Latest news from FE Week

Ofsted to review NEET prevention strategies

Successful strategies for helping disengaged young people transition into post-16 education will be highlighted in a new Ofsted-led study aimed at tackling rising NEET numbers.

The watchdog and Department for Education have jointly commissioned research into “effective” strategies for helping 16 to 18-year-olds remain in education, employment or training.

The study will identify practices from schools, colleges and training providers that helps young people stay engaged, prevents dropouts and support those who have already disengaged to re-enter education or training.

More than one million young people are currently estimated to be classed as not in education, employment or training (NEET).

Former Labour health minister Alan Milburn is currently running a national review into youth participation in work and education. His interim report in May warned of a post-16 system prioritised on enrolling young people into college rather of helping them progress into work.

His final recommendations are expected this autumn.

According to the terms of reference of the Ofsted and DfE review, published today, the inspectorate will investigate how schools and post-16 providers support young people as they move into their next destination.

Ofsted will examine its “rich” inspection evidence on a national scale that covers factors linked to disengagement such as attendance, inclusion, personal development and careers education.

Ofsted stressed that its role in this project is not to set new statutory expectations, but to identify effective practice and emerging evidence that can inform inspection practice, provider guidance and policy development.

Researchers will examine how schools, colleges and training providers identify and tackle barriers that increase a young person’s risk of becoming disengaged.

They will also assess how far existing inspection evidence captures the strategies providers use to prevent young people becoming disengaged and subsequently NEET.

The research will include case studies from eight local authority areas, examining how schools, post-16 providers and councils work together on prevention, transition and reengagement.

From the next academic year, researchers will interview school, college and local authority staff, alongside young people during the summer, autumn and winter terms, to track their experiences of the post-16 pathway.

A final report is expected in early to mid-2027.

College defends last minute decision to ditch A Levels

City of Liverpool College has defended its decision to cancel A Level courses on the day students expected to start enrolling.

The college announced yesterday, on GCSE results day, that it was scrapping all first-year A Level enrolments, leaving around 40 students scrambling to find a different course or place elsewhere.

A college spokesperson blamed “declining volumes” of A Level applications and “record growth” in students taking vocational and technical courses.

But according to staff speaking to local newspaper the Liverpool Echo, the timing of the announcement has left students who expected to start at City of Liverpool College in the next couple of weeks “distressed” at having to find a new school sixth form or college at short notice.

In a statement to FE Week, a college spokesperson said the decision was “not taken lightly”, with management waiting as long as possible in the hope of having more “firm enrolments”.

“At the same time that we were looking at very small numbers for A Levels, we were facing substantial waiting lists from young people wanting to study programmes directly connected to Liverpool’s future workforce needs,” they added.

“Maintaining very small A Level classes inevitably means resources cannot be deployed to accommodate young people waiting for those other opportunities.”

The college considered other factors such as overall student capacity to deliver “exceptional” teaching and learning, staff utilisation and wellbeing, and the “high level of availability” of 30 alternative A Level providers across the city.

‘A Level bias’

The college took aim at society’s “unfortunate tendency” to view A Levels as “gold standard” qualifications while technical and vocational qualifications are “somehow regarded as second best”.

Without giving any details of courses or timings of decisions, the college claimed that a decision to close some vocational courses last year due to viability was not met with a “comparable media reaction” to this week’s news.

About 40 students had applied for City of Liverpool College A Level courses this year, with about half now understood to have enrolled on “alternative qualifications”.

The college said second year A Level students would be able to finish their course and that there will not be any staff redundancies as a result of the decision.

Speaking to BBC News, principal Elaine Bowker said the City of Liverpool College is 500 “oversubscribed” in construction engineering students and 250 oversubscribed on health and social care courses.

She apologised for “causing any upset” but said staff have done their best to “put a really warm blanket” around disappointed A Level applicants to ensure they have the best advice on their next step.

University and College Union general secretary Jo Grady said students have been “badly let down” by the sudden decision to scrap A Levels.

Grady called for stable, long-term funding to help colleges respond to changes in demand without long-lasting consequences for students and communities.

She added: “A dip in applicants one year cannot justify undermining academic provision.

“The government is rightly promoting technical and vocational education, but that must not come at the expense of academic routes. Students deserve a broad choice of high-quality courses and colleges need the funding and support to provide it.”

Sign of the times?

College capacity is straining under growing pressure from a bulge in the population of 16 and 17-year-olds.

Last month, FE Week reported that colleges in West Yorkshire are turning away teenagers, with waiting lists of hundreds hoping to train as electricians, joiners and bricklayers.

But closures of A Level programmes continue to prove controversial, with staff at a London college campus striking last year over plans to ditch A Levels in favour of other level 3 courses.

According to its most recent Ofsted inspection report, from early 2024, City of Liverpool College offered 16 A Levels and had about half of its 3,500 16 to 18 students on level 3 courses.

The college, which has been run by Bowker since 2011, raised its overall effectives grade to ‘good’ in 2017, following two ‘requires improvement’ grades in the mid-2010s.

Its financial health rating is ‘outstanding’, according to the college’s latest set of accounts.

The people who assess our skills have no professional home

The Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors (CIEA) is separating from the University of Hertfordshire. For most of the sector, this will pass as administrative news. It shouldn’t. It reopens a question that further education has ducked for too long: who speaks for the people who carry out vocational assessment?

Tens of thousands of assessors and internal quality assurers work across the Regulated Qualifications Framework. They judge competence, uphold standards, and decide whether a gas engineer, a care worker or a team-leader apprentice has genuinely met the bar. They are the last line before a certificate goes out. Yet unlike almost every profession they serve, they have no professional body of their own.

Teachers have the Chartered College of Teaching. HR professionals have the CIPD (The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development). Accountants, surveyors and engineers each answer to an institution that defines their standard, protects their status and gives their expertise a name that means something. Assessors have nothing equivalent. They earn their CAVA (Certificate in Assessing Vocational Achievement) or IQA (Internal Quality Assurance) qualification, then work in professional isolation, their development shaped by whichever awarding organisation or employer happens to require it that year.

This is not a status complaint. It has practical consequences the sector feels every day.

Consider continuing professional development. An assessor who invests in genuine CPD (career professional development), updating their occupational knowledge, sharpening their questioning and keeping pace with standards reform, has nowhere neutral to record it and no recognised currency to show for it. Move employer, and the record often resets. An external quality assurer asks for evidence of competence, and the assessor rebuilds a folder from scratch. Effort that should compound instead evaporates.

Consider consistency. Assessment quality varies enormously between providers, and much of that variation traces back to how assessors were trained and how they are kept current. Where no shared professional standard sits above the qualification, no shared floor exists, and regulators end up policing outcomes that a stronger professional culture would have prevented.

At this point a fair objection arrives: assessors already hold the CAVA or equivalent, and Ofqual and the awarding organisations already regulate quality, so what exactly is missing? Neither fills the gap. A qualification certifies that someone could assess competently on the day they passed it; it does nothing to maintain that competence in the years afterwards. Regulation polices outcomes; it does not develop the people producing them, nor give them a standing that travels between employers.

A profession needs the bit in between, the part that keeps practitioners current and recognised, and that is precisely the part that no one currently owns.

So, what would a professional home for assessors need to provide? Three things, at a minimum.

First, a defined standard of practice. One built around vocational assessment as it is really done, not borrowed from academic examining. Assessing a welder on site is not the same task as moderating an exam script, and the standard should say so.

Second, portable CPD that means something. Development an assessor records once and carries between employers, and that awarding organisations and external quality assurers recognise. Recognition is what turns activity into a credential.

Third, a route to recognised status. A way for a skilled, experienced assessor to be identified as exactly that. Not through a one-off qualification sat years ago, but through demonstrated, current, ongoing competence.

None of this is exotic. Every established profession already works this way. The oddity is that assessment, the discipline whose entire job is to judge whether others meet a standard, holds itself to no organised standard of its own.

The CIEA’s change of circumstances is a prompt, not a solution. Whatever emerges from it will continue to serve educational assessment broadly. The specific community of vocational assessors and IQAs, the people making competence decisions in workshops, salons, wards and warehouses, still needs an institution built for them.

I have founded BIAP to address this gap.

The sector spends a great deal of energy worrying about the quality of assessment. It spends almost none on the professional standing of the people who deliver it. Those two problems are the same problem. Until assessors have a professional home, we should not be surprised if the quality of assessment stays as uneven as the support we give those responsible for it.

GCSE resits 2026: English and maths pass rates fall as entries surge

The proportion of post-16 students achieving a grade 4 or above in GCSE English and maths resits has fallen as entries have surged.

In maths, 15.3 per cent of 219,135 learners aged 17 and over who resat the subject in England achieved a grade 4 or above this summer.

That was down from 17.1 per cent last year, when the cohort was 6 per cent smaller at 206,732.

The grade 4 and above pass rate was 21.2 per cent in 2019, before the pandemic.

In English, 19.8 per cent of 187,558 post-16 students who resat the GCSE achieved at least a grade 4 this summer, down from 20.9 per cent last year when there were 175,118 entries.

The English pass rate was 30.3 per cent in 2019.

Despite the falling pass rates, the number of students securing a grade 4 or above increased marginally in English as the size of the cohort grew.

A total of 37,136 students gained their level 2 English GCSE this summer after failing to do so at school, compared with 36,599 last year.

But in maths, the number achieving a grade 4 or above fell, from 35,351 last year to 33,527 this summer, despite the cohort growing by 12,403 students.

Ofqual chief regulator Sir Ian Bauckham said the rise in 18- and 19-year-old entries (see breakdown below) suggested more learners were attempting to secure the qualifications for a third or fourth time.

He said there had also been a “long-term shift” away from functional skills qualifications towards GCSEs, which could be changing the makeup of the resit cohorts.

The results come as the government continues to face pressure over its policy of requiring 16- to 19-year-olds without a grade 4 in English and maths to continue studying the subjects.

The condition of funding rule, introduced in 2014, has been criticised by colleges for driving repeated GCSE resits.

Education secretary Lucy Powell told The Times yesterday that GCSE results day had highlighted “one of the most pernicious examples of the education system setting kids up for a cycle of failure: the number constantly resitting English and maths”.

She said she wanted to end the resit “treadmill of failure” and pointed to “stepping stone” qualifications now being developed as a way of improving results for resit students.

A consultation on new level 1 English and maths qualifications for 16- to 19-year-olds who leave school with a grade 2 or below closed in June.

The qualifications were proposed last year by the independent curriculum and assessment review, led by Becky Francis, as a way of better preparing learners to achieve a grade 4 in their post-16 GCSE resits.

Bauckham told FE Week he was “anxious” to get on with developing stepping stone qualifications as they could play a “really important part”.

Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said today’s results showed that the current condition of funding policy was failing.

“This year’s post-16 resit results reinforce the fact that the government policy of then force-feeding them a relentless diet of GCSE English and maths in post-16 education is simply not working,” he said.

“Tinkering at the edges of the qualification system will not solve this problem. As long as we continue to grade students in this way in these gateway subjects of English and maths we will continue to damage their future prospects.

“If the government is serious about tackling the not in employment, education or training (NEET) crisis it must grasp this nettle and rethink how we assess English and maths.”

Gender gap narrows

More females than males continue to enter post-16 maths GCSE resits, but the gender gap in pass rates has disappeared.

This summer, 15.3 per cent of both male and female entries achieved a grade 4 or above.

Last year, 17.8 per cent of males reached the threshold, compared with 16.4 per cent of females.

In English, there continues to be more male than female entries for GCSE resits, although the gender gap in pass rates has narrowed slightly.

The proportion of male students achieving a grade 4 or above fell from 17.9 per cent last year to 16.8 per cent this summer.

Among female students, the pass rate fell from 25 per cent to 23.8 per cent.

18-19 year olds struggle the most

Students aged 18 and 19 continue to have the lowest GCSE resit pass rates, while those aged 20 and over perform significantly better.

The condition of funding rule applies to 16- to 19-year-olds, meaning older learners are not required to continue studying English and maths if they have not achieved a grade 4 and therefore are more likely to study the subjects by choice.

In maths, 16.4 per cent of 17-year-olds achieved a grade 4 or above this summer, compared with 10.4 per cent of 18-year-olds and 10.3 per cent of 19-year-olds.

Among those aged 20 and over, the pass rate was 32.5 per cent.

In English, some 21 per cent of 17-year-olds achieved a grade 4 or above, compared with 16.1 per cent of 18-year-olds and 15.6 per cent of 19-year-olds.

The pass rate rose to 29.6 per cent among learners aged 20 and over.

SEND reforms will only succeed if colleges change too

There is no doubt that we are entering a period of significant change in FE. Qualification reforms, the schools’ and SEND white paper Every Child Achieving and Thriving, and the post-16 education and skills white paper are all aligned with the new Ofsted framework, which places inclusion, equity and opportunities for skills development at the heart of its purpose.

For me, having worked in forward-thinking, inclusive and proactive FE settings all my career, the revised SEND policy and legislative changes feel like a welcome approach to provide a level playing field and address some inequities.

I fundamentally believe these changes will be highly impactful if their intent is fully realised. Recognising that more young people will receive earlier diagnosis and support from a network of specialists through the ‘experts at hand’ approach, as well as the use of nationally standardised assessment and documentation and the sharing of information between settings, can only benefit young people with SEND.

The essential element to this, however, is the co-design and co-production of the revised system.

FE colleges have often tried to ‘fix’ the issues in the current SEND system themselves, forgetting that a wider network of professionals and experts exists in their shared ecosystem. Families, parent and carer forums, local authorities, the NHS, employers and organisations within the voluntary and care sector are all trusted and superb sources of external help, feedback and guidance to ensure colleges deliver the very best provision, supporting students on their PFA (preparing for adulthood) journey.

Colleges should deeply reflect on how they use their network to enhance their SEND offer and student outcomes.

What is more often missed are the opportunities for the college to use its own resources to support students with SEND on this journey. As seen in my own organisation, this starts at the very top, with a clear vision and intent statement from governors through to senior and middle leaders.

This should then translate into policy and action at the curriculum and business support level. Imagine a college where every business support department offered work experience to a student with SEND as standard, where the sports curriculum across the wider college delivered health and fitness programmes to students with SEND, or health cooking and nutrition was delivered by hospitality students.

Imagine a college where health barriers and anxiety were removed by collaborative working with health students, or the creative teams supported the artistic and musical cultural development of students. This approach is taken at EPNE, but these opportunities are not seen in all colleges.

When they are, the impact on organisational culture and SEND awareness is tangible, as is the progress students make on their academic and personal development.

Collaborating with colleagues who have a keen and vested interest in SEND is also pivotal in transforming SEND inclusion in a college.

Real impact is delivered by embedding a SEND champion model, where colleagues from all areas of the college come together in experiential learning. This also supports SEND advocacy across the college. Setting up SEND clinics and planning for inclusion training for teachers can also deliver a significant impact on inclusive pedagogy. This ensures that the organisational training being delivered is relevant to the setting, and areas for development are addressed ahead of the implementation of national SEND training.

EPNE is a nationally leading college group for its SEND provision and an Education Training Foundation Centre for Excellence.

The introduction of the SEND reforms means we are fully reviewing our approach to inclusion. Key aspects of the journey of students with SEND are being re-mapped. This includes the initial assessment, transition, meeting needs decisions and allocation of courses from a ‘seamless’ start perspective. The full review of scaffolded curriculum ladders, including the new level 1 maths and English offer, is also being embedded within our annual planning cycle.

While the introduction of new policies may feel challenging and will result in a need to review SEND practices, they also provide a huge opportunity to truly pause, reflect and improve the SEND offer, and deliver improved, equitable outcomes for all.

Four lessons from six years as an FE college chair

Two seemingly unrelated life events have happened to me recently. I stepped down as chair of Barnet and Southgate College after six fantastic years, and I saw The Odyssey at the cinema. Through scenes of storm-lashed boats, it occurred to me that FE governance does in some ways feel comparable to steering a steady course through choppy seas and unpredictable headwinds. Being chair of my local FE College has been the professional privilege of my career and has taught me many lessons.

The most important has been how critical FE governance is to enabling colleges to stabilise, grow and thrive during tumultuous times.

That recent years have been challenging for the FE sector is not in doubt. Emerging from the pandemic, colleges have had to support students impacted by lost learning. Ongoing qualification reform, Ofsted framework changes, shifting stakeholder engagement priorities, devolution – to name but a few – have complicated long-term planning. All of this during an initial period of historic underfunding, while FE staff continue to contend with cost of living challenges.

Barnet and Southgate College has not been immune to this. When I became chair in 2020, the college had recently been judged ‘requires improvement’ and was dealing with a significant financial deficit at the end of 2019-20 of £1.2m. Most of the governing body were coming to the end of their term, so significant change was imminent. Reductions in adult education funding were hitting the college particularly hard, in a geographical area where competition for enrolling 16-18s was consistently fierce.

Amidst these challenges, the college was able not just to stabilise, but eventually grow and thrive. Our governance played a fundamental role in enabling this. The college received an Ofsted ‘good’ (with ‘outstanding’ for apprenticeships), converted a historic financial deficit into a healthy surplus, grew student numbers year on year, underwent successful structural transformation, and set an ambitious new strategy for 2030.

Reflecting on my time as chair I learnt four key lessons for how governance can support college stability, growth and transformation:

1: Focusing governance structures, processes and culture on delivering success

Introducing a new committee structure, refreshing data flows and redefining governor skillsets delivered an immediate step-change in our governance quality. Building a sense of team identity and empowering our governors to work directly with the college’s senior executive unleashed the powers of their experience and skills. Making the governing body more visible to college staff also brought governance out of the shadows, so their purpose was clearer.

2: Putting learner impact at the heart of decision-making

Student governors were newly recruited, and wider ‘meet the student’ sessions for the governing body helped triangulate information and led to more informed decision-making. Delivering growth required more students coming through the doors and staying with us. Governance deep dives on the recruitment and enrolment process, plus the challenges in improving attendance, helped drive executive focus on these areas.

3: Fostering relationships between the governing body and the college executive team

These were the foundation for success. Committee chairs worked in partnership with their direct equivalents in the executive. Myself and our CEO/principal developed a hugely productive working relationship through clear and honest communication, availability, coaching and mentoring, and above all trust. This was particularly key as new senior leadership structures were built.

An enhanced role for governors in performance management of senior postholders also made clear how ambitious the governing body was for college success.

4: Being ambitious for the college, and expecting it back

Recruiting excellent governors meant setting high expectations for our college. Our governing body challenged the college leadership to be bold, to be transformative for our students and to enhance our role as a local and regional skills stakeholder. The college’s ambitious ‘Strategy 2030’ was the result – an approach we are all hugely proud of.

Much is rightly now expected of colleges. Within a supportive and challenging environment, governors can – and must – continue to drive their institutions forwards through the storms they face to deliver growth and learner success.

Australia, Canada, and a lesson for England’s 14-16 routes

The prime minister’s recent proposals on 14-16 routes have reignited an important debate about pathways and, importantly, repositioned technical education as a first-choice route rather than a second-best option.

Drawing on my Churchill Fellowship, which funded my exploration of work-connected learning systems in Australia and Canada, I believe the bigger lesson lies elsewhere.

The systems that impressed me most did not begin by asking what new qualification should be created. They began by asking how progression could be intentionally designed around young people, local opportunity and long-term outcomes.

Across every system I visited, one thing became increasingly clear: while the models differed, the underlying design principles were remarkably consistent.

People before institutions

Education systems are designed around young people’s journeys into opportunity rather than organisational boundaries. Schools, FE providers, higher education institutions, employers and local services see themselves as integrated contributors to one progression journey, deliberately removing barriers that prevent young people moving successfully into adult life.

Progression must be designed

Successful transitions are never left to chance. They are engineered through curriculum, work-connected learning, technical pathways and employer engagement. The strongest systems design both progression and re-engagement, ensuring young people can move forward, or find their way back, through intentional pathways.

Experiences should carry recognised value

Learning beyond the classroom counts. Work experience, technical projects and employer-designed learning contribute to recognised achievement, giving young people trusted evidence of their capabilities alongside and within academic qualifications.

Partnership creates infrastructure and opportunity

Employers, FE providers, universities and intermediary organisations are not simply external partners; they are integral parts of the progression system itself. Genuine co-design, enabling timetables and shared responsibility make ambitious pathways possible, at scale.

Progression is shaped by people and place

National ambition provides consistency, but local systems bring pathways to life. Education, employers, civic leaders and communities work together to reflect the distinctive opportunities and workforce priorities of their area.

These principles came to life in very different ways.

South Australia’s flexible industry pathways (FIPs) demonstrate how regional government can enable local innovation while maintaining consistently high standards. FIPs are accessible to15-18-year-old learners in every school. Co-designed with employers, government-approved and aligned to regional workforce priorities, they make intelligent use of existing qualifications while creating rigorous, employer-informed pathways into sectors that matter to local economies.

In July 2026, I visited Calgary, where more than 12,000 learners had enrolled on funded summer technical programmes, completing around 120 guided learning hours through intensive three-week vacation courses. Alberta has expanded opportunity not by creating more qualifications, but by delivering existing accredited programmes with greater flexibility around the core curriculum. They add opportunity in and around the core curriculum rather than competing with it. Ministry-approved locally developed courses allow successful programmes to be adopted across the province, combining local innovation with consistent standards.

At Fusion Collegiate in Calgary, flexible programmes enable young people to access connected pathways designed by local skills needs, while carefully designed discovery routes keep learners connected to progression. Their impressive “gap year” pathways programme re-connected lost learners up to the age of 20 to tangible jobs and progression into the workplace, when the young person was ready and supported as an end-to-end pathway.

Different models, the same design principles: progression designed around learners, recognised value for experiences, genuine partnership and shared local responsibility for creating opportunity. Ultimately, every one of these systems sends young people the same message: there are multiple successful futures, and each deserves to be planned for with equal ambition.

That may be the most important lesson for England: successful progression is designed, not left to chance.

If Andy Burnham’s proposals are the catalyst for genuine reform, our focus should not simply be on creating new pathways. It should be on creating the conditions that allow purposeful progression to flourish: curriculum flexibility, mature local partnerships, intelligent use of existing qualifications, coordinated delivery across institutions and accountability measures that reward purposeful progression alongside attainment.

England already possesses many of these building blocks. The challenge now is to connect them into a coherent progression system.

My forthcoming Churchill Fellowship report explores further examples from Australia, Canada and Ireland and practical recommendations for England’s education and skills system.

Ultimately, this is not simply a debate about qualifications or technical education because there isn’t one future worth preparing young people for. There are many. Our responsibility is to give every young person a clear line of sight to the future they choose, and the means to get there. That is what it means to design progression well.

For technical education to succeed, creativity can’t be an afterthought

For too long, young people have been told that academic routes carry ambition and status, while technical and vocational pathways are somehow second best.

Giving young people earlier access to technical education from age 14, with skills training, work experience and stronger employer connections, is an important moment. So is the ambition for mayors to develop local pathways with schools, colleges and employers from September 2028.

Young people should see routes into skilled work where they live, rather than leaving their home region to believe serious opportunity exists.

But if Andy Burnham’s “hard hat and graduation cap” ambition is to work, we must resist treating technical education as one single thing.

Creative technical education is different.

That point was made powerfully in the House of Lords recently, when Baroness Caine warned against a one-size-fits-all approach and highlighted Birmingham Ormiston Academy and the partnerships helping to build Birmingham’s screen cluster.

Her intervention was important because the creative economy is project-based, often freelance, and built around portfolios, networks and collaboration. Around 90 per cent of creative businesses are micro-enterprises. More than 30 per cent of the workforce is freelance, and in film and television that rises above 50 per cent.

Skills minister Jacqui Smith was right to confirm no qualifications will lose funding approval in 2026–27, commit to no further removal of funding for creative art and design qualifications until 2030, and convene a creatives advisory group for qualifications reform.

That is the right direction of travel. The creative sector does not need reform done to it. It needs reform done with it. This matters especially at level 3. For many young people, level 3 creative qualifications are not a holding pattern before university. They are the bridge between school and industry. They are where young people discover whether they are editors, producers, performers, designers, lighting technicians, coders, animators, production managers, filmmakers, game designers, stage managers or entrepreneurs.

They are also where many young people develop the confidence, discipline and professional behaviours that employers value but traditional academic qualifications do not always measure.

That is why breadth matters. Portfolio matters. Rehearsal matters. Studio practice matters. Live briefs matter. Collaboration matters. Time to experiment matters.

A narrow qualification model will not build a broad creative workforce.

At BOA Group, we see this every day.

Since Birmingham Ormiston Academy opened in 2011, BOA Group has grown into a specialist multi- academy trust rooted in Birmingham’s creative and digital economy. Across its three academies, learners produce, perform, code, design, edit, rig, film, rehearse, collaborate and present through real projects, specialist facilities and industry-connected pathways.

Our new Imagine Everything strategy responds to a national challenge: how do we build a stronger talent pipeline for sectors that are growing quickly, changing constantly and still too often closed to young people without networks, confidence or access?

Our answer is to bring together high standards, professional practice, technical confidence, work experience, employer partnership, enrichment, progression and a network that lasts beyond school.

The test for reform is simple. Young people must see where new pathways lead. Level 3 qualifications that work should not be abandoned before replacements have proved their breadth and progression value. Creative apprenticeships and placements must reflect freelance work, project cycles, small employers and regional clusters.

Will the new system strengthen the creative pipeline, or weaken it?

The prime minister has opened a vital national conversation. The skills minister has created an opportunity to get the creative detail right. Now government must learn from what already works.

The creative economy does not need a skills system designed for another world of work. It needs one designed for this one.

That is what BOA Group is building in Birmingham. And it is why this moment matters.

It’s time to stop the madness of GCSE resits for all

For many young people finishing school, GCSE results day is a cause for much celebration.

But each year, around 30 per cent do not achieve the minimum “standard” (grade 4) pass. Most of these pupils will enrol into FE Colleges, although too many will end up not in any form of education, employment or training (NEET). There will always be roughly 30 per cent who don’t achieve that all important set of grade 4 passes because that’s how the exam system works: there must be “winners” and “losers”.

For the hundreds of thousands of young people forced to re-sit GCSE maths and English classes, the outlook is grim. Only one in five are successful in their resits, and the results this summer are even slightly worse than that, especially for maths. Despite numerous calls for the sector to do better and intense scrutiny from Ofsted, the success rate will never be much better than one in five: If you a “loser” first time around, you’re much more likely to be a “loser” second time around when you are pitted in a system predicated on sorting the wheat from the chaff.

Of course, this time of year always brings people like me out to criticise the GCSE resits policy. The DfE responds with its defence, and it all goes quiet until the next set of depressing results. Perhaps this year there is a slight shift. The noise of opposition gets louder. A UCL research report outlines the impact of the GCSE resits policy on young people’s mental health. The new Secretary of State talks about the effects of the cycle of failure and it is welcome that there is now a renewed commitment to review the policy. Perhaps we stand at last on the cusp of change. It is a moment and opportunity the sector must grasp.

Yet we mustn’t be complacent. The counter responses so far have included that the system is being reformed to bring in new “stepping stone” qualifications at level 1. But these won’t be available until the end of the decade, and the clue is in their designation: stepping stone. The expectation is that young people will still sit the GCSE before the end of their post-16 study. Then there is the argument that young people now have at least 100 hours of tuition in each subject. That has no impact on the large numbers who were so demoralised the first time around that getting them to attend ten hours is an achievement.

The defence trotted out that the DfE do not require us to enter young people each year for the exam and we should in fact only enter them when they are ready, which might not be for two years, also doesn’t hold water. This is thinking based on a simplistic understanding that every young person in an FE college is studying a neat two-year programme.

The reality is far more complex. It’s a brave college that will chance this given the risks to their data if a young person leaves after a one-year course. The perverse incentives in the performance and accountability system means the stakes are too high.

None of these things are adequate solutions to a policy that should have been scrapped the moment the current government took office.

We also need to ask about the policy: what is it fundamentally trying to achieve? GCSEs are essentially based on content supporting progression to A Levels, which in turn are based on supporting progression to university education. They don’t necessarily guarantee progression into work – although it must be conceded that having them on your CV does open doors.

In all my many conversations with employers, I have yet to find one that fully supports the GCSE re-sit policy. Yes, they want their employees to be reliable, punctual, numerate, good communicators, think on their feet, work well with others, not be welded to a mobile phone and so on. But adept at quadratic equations? Nineteenth century texts? Nope.

The stark reality is that for all the time, effort, cost, tears and regulatory reprisals for only one in five young people being successful in GCSE re-sits, we have over a million NEETs. The recent Alan Milburn review points out how the requirements also “further constrain limited FE capacity”, and how the system “risks locking out a significant minority of young people from taking meaningful steps towards work at a critical age”.

In a system of finite resource, wouldn’t it make much more sense to put more effort in supporting young people into work rather than a policy that guarantees failure for 80 per cent? I do believe we should still provide GCSE re-sits for every young person who wants them. But this madness of forcing everyone to do them must end.