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A day in the life of a WorldSkills expert

Most attendees of a WorldSkills event see the competitors front and centre, with their heads down and tools in hand, racing the clock.

What they often miss are the people standing over their shoulders, armed with a clipboard and running on just a few hours of sleep.

That is the job of a WorldSkills expert. For Mike Swan, it’s a world away from his day job as a construction curriculum leader at Dundee and Angus College.

Swan has been a training manager for the painting and decorating skill since 2005 and has been a key mentor training Team UK members in the run-up to international competitions every year since.

Once the contest is up and running, however, mentors must hand in their training manager cap for an expert cap.

“When you’re a training manager, you’re there to supervise and manage the competitor leading up to the competition but as soon as you come to the competition as an expert, you have to forget that role completely,” Swan explained.

“You’re there to run the competition and to be as fair as possible for every single competitor.”

Before competitors arrive

WorldSkills UK training managers automatically become competition experts when they voluntarily join the organisation.

At an international final, whether it be a EuroSkills or WorldSkills competition, one assigned expert per competitor is expected at the event.

For the upcoming global competition in Shanghai in September, there are 22 experts for painting and decorating alone who all must follow strict competition guidelines and remain neutral in the judging process.

Experts are restricted in the contact they have with their own competitors and are only allowed to provide pastoral support instead of technical guidance throughout the event.

“All you’re allowed to do is talk to them about how they’re feeling. Anything related to the tasks, you’re not allowed to talk about,” Swan explained.

“I have the view that if they’re needing me to tell them to do anything at a competition, then I’ve not trained them properly.

“I want them to go to a competition and feel that they can be there on their own without me or without anybody else.”

Swan, as chief expert, will oversee the proceedings over the three-day competition.

At the last WorldSkills event in Lyon, France in 2024, that meant waking up at 4am to arrive on site around 6.30am – an hour before the other experts.

Mike Swan with competitor Dior Regan at WorldSkills Lyon 2024

“I had to be first person on site to open up and make sure everything was okay, nothing was tampered with during the evening,” he said.

Out of the entire competition day, Swan said getting started is the most difficult logistical task for him before anyone picks up a paint brush.

“You’re working with so many different nations and interpreters,” he said.

“You need to make sure you get instructions across properly and everybody understands them.”

On your marks

After the doors open to the public, competitors are typically on the floor from around 9am to 6pm.

One of Swan’s responsibilities is to manage the entire logistics of the day’s competition. This could include managing timed tasks, adhering to health and safety requirements and solving any problems that prevent a smooth-running contest.

“There’s always things that do not go to plan. You’ve got to think on your feet and find solutions extremely quickly,” he said.

“I want the competitors to be seen, and I want experts to be invisible.”

As experts parole the competition floor all day, they can often develop “competition feet”, which can involve painful blisters and sores.

“I always take my foot balm because you’re on concrete all day,” Swan said. “You’ve got safety boots on and your feet are sweating a lot so you can imagine the mess your feet get in.”

After competitors retire for the day, experts come together to get straight into assessing, which can take all night sometimes.

Swan aims to send the rest of the experts home by 9 or 10pm, but at the 2019 competition in Kazan, Russia, a marking session ran through the entire night.

“I didn’t have any time to get back to the hotel. I just ended up staying overnight. I think I had a sit in a chair and keeled over.”

Stickler for the rules

Every expert also has to memorise a “fairly thick” set of rules before the event. Beyond the general WorldSkills rules, each skill has its own additional rulebook.

For painting and decorating, the judging is extremely precise. For instance, assessors are only allowed to check a competitor’s painted wall from 1.5 metres away when checking for defects.

Teams of four experts are drawn up during marking. Three will mark and one will supervise.

More importantly, experts must recuse themselves from marking their own national competitor.

Swan’s job is to create and manage the expert teams, which involves deliberately mixing in experienced and newbie experts together as well as directing when experts should remove themselves from marking.

Judging is also “very marginal”, he said.

“All the competitors have got an incredible level of standard, and the difference between silver and bronze can be minuscule – it can come down to half a millimetre, or different levels of opacity.”

The painting and decorating competition is often one of the last to finish marking each day and sometimes does not wrap up until 1am or later.

“You’re working with a lot of experts who are tired and hungry, and you’ve got to keep the spirits up,” Swan said.

Swan swears off caffeine to stay awake, citing his dietitian wife who taught him good habits to stay energetic during competition week.

But the job of an expert can be so intense that habits can sometimes fail.

At last year’s EuroSkills Herning in Denmark, Swan forgot to eat until 9pm and started experiencing blackouts from exhaustion.

“I recognised then, ‘right, I need to go and have a wee power nap here’.”

For all the risks of sleep deprivation and “competition feet”, Swan comes back year after year, bar a decade-long break to raise his children before returning in 2018.

“It’s the look on the competitors’ faces on the last day, when I drag them back into the room and give them the debrief. The elation, the joy, the relief – it just oozes out of them.”

Mike Swan at his first WorldSkills event in Shizuoka, Japan 2007 alongside painting and decorating competitor Chris Blake

His first memorable moment was when Mark Nevin won the gold medal in 2009 at WorldSkills Calgary, Canada.

But his proudest moment was last year in Herning when Team UK competitor Shelby Fitzakerly won a medallion for excellence after just 13 days of training.

“That completely blew me away with what she took on board and what she learned in a short space of time, and that was extremely memorable,” he said.

Fitzakerly and Swan at EuroSkills Herning 2025

Fitzakerly will represent Team UK for the painting and decorating skills in Shanghai later next month.

When asked what his advice was to anyone considering becoming a training manager, he said: “It’s probably the hardest work you’ll ever do. It really is hard work. But it’s one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done.”

FE Week is the media partner of WorldSkills UK.

Ofqual fines awarding body for allowing colleges to investigate themselves

Ofqual has fined OTHM Qualifications £25,000 after finding the awarding organisation allowed colleges and training providers accused of malpractice to investigate themselves.

The penalty follows a two-year investigation by the regulator after it received a dozen allegations of malpractice involving OTHM Qualifications.

A notice of monetary penalty was today issued to the awarding body, which admitted to breaching ten separate conditions of its recognition over a three-year period, spanning conflicts of interest, malpractice investigations, record keeping, centre monitoring and reporting to Ofqual.

The exams regulator launched an investigation into the awarding organisation in February 2024, reviewing OTHM’s handling of alleged malpractice stretching back to 2018 when Ofqual’s reporting portal was launched.

OTHM admitted the breaches and entered a voluntary settlement on July 21, agreeing to pay the £25,000 penalty plus up to £10,000 of Ofqual’s legal costs.

OTHM has since drawn up an action plan and invested “significantly” in improving its systems and will regularly send Ofqual reports on how the improvements are working.

Ofqual concluded that a £25,000 fine reflected OTHM’s cooperation and corrective action and confirmed it fell within the statutory cap of 10 per cent of OTHM’s total annual turnover.

The regulator also noted OTHM had breached regulatory requirements in the past but while it did not result in enforcement action, it suggested a pattern of “similar” failings.

Amanda Swann, Ofqual’s executive director for delivery, said: “I’d like to remind awarding organisations that event notifications are a sign of good governance, not a sign of failure. When Ofqual is not kept informed, we cannot step in to protect learners.

“OTHM has acknowledged what went wrong and taken steps to put it right. We will be watching. But a £25,000 fine is a significant consequence, and it is meant to be. Qualifications only mean something if people can trust them.”

Centres allowed to investigate themselves

OTHM offers level 3 to 8 qualifications in subjects like business, health and social care, HR, tourism and currently delivers nearly 100 qualifications. Last year, it issued almost 11,600 certificates.

The awarding body submitted just one alert of a potentially serious incident to Ofqual, despite its own records showing several malpractice and maladministration events that met the threshold for reporting.

Ofqual found OTHM had directed multiple centres to investigate themselves involving alleged malpractice and in at least four cases, there was potentially a personal interest in the outcome from those carrying out the investigation.

On one occasion OTHM relied on evidence from a centre managing director who was implicated in the allegations.

In the case of a centre facing allegations of mis-selling qualifications and certificates, OTHM warned that “any proven malpractice or maladministration will result in sanctions being applied and could result in withdrawal of centre approval”. The awarding organisation then closed the case a day after the centre said the allegations were unfounded.

In another case, a learner produced WhatsApp messages where a staff member at a different centre allegedly advised them to use third parties to complete assignments. The centre was allowed to investigate itself and Ofqual found that OTHM did not consider this to be a conflict of interest.

Inconsistent and unreliable records

Investigators also uncovered “inconsistent” record-keeping and OTHM could not produce investigation reports in four instances where it was required to keep for five years under its own internal policy.

Each time Ofqual requested OTHM’s malpractice records, it received a different register containing different information.

The penalty notice said: “OTHM was using multiple documents to record and monitor malpractice/maladministration events and this information was not consolidated, resulting in information regarding malpractice and maladministration appearing inconsistent and unreliable.”

One register noted 13 malpractice or maladministration entries, another listed 49, and a third listed 23. Ofqual concluded there were 64 entries not appearing consistently across the three documents.

OTHM told investigators it would only notify Ofqual of an event if it decided to investigate and would not do so where it believed any “adverse effect” had already been mitigated.

But Ofqual found OTHM’s definition of an adverse effect was narrower than its own stipulated in the conditions of recognition.

‘Deficient’ quality assurance

Awarding bodies must also abide by the centre assessment standards scrutiny (CASS) strategy to evaluate centre marking.

Ofqual found a lack of “adequate” centre monitoring and “deficient” quality assurance activities.

Investigators separately reviewed 251 quality assurance reports covering nearly 400 certifications and found nearly half of reports showed an under sampling of learners’ work per qualification.

The notice said: “By failing to comply with its CASS strategy, OTHM denied itself this opportunity and thereby failed to take all reasonable steps to detect and prevent malpractice as well as failing to comply with its CASS strategy.”

OTHM has since updated its centre monitoring processes and CASS strategy.

OTHM was contacted for comment.

Skills weighting doubled for major public contracts

Apprenticeships, training and work placements will count for double in bids for large government contracts from January 2027, with skills becoming one of just two social value measures used by Whitehall to score its suppliers.

A new procurement policy note (PPN), published by the Cabinet Office this morning, doubles the minimum social value weighting to 20 per cent on contracts worth £5 million or more.

It cuts the previous eight social value outcomes suppliers could be measured against, including cutting carbon emissions, reducing crime and improving workers’ health, to just two: “good jobs” and “skills”.

Government contracts worth between £1 million and £5 million keep the 10 per cent social value threshold. Those worth less than £1 million are exempt altogether. Ministers said this was to reduce burdens on small businesses bidding for government contracts.

The new rules will apply to procurements from January 1, 2027. Detailed guidance on how bids from potential suppliers will be scored is not due out until the autumn.

Louise Haigh, first secretary of state, today said securing government contracts had “for too long” been “a tick box exercise that fails to deliver the positive change that people feel in their pocket and see in the places they live”.

The new rules would “ensure the £90 billion that is spent each year through government contracts supports British jobs, skills and people in every postcode”, she said.

Points mean prizes

The new ‘skills’ outcome has three award criteria covering training and retraining, in-work progression and building a “talent pipeline”. The pipeline criterion says: “For example, 45 days of work experience is exactly the kind of social value the prime minister is seeking to see delivered through this policy.”

The figure echoes a pledge made by Andy Burnham in June, before he became prime minister, that public contracts would require “a much greater supply of 45-day work placements and apprenticeships for young people”. Forty-five days is the minimum for a T Level industry placement, though the PPN does not mention T Levels.

Nothing in the document obliges a supplier to deliver a single apprenticeship or placement, but points are awarded to bidders that offer them.

The model being replaced named apprenticeships at levels 2, 3 and 4 and above, T Level industry placements, supported internships and “recognised qualifications”, and included a criterion on engaging schools and colleges through mentoring, placements and careers guidance. The new model so far only says “illustrative examples include apprenticeships, work placements or workplace adaptations”.

Target groups have also changed. Prison leavers and kinship carers, both named in the current model, are absent from the latest PPN, which covers young people not in education, employment or training (NEET), those moving from education into work, people with a long-term health condition or disability, and care leavers.

Anchor institutions

Suppliers that offer apprenticeships or work placements typically need a college or training provider to deliver them.

Analysis by procurement data firm Tussell shows 36 “strategic suppliers” took £24.7 billion of public procurement spending in 2024-25, led by construction and facilities management firms including Balfour Beatty, Kier and Mitie.

One of the new criteria awards points to suppliers that “co-design solutions” with “anchor institutions”, a term that is often attached to further education colleges and universities.

Buyers will also have to attach a list of “community programmes” to their tender documents. This will be a government-compiled menu of existing schemes that bidders can offer to back in return for social value points. The list is due with the autumn guidance.

Contracts worth £5 million or more must carry at least one social value KPI, published and reported on annually. Poor performance against it can count towards excluding a supplier from future tenders.

Government has been attempting to lever apprenticeships through procurement since 2015, when a policy note set a benchmark of 3 to 5 per cent of a supplier’s workforce being apprentices. It was withdrawn in 2023 and never replaced.

‘Exceptional’ Ofsted result for BAE Systems

Defence giant BAE Systems has been rated ‘exceptional’ by Ofsted for its “life-changing” approach to inclusion and leadership of its 2,600 apprentices.

The company received the highest possible grade under the education watchdog’s new inspection framework in both areas, alongside three ‘strong standard’ judgments.

Inspectors praised the company for its “remarkable insight” into apprentices’ barriers to learning, saying its support helps many overcome significant challenges.

Apprentices are enabled to acquire skills that help them to move “effortlessly” into a wide range of “trusted and influential roles” across the global business, managing multi-million-pound international and national contracts, Ofsted’s report said.

Apprentices told inspectors that BAE’s approach had a “life-changing impact” on their self-esteem and confidence, enabling them to develop career aspirations they had not previously thought possible.

Richard Hamer, HR director of education and skills at BAE Systems, said: “Apprenticeships are a fantastic gateway to a successful career and being considered by Ofsted as one of the strongest providers in England means a great deal to us.

“This outcome is testament to the high standards and quality of our training, the support our apprentices receive and the real contribution they make to our business. It also reflects the hard work of everyone at BAE Systems who make our apprenticeship schemes such a success year in, year out.”

A ‘unique approach’ to inclusion

BAE Systems uses technology to support the armed forces and security services by air, at sea, on land, in space and in the cyber domain.

It offers apprenticeships from levels 2 to 7 in roles including engineering technician, plate welder, metal fabricator, project manager, aerospace engineer and digital and technology solutions professional.

Just over half of its apprentices are aged 16 to 18.

The company was last inspected by Ofsted in 2021, when it received an overall ‘outstanding’ rating.

Under Ofsted’s new framework, introduced in November, providers are no longer given a single overall judgment. Instead, they receive grades across multiple areas on a five-point scale ranging from ‘exceptional’ to ‘urgent improvement’.

BAE is the first employer provider to receive an ‘exceptional’ grade for inclusion and leadership and governance.

Inspectors said BAE has a “long-established and exceptional culture” of inclusion that “permeates” the organisation and extends to its subcontracted provision.

Before apprentices start their programmes, staff discuss their strengths and personal circumstances and identify any barriers to learning.

Ofsted described this as a “unique approach” that gives leaders, staff and workplace line managers highly personalised information about the support each apprentice needs.

BAE provides resources to make learning more accessible, including digital devices, artificial intelligence tools to help with reading and transcribing information, and British Sign Language experts.

A significant proportion of apprentices go on to secure prominent promotions, Ofsted found.

Apprentices are also given opportunities to take leading roles in multi-million-pound bids and organisational projects and campaigns, including television interviews and royal and parliamentary visits.

Those who have experience of the care system receive financial support to help them live independently and buy resources needed for their studies.

Culture of ‘psychological safety’

Inspectors also praised BAE’s governors who work in “synergy” with leaders to drive strategic priorities while putting apprentices’ best interests first.

Governors and leaders have an “unwavering passion” for growing talent within the business and creating lifelong career pathways, Ofsted said.

They have also created a culture of “psychological safety” for apprentices and staff.

BAE provides staff, including those working for subcontracted providers, with a “comprehensive programme of professional development” to ensure teachers are subject experts.

The company subcontracts just under half of its apprenticeship provision to nine training providers across England.

Its largest subcontractors are Furness College, Blackpool and The Fylde College, and the University of Cumbria.

Inspectors said BAE “rigorously” monitors the quality of its subcontracted provision and provides swift support where improvements are needed.

The company recorded an 88 per cent overall apprenticeship achievement rate in 2024-25, compared with a national average of 65 per cent.

Student recruitment needs strategy, not just more content

For post-16 providers, student numbers underpin college funding, staffing and the opportunities a college can provide. Recruitment therefore shapes the financial and educational health of the whole college, far beyond the marketing team’s remit.

Yet recruitment marketing is often treated as an add-on. A small team may be expected to manage admissions, the website, social media, events, communications and design while also thinking strategically.

That model is easier to sustain while student numbers grow, but becomes exposed as demographic decline reduces the pool of potential applicants. Colleges therefore need to treat recruitment as a core institutional priority, without necessarily spending vastly more on it.

Content-rich, strategy-poor

When colleges look to improve recruitment, the instinct is often to do more.

A new prospectus. Another promotional video. More social media posts. An additional open event. More school visits. A refreshed website.

None of these are bad ideas. In fact, they are all valuable parts of recruitment.

The problem is that they are activities, not a strategy.

A strategy asks different questions. Who are we trying to reach? What makes our college genuinely different? And how does each activity move someone from awareness to enrolment?

Without those answers, recruitment can become content-rich but strategy-poor: plenty of activity, with little coordination behind it. Individual tactics may be well executed yet still operate in isolation, failing to build the clear identity that students and parents can understand, believe and ultimately choose.

Turning values into a proposition

Every college has a set of values.

Ambition. Enjoyment. Individuality. Inclusion. Excellence.

We’ve all seen words like these on a website, a prospectus or a poster in reception. But how do they actually help a student or parent decide which college to choose?

These values matter. They should shape the culture of the organisation and the decisions it makes. But unless they are translated into something meaningful for students and parents, they remain just words on a website.

The role of recruitment marketing is to translate those values into a proposition that prospective students and parents can understand, relate to and believe.

For one college, ambition might become a proposition centred on high expectations, academic challenge and progression to competitive universities. For another, inclusion might become a proposition built around belonging, individual support, confidence, progression and helping students move forward from where they are.

Values tell you what a college believes. A proposition tells prospective students why that should matter to them.

Once that proposition is clear, it becomes the thread running through every part of recruitment, giving every piece of communication its own clear purpose.

Working together

Few colleges have unlimited marketing budgets, so every activity needs to earn its place by asking: “What role should this play?”

A prospectus, website, social media, school visits and applicant communications should all contribute to the same story. Individually, each may have only a modest impact. Together, they create a consistent picture of what the college offers and why it is the right choice.

The recruitment journey continues well after a student applies. An application signals interest, but enrolment still has to be earned – students keep comparing providers, asking questions and changing their minds right up until they make their final decision.

Post-application communication has two jobs: providing the practical information students and parents need about interviews, key dates and enrolment, and reducing uncertainty by reinforcing why they applied in the first place. That is where curriculum teams can help, with subject-specific messages from current students and taster activities that let applicants picture themselves on the course.

Most colleges already have plenty of recruitment activity. What’s missing is coordination – making every activity work together around a clear proposition.

The future of recruitment is unlikely to belong to the colleges that produce the most content. It will belong to those that combine a distinctive identity with a coherent strategy.

Missing records thwart evaluation of covid tuition fund

Researchers could not judge whether catch-up tuition worked in colleges after more than 500 institutions that took the funding failed to log which students received it.

An independent impact evaluation of the 2021-22 year of the 16-19 tuition fund, published last week, found that so many schools and colleges omitted information from their data returns that no reliable comparison group could be built for FE and sixth form colleges.

The 16-19 tuition fund allocated £420 million over four academic years, with £102 million committed in 2021-22.

The data gaps forced researchers from Ipsos UK and the Education Policy Institute to abandon plans to draw “meaningful policy inferences” on the fund’s impact on students’ attainment.

The Department for Education said it has since introduced “clearer” reporting requirements and better validation for providers.

Researchers were only able to produce an impact estimate for school sixth forms, covering around a third of students who benefited from the fund in 2021-22.

Those students scored an average of 1.49 points less in their 16-19 qualifications than matched students who did not, equivalent to about 15 per cent of an A Level grade.

But researchers warned that the finding could not be relied on because school sixth forms are more selective than colleges and 85 per cent of tuition recipients in the sample already held grade 4s in GCSE English and maths. They were not the primary group the policy set out to help.

The report said those students were “unlikely to be representative of the broader population that benefitted”, and that “no meaningful policy conclusions can be inferred”.

Comparison group collapsed

DfE launched the fund in the 2020-21 academic year as part of the government’s education recovery programme. It paid for small group tuition in English, maths and other subjects disrupted by the pandemic.

Eligibility was widened in 2022-23 after complaints from the sector that the criteria were too restrictive, before the fund closed at the end of 2023-24.

The evaluation covered 2021-22, when £102 million was allocated. Of 2,506 eligible institutions, 1,567 opted in, 63 per cent, down from 77 per cent the previous year.

Researchers set out to compare exam results for students who received tuition with similar students who did not, using the summer school census and the individualised learner record.

But a substantial proportion of the data was unreliable for every type of institution, because providers that had taken the funding did not record who received the tuition. Students placed in the comparison group may in fact have had it. School sixth forms accounted for the largest numbers.

“This reporting issue meant that many students included in our matched sample may have benefitted from the 16-19 tuition fund even though the data suggested they had not, making the analysis unreliable,” the report said.

It added: “We advise caution in interpretation of this analysis, […] no meaningful policy conclusions can be inferred.”

Once the affected providers were stripped out, only two FE colleges, seven sixth form colleges and three other providers that had not opted in remained. Researchers tried matching students repeatedly against that small pool, but the sample size was too small to use.

‘We have introduced clearer reporting requirements’

The evaluation recommended DfE collect monitoring data on the type, frequency and duration of tuition delivered for any future tuition or catch-up programmes for 16 to 19-year-olds.

It also advised officials to set minimum expectations for delivery, align eligibility criteria with intended outcomes and test different models of tuition within a sample of institutions before any wider rollout.

A separate process evaluation, published in 2023, relied on provider and student surveys and found more positive perceptions of the fund for the same 2021-22 academic year.

Nearly 9 in 10 (88 per cent) institutions agreed the fund had improved students’ educational attainment and 23 per cent of students said they achieved better results.

A DfE spokesperson said: “We accept the evaluation’s recommendation to strengthen data collection and monitoring requirements. We have introduced clearer reporting requirements alongside improved validation and support for providers, helping ensure more robust evaluation while retaining the flexibility needed to deliver support effectively.”

We need to stop selling courses and start building skills ecosystems

The skills sector talks a lot about responsiveness. But too often, we still start in the wrong place.

We start with the course. The qualification. The apprenticeship standard. The funding line. The recruitment target. The validation process. The internal department.

Employers do not think like that.

Most employers do not approach a college, university or training provider with a neat request for a specific product. They come with a workforce problem. They need to recruit. They need to retain staff. They need technicians, supervisors, managers, digital skills, green skills, compliance training, placements, apprentices, graduates or short upskilling for existing staff.

The sector’s job is to translate those workforce problems into credible learning solutions. That means moving beyond course portfolios and building skills ecosystems.

A course portfolio is a list of provision. A skills ecosystem is a connected set of routes, relationships and support that links employers, learners, providers and place. It joins up technical education, apprenticeships, T Levels, placements, higher technical qualifications, CPD, apprenticeship units, adult learning and workforce development.

That matters because the skills challenge is wider than any single product.

Skills England’s 2026 annual skills report points towards a more evidence-led system aligned to priority sectors. The latest government employer skills survey, from 2024 reported 250,500 skill-shortage vacancies across the UK. It also showed employer training expenditure at £53 billion, down from £59 billion in 2022 and 18.5 per cent lower in real terms than in 2011.

So we have a problem. Employers need skills, but long-term investment in training has weakened. Providers cannot assume demand will turn into enrolments. The offer has to be relevant, flexible and easy to navigate.

This is where business engagement needs to change. It cannot be treated only as sales or recruitment. A strong business engagement function should be a source of intelligence. It should tell providers what employers are struggling with, which sectors are changing, where delivery models are not working and what skills are emerging.

That intelligence should shape the portfolio. It should influence what we grow, what we redesign and what we stop doing.

We also need to think in pathways. A young person might start with careers activity in school, progress into a T Level or level 3 technical route, move into an apprenticeship, and later return for higher technical learning or CPD. An adult in work might need a short unit first, then a larger qualification later. An employer might need placements now, apprentices next year and leadership development after that.

If we treat these as separate products, we make the system harder to use. If we connect them, we create progression.

This is particularly important for integrated FE and HE groups. LSBU Group, for example, brings together London South Bank University, South Bank Colleges and South Bank Academies. That creates the potential to connect early talent, technical education, apprenticeships, higher education, placements and professional learning.

But the wider lesson applies across the sector: structure alone is not enough. Integration only matters if it simplifies the journey for employers and strengthens progression for learners.

Quality is also central. Flexible provision must not become weaker provision. Apprenticeship units, short courses and modular learning can help employers respond quickly, especially in areas like AI, digital and green skills. But if they become disconnected fragments, they will add complexity rather than solve it.

Every part of the skills ecosystem needs proper quality design. Apprenticeships need strong initial assessment, employer commitment, progress reviews and assessment readiness. T Level placements need meaningful workplace learning, not just hours completed. CPD needs to be applicable in work. Higher technical provision needs employer recognition and clear progression value.

We also need better measures of impact. Starts and income matter, but they are not enough. We should be looking at retention, achievement, progression, employer satisfaction, repeat engagement, learner destinations, social mobility and local economic value.

The next phase of skills reform should not be about adding more disconnected provision. It should be about building coherent skills infrastructure.

That means asking different questions. Not only: can we run this course? But: what problem does it solve? Which employers helped shape it? Where does it lead? Can adults access it? Does the workplace support learning? What impact will it have?

The future will not be won by providers with the longest list of courses. It will be won by those that can connect learning to work, employers to talent, and local people to real opportunity.

What we’ve learned from six years delivering T Levels

With more than one million young people now classed as not in education, employment or training (NEET), the recent Milburn Review has reignited an important debate about how we prepare young people for work.

The discussion so far has focused on what young people need: more confidence, greater resilience, stronger employability skills and better exposure to the workplace.

As someone who’s been involved in delivering T Levels since the beginning, I can confidently say that T Levels offer my students that. The bigger question is how we make sure teachers feel ready and supported to deliver them.

Six years ago, Middlesbrough College was among the first providers in the country to introduce T Levels.

Today we deliver 17, spanning subjects from accounting and building services to health, digital software development and marketing. Delivering new qualifications from scratch is always daunting. We wanted students to get the very best quality teaching from day one. Reflecting on what’s worked well, I think learnings can be applied to the roll-out of any new qualification, including V Levels due to start next year.

In some ways, we learned on the job together with employers and awarding bodies. At Middlesbrough College, we made a deliberate decision to invest in training staff and provide support right from the outset. We looked carefully at what teachers needed, not just when T Levels launched, but throughout the implementation journey. As a result, our teachers became more confident, more connected and better supported.

And you can see the impact of this in the results of our students: our T Level pass rate rose from 73.4 per cent to 93.2 per cent last year and the proportion of students achieving merit or distinction increased from under half to nearly three-quarters of the cohort.

So how did we do it? We carved out time specifically for professional development, mentoring and training. We have made extensive use of the teaching resources and teacher Communities of Practice from Gatsby’s Technical Education Network (TEN).

The resources have been invaluable for me and my team, completely free and ready to use in the classroom. It’s been a gamechanger and has saved teachers roughly two hours a week in planning time, giving them more time to adapt resources and meet every learner’s needs.

The Communities of Practice have been a huge support to me and so many of my peers. They are subject-focused and allow us to learn from each other, and discuss different approaches in a safe space.

The impact of high-quality teaching resources and practitioner networks like TEN shouldn’t be underestimated and is felt directly by learners. As well as uplift in attainment, our T Level students have some of the highest attendance rates across our Level 3 provision.

They consistently tell us they value the relevance of their learning and the opportunity to apply it in real workplaces. Employers regularly comment on how workplace-ready many of them are by the end of their programme.

I see day in, day out, T Levels creating resilience and confidence in our students, qualities that are very much needed for the world we live in now.

Students can see clearer progression routes into higher education, apprenticeships and employment. Universities have a much stronger understanding of the qualification and employers are actively seeking out T Level students because of their industry experience.

For any new or experienced T Level teachers – and practitioners who will embark on the V Level journey next year – I’d encourage you to seek out high-quality resources, subject-specific professional development and opportunities to collaborate with peers around the country. It’s a key learning for us and we know from results it reaps high rewards.

T Levels are a valuable qualification, and we need to be consistently investing in the teachers who bring it to life. Because when teachers are set up to succeed, so are their students.

Personalisation is FE’s next evolution

For decades, in most classrooms the idea of an ‘average learner’ has shaped how teaching is planned and delivered. But in reality, no such learner exists. Every cohort of students contains individuals with different levels of prior knowledge, confidence, experience and support needs. Yet, as educators we have historically had limited tools to address this. Meaning we deliver the same content, in the same way and at the same pace to all learners.

This presents a challenge. Some learners risk being left behind because the pace is too fast, while others may become disengaged because they are not being sufficiently challenged. As educators, we have a responsibility to support both groups, designing educational experiences to deliver the best outcome for every learner.

The good news is that rapid advances in technology and AI mean our ability to address this challenge is becoming increasingly achievable, at scale. Personalised learning can create opportunities to provide learners with the right level of challenge and support at the right time.

Personalised learning in practice

Until recently, delivering a high level of personalisation was difficult. Outside one-to-one tutoring, educators simply haven’t been able to scale learning experiences to continuously adapt for each individual learner. However, advancements in AI and data are creating opportunities to change that and allow us to think differently about how we deliver education.

At Kaplan, we’re using the digital footprint of our learners to improve the quality of our education across our courses in real time.

AI helps us to see patterns in how learners progress and engage and, crucially, to act on this in a timely way to give learners maximum opportunity to reach their full potential. The technology means we can do this at scale, making a hands-on approach to learning – which everyone deserves – accessible to all.

Leveraging AI technology and data insights means we can deliver learning experiences that maintain ‘desirable difficulty’ for individual learners – a well-established concept in educational science referring to the productive zone of challenge where real learning happens, far enough beyond what a learner can already do to stretch them, but not so far that they disengage.

And AI is embedded into our learner ecosystem through our TutorBot, a study partner that provides the support of a teaching assistant around the clock. Learners can use the TutorBot to test and develop their understanding, posing questions that encourage active thinking rather than simply supplying answers. Over time it builds a picture of the individual learner – their confidence, their persistence, the way they approach problems – and helps us to adjust the level of challenge accordingly.

None of this removes the need for great educators. Technology enables teachers and trainers to be even more effective by providing better insight into learner needs and allowing interventions to happen sooner and with greater precision.

This means that personalised learning has a real, meaningful impact on students. Our TutorBot data shows a clear behavioural split between learners who use it as a thinking partner and those who attempt to cognitively offload their learning. That distinction is detectable early in a programme, long before assessment scores reveal anything, which means we can deliver human interventions at the point it is most likely to help, rather than waiting until a learner shows signs of struggle in assessments.

Looking forwards

As educators, we have always owed it to our learners to provide the best possible educational experience. The fundamental foundations of effective teaching and learning haven’t changed, but the tools available to support it have.

As a sector, we should be challenging ourselves, not because providers who don’t adapt are failing their learners, but because those who do will give them something genuinely better.