Colleges are “mopping up systemic failures” that include poor information sharing from schools and regional disparities in transport costs, the children’s commissioner has warned.
In a report based on survey data from 238 colleges, children’s commissioner Rachel de Souza said young people in post-16 education were often “neglected” due to a narrow focus on schools in education policy.
College leaders told the commissioner that information sharing from school to college was “not good enough”, with many students arriving with outdated education health and care plans (EHCPs).
Almost a third of colleges reported affordability and availability of transport for college students was a top concern, with regional variation in transport subsidies creating an “uneven playing field”.
Other top concerns included access to mental health support, student attendance, funding constraints, and diverse problems faced by college students such as complex home-life pressures, disadvantage and work responsibilities.
De Souza said the data, collected between September 2024 and February 2025, gives a unique national picture of how colleges typically go “beyond their core role” to help students.
She added: “The ambition to reduce NEET rates across the country will require us to tackle the structural and wellbeing barriers our young people face – and colleges are rightly recognised as part of the solution.
“Yet too often, rather than the wider system learning from them, colleges are asked to mop up after systemic failures elsewhere.
“When thinking about supporting young people’s needs, there is now rightful pushback to the simplistic idea of ‘put it on the school curriculum’ as a policy lever, but too little attention is paid to the burdens placed upon the FE sector and skills policy.”
College leaders reported that “delayed or incomplete” information sharing was a barrier to effective planning.
The report says: “Colleges have a shorter amount of time than schools to understand and meet their young people’s needs due to the length of time young people study at the college, and therefore timely information sharing is crucial.”
Key recommendations from the commissioner include providing free travel for as many children as possible, “timely and high quality” data sharing by local authorities and schools, and an extension of the pupil premium to young people in post-16 education.
De Souza said colleges and sixth forms play a “vital role” in young people’s educational journeys, and taught about a third of 16 to 18-year-olds in England in 2024-25.
However, 70 per cent of college leaders listed funding as one of their top concerns, compared to about half of secondary school leaders – revealing one of the biggest disparities between the two sectors.
And 35 per cent said funding constraints prevented them from fully meeting the requirements of EHCPs.
Most colleges step in to provide mental health support due to difficulties accessing local services, the report found.
Access to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) was a top concern for 79 per cent of leaders, with a similar number reporting that they fund their own mental health counsellor.
Chief executive of the Association of Colleges David Hughes said: “The barriers facing the college sector are well known to all across further education, but often fail to register in wider policy circles, so it’s heartening to see this report set them out so explicitly.
“Colleges are consistently asked to do more with less, and despite immense funding and resource pressures, they offer strong support to young people from all backgrounds, no matter what their circumstances.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We are determined to break down barriers to opportunity to reach the prime minister’s target for two-thirds of young people to take a gold-standard apprenticeship, higher training or heading to university by age 25.
“Our post-16 education and skills white paper set out ambitious reforms, coupled with investment, to identify young people who need support and help them to move smoothly from school into further education, including piloting automatic enrolment and investing in better data sharing and attendance monitoring.
“We are also tackling the issues before young people reach college by expanding access to a mental health professional in every school and college, rolling out free breakfast clubs and free school meals, and lifting the two-child benefit cap.”
A rule that blocks apprentices from accessing their legal entitlement to English and maths training will be changed, it has been confirmed.
Officials are also considering amendments to apprenticeship funding rules covering visas, workers employed across UK borders, subcontracting, co-investment collection for completion payments and additional learning support reimbursements.
Department for Work and Pensions’ head of funding delivery Tracey Cox outlined multiple rule change proposals that could come in from 2026-27 during a workshop on day two of this week’s Apprenticeship and Training Conference.
Here’s what you need to know.
English and maths double funding
Ministers announced on February 11, 2025, that an exit rule forcing apprentices without a GCSE pass to achieve a functional skills qualification in English and maths to complete their training was scrapped with immediate effect for those aged 19 or older.
Employers must now agree for older apprentices to opt in to study English and maths. When employers do not agree, apprentices should still be able to exercise their statutory entitlement to level 2 English and maths.
However, current apprenticeship funding rules do not allow apprentices to study the subjects using alternative funding streams while on an apprenticeship.
Cox said the issue had generated a high volume of queries and complaints over the past year.
The government is now looking to change the rules on “double funding” in the English and maths section to “allow for apprentices to seek adult skills fund (ASF) funding outside of their apprenticeship in circumstances where their employer does not allow them to study English and maths as part of the apprenticeship”.
This will hinge on funds being available locally, and apprentices may have to use a different provider if their apprenticeship trainer does not hold an ASF contract.
Learning support cash should double
All education and training providers have a duty under the 2010 Equality Act to make reasonable adjustments for those with learning difficulties so they are not placed at a “substantial disadvantage”.
The main source of funding, the additional learning support (ALS) fund, is a fixed £150 per month intended to pay providers for adjustments such as additional assessor visits and specialist equipment.
Cox said the government receives “continuous feedback” that providers are not claiming this funding due to fears of clawback following several high-profile cases, and because the process can be “burdensome”.
Her department has recommended reviewing the policy, including the funding level, but Cox said this would be a longer-term project and any changes would come in from 2027-28 at the earliest.
She asked ATC delegates how much they spend on learning support per eligible learner each month, and discovered it was at least double the current £150 amount.
Tracey Cox
Break the co-investment and completion payment link
Under current rules, apprenticeship providers must collect and record each employer’s co-investment payment in the individualised learner record for their 20 per cent completion payment to be released, even if the amount is minimal. This must be done by the final return – known as R14 – in the academic year the apprentice completes.
Providers say the rule is burdensome and increases operational costs because staff must track and chase often small co-investment payments, while providers take a financial hit if the money is not collected on time.
The DWP has recommended “removing the link between collecting co-investment and releasing the completion payment”. However, as there is a financial impact to the government, this “needs further exploration” with the Treasury.
Cox said if approved, it “could make a big difference” for providers.
50% working time in England
To be eligible for English apprenticeship funding, an individual must spend at least 50 per cent of their working hours in England over the duration of the apprenticeship.
Cox said she believed the government “should allow greater flexibility in this area” after receiving “a lot” of queries about learners working for employers close to UK borders.
Her team is working with the four nations to “come up with some kind of agreement on what is acceptable across the board”.
Visa clarification
The rulebook states that a foreign learner must be able to fully complete an apprenticeship within the time available before their visa expires.
Cox told ATC the rule had frustrated providers who have apprentices due to complete after their visa expiry date but who plan to extend their visa when they are able to apply for renewal.
Visa extension can be a slow process and they are typically only extended in the six months before expiry.
Analysis suggests that in most cases applications for extensions are granted, Cox added.
The DWP plans to add the following clarification to the funding rules: “Providers must not fund learners who would not have enough time on their visa to complete their course, and who do not intend to or would not be eligible to renew their visa where the course continues past the learner’s visa expiry date. Providers may at their discretion fund that learner only where they have a high degree of confidence that the learner intends to renew their visa.”
A clear subcontracting definition
Apprenticeship subcontracting rules underwent a significant review in 2022. Officials are now looking to update their definitions after finding some providers are failing to declare subcontracting because they are unsure what counts.
Cox said there were around six cases where auditors proposed to claw back all funding handed to providers because rules were misinterpreted.
She said that “everything is subcontracting when you don’t deliver it yourself to a learner”.
But there are areas, such as first aid training or a talk from a tax expert, where Cox believes this should be declared but not classed as subcontracting.
Officials are working on a new, clearer definition.
The DWP is also aware of requests from providers to use subcontractors not on the official apprenticeship provider and assessment register (APAR). Providers can already do this if the total amount subcontracted is less than £100,000.
Cox said her department wanted to provide “further clarity and consider how we can improve the current de-minimis arrangements to allow expert input to training delivery by non-APAR providers”.
Sir Ian Bauckham was jolted into “stepping up” Ofqual’s work on AI misuse after students admitted to him they were using AI but were too afraid to tell their teachers.
Speaking at a keynote and Q&A session at this week’s Apprenticeships and Training Conference (ATC), the chief regulator also said V Levels could be regulated as a “marketplace” without becoming an “easy” option, and insisted Skills England’s apprenticeship assessment overhaul will not mean standards slipping “on my watch”.
AI ‘confessions’
Bauckham told delegates his job regularly takes him into schools and colleges, where he probes what’s really happening on the ground with qualifications.
Over the past year, he said, teachers had told him AI misuse was becoming increasingly difficult to spot, particularly in coursework and non-examined assessments.
At the start of the “AI era”, he said, plagiarism and detection tools could more easily identify where a student’s work had been copied “directly” from elsewhere. But that advantage is fading as AI tools improve and students become more fluent in prompting them.
“When I talk to students and ask them to tell me the truth, not necessarily what they would tell their teacher, they say, well actually, yeah, please don’t tell my teacher, yes I do,” Bauckham said.
This has sharpened worries about “the long-term viability” of non-examined assessments and made it clear to the chief regulator that Ofqual needed to “step up our efforts in this area”.
The remarks came as Bauckham referenced a letter to awarding organisation chief executives, published on Tuesday, in which he warned that while detected AI cases reported to Ofqual remained “relatively low”, there was “significant concern” among teachers and leaders about the true extent of misuse.
In the letter, Bauckham asked awarding organisations to reply to him spelling out the specific steps they were taking to root out AI misuse in their qualifications by the end of March.
In the ATC Q&A, he rejected the suggestion Ofqual had been slow to respond to AI misuse in qualifications, arguing awarding organisations sit closest to centres and were responsible for setting expectations and enforcing them.
Pressed on what happens after the March deadline, Bauckham said Ofqual would review the boards’ proposals and assess “the quality of their responses” before deciding whether further regulatory action was needed.
He acknowledged the “ultimate sanction” would be removing non-examined assessments from qualifications entirely, but stressed many teachers had urged him not to “default to the easy option” because coursework “can be a powerful learning experience”.
Instead, the regulator has its own ideas on “cheat-proofing” but wants to see what boards propose first.
Asked whether he would use AI to help him determine if the AO’s responses were enough, he said: “Of course not, we’ll use our old-fashioned human brains.”
V Levels: ‘No easy options’
Bauckham also set out how Ofqual would regulate V Levels if ministers stick with the government’s proposal to have a market of multiple awarding organisations offering them, as is the case with A Levels, rather than the single-AO licence approach with T Levels.
“Ofqual was set up to regulate a market of awarding organisations, so we’re very comfortable” with multiple AOs, he said.
He added there would be “nationally set content” for V Levels, but with “legitimate variation” in how AOs design, sequence and assess. Ofqual’s job, he added, would be to ensure that a V Level in the same subject holds a comparable standard across AOs “so there won’t be an easy V Level available”.
This followed the latest round of wave 2 T Level licences, showing Pearson will hold 16 of the available 20 T Levels in September 2027.
Asked directly whether it was “high risk” to have a dominant force in a single-provider T Level system, Bauckham said he would “slightly dodge the question”, but said an advantage of a regulated market was that it creates “a layer of resilience” because “there is always a plan B if something goes wrong with an awarding organisation”.
Concentrating all qualifications of a certain type into one AO “potentially reduces that system resilience”, he suggested.
‘Not on my watch’
On apprenticeships, Bauckham said the purpose of Skills England’s assessment reforms was to respond to concerns about “complexity, duplication and unnecessary delays”, while recognising fears the changes could “dilute quality” or weaken how reliably assessment signals occupational competence.
“My priority is, and will remain, the protection of that quality and the purpose of apprenticeship assessment,” he said. “Simplification and streamlining does not mean dumbing down. Not on my watch anyway.”
Bauckham said Skills England’s assessment plans would continue to set baseline requirements per apprenticeship standard, and Ofqual would “regulate to make sure the intention of those plans is delivered”, including by challenging awarding organisations on assessment design choices and requiring them to demonstrate they reflect occupational competence needs.
Plans to merge two industry-led training quangos have been revived – a year after an independent review recommended the tie-up.
A 12-week consultation on merging the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) and Engineering Construction Industry Training Board (ECITB) into a “single unified body” will be launched next month.
Both boards are non-departmental public bodies that hand out training grants for the construction and engineering workforces funded by levies on employers.
Work and pensions minister Andrew Western announced the consultation this week as he laid routine legislation to approve levy rates on employers that fund most of the CITB’s training activities.
Western said a single training board would “support the combined skills needs” of the sectors, delivering on a recommendation of an independent review by Mark Farmer which the government partially accepted in January 2025 “subject to further scoping”.
The minister added the views of industry “will inform a decision on how to proceed”, with the earliest likely change to be April next year.
The move comes after the CITB’s boss Tim Balcon was forced to apologise in December for cutting several training grants at short notice due to “the pace of demand growth”.
Government targets
Supply of skilled workers is seen as critical to the government’s manifesto pledge of building 1.5 million new homes by the end of this parliament, as well as major national infrastructure projects such as the ongoing Hinkley Point C nuclear power station.
Measures rolled out since the 2024 general election include a £600 million training package for up to 60,000 construction workers and a construction skills mission board that includes ministers and sector leaders.
However, while the government called on the two boards to collaborate following Farmer’s review, it held back from passing legislation needed to merge them.
The review called for a “fundamental reset” amid concerns about workforce shortages and future skills misalignment, arguing the two quangos had “insufficient” impact to justify their existence.
Farmer told FE Week he was pleased to hear about the consultation, as a merger would result in operational efficiencies and create a more “focused and strategic” workforce planning and development agency.
He added: “It is clear that in the current economic climate, industry will be even more sensitive to the need to deliver operational efficiencies from the ITBs and minimise levy ‘leakage’ for reinvestment in industry that delivers the biggest impact.”
A DWP spokesperson said: “This government inherited a dire shortage of construction workers and we are determined to deliver more opportunities for young people as we work to boost construction skills.
“We will be consulting industry on whether bringing these two training bodies together would better support workers and employers to get the skills they need.”
The two boards
Both the CITB and ECITB work in England, Scotland and Wales, distributing training grants that are largely funded through separate levies on employers.
CITB focuses on construction and building skills for sectors such as housebuilding, while the ECITB works on training for more specialised major infrastructure projects such as nuclear power stations, oil and gas production, and water treatment.
According to its most recent accounts for 2024-25, the construction board raised £228 million in levy funding for training grants to support more than 4,000 new entrants to the sector and 30,000 apprentices. It also runs employer networks and directly delivers apprenticeship and health and safety training.
The board’s most recent minutes from September said it forecast a budget deficit of £14 million for the year due to high demand for its grants.
In the same year, the ECITB raised £34 million from its levy, £28 million of which was spent on training grants and new-entrant programmes.
Andrew Hockey, CEO of the ECITB, said: “Whatever the outcome of this consultation, it is important the distinct skills and workforce needs of the engineering construction industry continue to be supported.
“Our research forecasts that the engineering construction industry will need 40,000 additional workers by 2030. Any changes to how the ITBs are structured should not detract from the urgent need to attract, develop, qualify and retain skilled workers now.”
CITB chief executive Tim Balcon said: “We must continue to work to tackle the joint needs of industry – we need to be providing standardised levels of competence, alternative routes into industry and making it easier to access high-quality training.”
More than 20 levy-funded boards were founded in the 1960s, but the CITB and ECITB are the sole two to remain after most were dismantled in reforms under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.
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.
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.
Analysis by the Centre for Social Justice suggests more than 700,000 university graduates are unemployed and claiming benefits. For me, this statistic demonstrates the wider challenge around how effectively young people move from education into work.
This is echoed in Alan Milburn’s review into NEETs, which aims to dig into why nearly one million young people are not in education, employment or training.
The Association of College’s evidence submission to this review shows that colleges are already providing targeted, locally rooted interventions. This reflects the reality that moving from learning to earning requires more than qualifications alone – we know that employers also need skills, experience, confidence and workplace readiness.
At LSEC, we discuss intended destinations at enrolment with our learners, ensuring they have access to impartial careers guidance within their first six weeks. This helps them understand the full range of routes available (including apprenticeships, higher education and employment) and makes clear that progression depends on more than academic attainment.
Inconsistent access to high-quality work placements can also be an issue. When young people enter a competitive labour market, lack of exposure to the workplace can quickly become a barrier to securing employment.
Embedding work experience and employer engagement into curriculum design is key, rather than treating these activities as add-ons.
We engage with hundreds of great employers, who support our learners with placements, live briefs, workshops and projects.
T Levels have reinforced the value of substantial industry placements, but the principle applies across all provision: experience and understanding of the workplace matters.
However, even where experience has been gained, young people can struggle to explain their skills to employers. They may have completed great placements or projects but find it difficult to articulate what they can offer to a workplace.
To overcome this, we embed the development of critical employability skills into our study programmes through our Careers Advantage framework. Confidence building, communication and presentation skills help students articulate who they are, their ambitions and the value they bring, while encouraging reflection on their experiences and strengths.
We are also exploring the use of emerging technologies, including immersive and virtual reality environments, to expose students to a range of workplace settings. This allows learners to test different pathways within a sector through safe, private practice for interviews and presentations. Their work is supported by feedback and advice, complementing real world experience.
The reality of a highly competitive graduate labour market cannot be ignored. In many sectors, there are simply more qualified applicants than entry-level roles. Standing out requires evidence, not just ambition.
Volunteering can be a great way to do this. As part of the sector’s Good for Me Good for FE initiative, LSEC has developed a new national volunteering programme in collaboration with NCFE. This formally recognises the employability and transferable skills gained through social action – from teamwork and communication to resilience and leadership.
Students with access to professional or industry networks have a better chance of securing opportunities than those without. All providers must help level this ‘social capital’ playing field by providing structured access to employers, alumni and professional environments – which is something we prioritise for all our students.
Finishing education and moving into work is not a single moment. It is an important transition that requires support. If success continues to be measured at the point of completion rather than beyond it, we risk producing qualified young people who feel unprepared and unsupported.
Careers education, employer engagement and progression planning should be core elements in all settings, not optional extras reliant on local funding or individual institutions going above and beyond.
There also needs to be greater national consistency, so young people’s access to enrichment and workplace experiences does not depend on where they study.
Transitions should be seen as a shared responsibility, with colleges, universities, employers and policymakers working together to support young people through one of the most significant points in their lives.
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.
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.
