literacy skills, often hiding their skills deficit due to a lack of confidence to learn altogether. Research from the Ministry of Justice has consistently shown a link between engagement with education and reduced re-offending, highlighting the importance of these foundations. If lifelong learning is going to work, it has to reach people who have had the worst experiences of education and who are least likely to engage through traditional routes.

Too often, we talk about essential skills as something people pick up at one point in their lives. In reality, they need ongoing opportunities to learn and progress. Essential skills should be seen as a lifelong investment, not a one-off educational intervention.

Reading provides the foundation on which further learning is built. Without it, accessing vocational training, qualifications or employment becomes more difficult. With it, people can continue their education, secure work, strengthen relationships with their families and contribute positively to their communities.

This work is taking place against a challenging backdrop. While the overall prison education budget in England has increased in cash terms, the Ministry of Justice has acknowledged that inflationary pressures and changes associated with the new Prisoner Education Service have contributed to a reduction of around 20–25 per cent in core education delivery.

Published commissioning figures indicate that planned core education hours across 94 prisons are around 25 per cent lower from April 2026 than before the new contracts began in October 2025. At a time when education provision is under pressure, ensuring people can access essential literacy and numeracy skills is more important than ever.

No single organisation can achieve this alone, which is why we’re supporting the WEA’s Lifelong Learning Labs campaign. Almost half of WEA learners left school with low or no qualifications, leaving them furthest from opportunity.

The campaign was launched in February 2026 to gather evidence, listen and challenge assumptions to ultimately build a stronger case for a national lifelong learning strategy.

If we’re serious about improving essential skills in the UK, we must focus on those facing the greatest barriers to learning, such as those supported through the Shannon Trust and the WEA.

Read the WEA Lifelong Learning Labs campaign interim report here. The final report will be released in December 2026.

Our AI marking tool is designed to challenge teachers, not replace them

Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s business partner, once said: “Show me the incentive, and I’ll show you the outcome.”

At the Centre for Humane Technology, that maxim is how you diagnose what a product does to people – and it has become the guiding light of our own AI strategy.

Fixter, our AI assessment sparring partner built by teachers for teachers, has been in testing since January.

Commercial AI is built to be frictionless and agreeable – quick to answer, quick to agree, because that’s what keeps you coming back. Fixter is engineered to do the opposite: to slow a teacher down long enough for their own judgment to stay in the feedback, rather than being handed over to the model. Before finishing any piece of feedback, it stops and asks the teacher for a personal observation — something only a human in the room would know.

We saw this first-hand in early prototyping. Teachers’ own fatigue, assumptions, and unconscious leniency were skewing feedback. And Fixter, marking only to the criteria, was catching it.

I was the teacher it caught. A transcript came back “not yet passed” when I’d projected what I already knew about the learner onto the work: tired from marking too many assignments at once, and quietly softening my judgement because I knew they were struggling and didn’t want to ask for a re-submission. Fixter didn’t know any of that. It just held the work to the criteria.

This isn’t a race to efficiency. Finnish education leader Olli-Pekka Heinonen argues that learning was never an optimisation game: productive struggle builds depth. Fixter is our attempt to apply that thinking to how teachers mark, not just what students submit.

Fixter’s origin story starts with a heated debate on our concourse at an INSET day in January 2023, when we were all still figuring out how to move forward. Lisa Fixter, an engineering teacher, challenged the unthinking rush to embrace AI – not the technology itself, but using it without asking why, how, or whether it helped anyone learn. The tool is named for her; she’s now one of our most deliberate AI users, and her scepticism has guided its development.

Fixter sits inside an intentional AI strategy: every student completes an AI Driver’s Licence at induction, now in its third year, before using our offloading tools. We’ve prioritised a refocus on authentic assessment since last year. Our learning coaches, who delivered CPD on it this August, are already seeing learning experiences that better prepare learners for their sector’s lived reality than an essay.

The question now is not whether to use AI, but how to design assessment that cannot simply be outsourced to it. This is built around one distinction: using AI for offloading rather than outsourcing. Offloading is using AI to hold a first draft steady while you do the real work of thinking. Outsourcing is clicking approve.

The American sci-fi writer Ted Chiang says using AI to complete assignments is like bringing a forklift into the weight room: you move the weight, but you never build strength yourself. The same is true for the person marking: a teacher who lets AI write feedback unread doesn’t get faster at noticing what a learner needs next.

Take Priya, a hairdressing apprentice (a composite drawn from real learners we teach). Written essays at school made her feel education wasn’t for her. But her evidence for this unit, instead of an essay, is a vlog transcript on a client consultation that went wrong, annotated reflective photographs, and a witness statement from her supervisor. Her teacher feeds all three into Fixter, which flags where Priya’s account doesn’t quite match the witness statement and drafts feedback against the criteria.

Before it finalises anything, the human nuance check stops and asks for something Fixter cannot see: what it means for Priya’s confidence to have her own voice reflected back, not a blank page. The teacher adds that context. VARCS Alignment then checks the draft against JCQ guidance in full, relevant awarding body standards, and the Centre for Humane Technology’s AI principles. Grounded in our own do-this, don’t-do-that teacher guidance, a running log tracks what percentage of Fixter’s wording the teacher keeps or edits, criterion by criterion.

Fixter’s real quality assurance is design, testing, and iteration led by the teachers who use it every day. Are commercial AI tools actually incentivised to enhance learning? We deliberated hard to find ones that are – because not every AI platform shares an educator’s incentives. It is a sparring partner for noticing what the evidence shows, not a replacement for a teacher who knows Priya well enough to notice what the evidence can’t.

England and America have each solved half the apprenticeships puzzle

England tightened its apprenticeship funding rules this year to favour young people. It hasn’t worked yet.

Young people’s share of new apprenticeship starts fell to 23.8 per cent in the first half of 2025-26, the lowest level in five years. This occurred even as the government restricted level 7 funding to under-22s and launched foundation apprenticeships aimed at young entrants. FE colleges’ share of the market slipped too, from 21 to 17 per cent.

The policy change logic was sound. The results aren’t matching it. Something besides funding rules is missing. And a new American report on community colleges suggests what it might be.

That report, from the nonprofit coalition Apprenticeships for America, examined how US community colleges function not just as training providers but as apprenticeship intermediaries. These are institutions that recruit and manage relationships with multiple employers, handle the compliance burden apprenticeship sponsorship requires, and provide the tutoring and transportation support that keep young apprentices enrolled.

The number of colleges playing this role grew more than five-fold between 2016 and 2023, from 30 to over 200. But the growth was thin. Of 541 colleges registered as sponsors, fewer than half have an active apprentice. And the roughly 15,500 enrolled represent only about 3 per cent of the nation’s civilian apprentices.

What’s most striking is that active programs draw the overwhelming share of apprentices. In some cases, the number is up to 95 per cent who come from existing employees rather than from young people entering the workforce for the first time.

Read together, the two countries are missing complementary pieces of the same puzzle. England has rewritten its funding incentives to favour youth. However, funding eligibility alone doesn’t automatically produce youth recruitment. Someone still has to find young people, match them with employers, and walk them through a system not built with them in mind.

That is precisely the intermediary function the AFA report describes. They actively broker connections between students who don’t yet know an apprenticeship is possible and employers who don’t yet have a relationship with any training provider. America has built a network of colleges willing to play that role. But it’s missing a funding architecture that steers them toward first-time entrants rather than the incumbent workers who are easier and cheaper to recruit.

Neither country’s problem is really about apprenticeship as a concept. It’s about the connections between a young person and a place. Those connections include the relationships, referrals, and institutional legwork that turn a funding rule or a training slot into an actual match. That’s a social capital issue.

Skills England’s remedy this summer, raising funding bands on the standards young people use most, may help at the margins. It remains to be seen whether higher rates alone can move the youth share without more recruitment and matchmaking capacity behind them.

But the UK and US data point to the same conclusion. Funding incentives are necessary and not sufficient. Somebody has to do the unglamorous work of recruitment and matchmaking that neither a levy nor a report can do. That argues for a specific kind of investment on each side of the Atlantic.

In England, it likely means giving Further Education colleges more explicit backing to act as the on-the-ground intermediaries the youth-first funding rules assume already exist. This includes treating recruitment and employer-matching as a resourced function rather than an unfunded expectation layered onto colleges already stretched by funding pressures.

In the U. S., it means the reverse. Attaching new incentives to the existing college apprenticeship infrastructure that already exists. This rewards colleges for reaching first-time entrants rather than defaulting to easier-to-recruit incumbent workers.

Each country has built half of what apprenticeship at scale requires. The other half is not a new policy lever so much as a willingness to fund the human work of connecting one young person to one employer at a time. That work is slow, expensive, and, on this year’s evidence, indispensable.