Latest news from FE Week

Burnham could create a new dawn for further education and lifelong learning

The vision that Andy Burnham has laid out of the future is refreshing, particularly his assertion that education is a key to growth, hope and opportunity.

Central to this vision I would like to see the revitalisation of further education. I have many reasons to believe in the life-changing importance of FE. Here are some of them.

Given Burnham’s emphasis on opportunity and hope, I would like to tell my own story. I failed my 11 plus and left school in 1965, aged fifteen. Ten years of dead-end jobs followed.

At the age of twenty-five I went to my local FE college to enquire about studying for some evening class O-Levels. They had just started a new full-time course for mature students and encouraged me to apply. After a year I had gained four O-levels; another year, three A-levels. My local authority gave me a grant for these two years.

I was then accepted to study social sciences at the University of Bath. FE, and then university, completely changed my life – it gave me hope and opportunity. Since those times in the 1970’s the opportunities for older people to follow such a path have diminished considerably.

After graduation I started as a part-time lecturer in FE teaching something called liberal studies to day and block release students, including plumbers, electricians, carpenters and joiners, motor vehicle engineers, and many others. These people were on proper, well-recognised and funded apprenticeships. I soon became a full-time lecturer and my local authority funded day release to study for a Certificate in Education

I taught in FE for 22 years. In 2002, after a tasty redundancy offer, I joined the FE teacher training team at my local university. I gained an MA in education studies and, before retirement became a senior teaching fellow in the university’s department for education, health and sciences. I have published several books on learning and teaching in further and higher education. All this might sound like bragging but I am proud of what I did and the way an FE college set me on the path.

I would very much like to see FE providing opportunities for people of all ages to study, train and retrain. This will become especially important when the idea of a job for life has gone, with technological shifts causing the economy to change more rapidly than ever before. In short, lifelong learning will become crucial. Former education secretary David Blunkett had a vision for this in his 1998 green paper The Learning Age.

In 1993, FE colleges were taken out of local authority control and forced to become independent entities. Reductions in lecturers’ pay, reduction in courses and general decline in the status of further education colleges followed. Perhaps Andy Burnham will consider giving local mayors more control of funding, curriculum and management.

I would also like to comment about his desire to put an end to the academic and vocational divide. This is a socially constructed divide reinforced by class prejudices; Professor Alison Wolfe said that vocational education was often regarded as ‘a great idea for other people’s children’.

Clearly skills are vital to personal and economic growth, but the phrase ‘learning and skills’ seems to imply that skills are for people who can’t manage learning. We should only talk about ‘education’ and ‘learning’. In the future people will need to learn, unlearn and re-learn throughout their lives.

My final wish for FE is a revitalisation of its role in building communities and bringing people together. I remember the times when non-vocational courses such as painting, woodworking and yoga were well attended, and relatively inexpensive. People learned, made friends and enjoyed themselves; they didn’t even have to undertake a qualification!

Let’s make further education central to life and learning again.

Hybrid assessment models are becoming essential for modern learners

As higher and further education institutions across the UK enter peak assessment periods, long-standing cracks in traditional assessment models are becoming harder to ignore. Ageing exam hall infrastructure, limited campus space and tightening budgets are colliding with rising student demand and forcing institutions to rethink how assessments are delivered.

During exam season, campus space is often stretched to capacity, as sports halls, classrooms and other venues are repurposed to accommodate students sitting their exams. This creates logistical challenges and limits teaching flexibility.

With 89 per cent of universities planning to scale back repairs and maintenance by 2029 and a £5.6 billion backlog in restoring research facilities, the reliance on paper-based exams is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. At the same time, students expect seamless digital experiences while institutions must safeguard academic integrity in the age of generative AI.

In further education, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has reported that funding would need to rise by £150 million by 2028-29 to maintain the current spend per student. Meanwhile, demand for further education courses is rising sharply, placing additional strain on resources and forcing some institutions to either turn away or enrol more students with little to no additional funding.

Hybrid assessments are continuing to rise

Amid these pressures, hybrid assessment models that combine paper and secure online exams are continuing to gain traction across different education settings. Rather than replacing traditional, in-person exams entirely, this approach gives institutions the means to align assessment methods with capacity, student needs and peak demand periods.

Beyond flexibility, hybrid models can also enhance accessibility when implemented with the right oversight and governance. Providing students with a wider mix of assessment methods can help ease logistical pressures and packed exam timetables as well. For students balancing studies with employment, training, commuting or caregiving, and particularly for SEND students, the option to take certain exams remotely makes participation more manageable and ensures exam delivery isn’t limited by physical campus restraints.

Futureproofing assessment models

While online exams raise valid concerns about cheating and this often acts as a barrier for adoption, addressing these concerns requires more than replicating in-person exam conditions digitally.

Preventing cheating in online environments requires a layered approach. Randomised question banks and clever question design, like open-ended or scenario-based questions, encourage students to think critically. These act as a soft barrier that makes AI-assisted cheating more difficult by design. A technical layer, including browser lockdowns or copy-paste restrictions, provides an additional hard barrier, while the proctoring layer adds oversight by monitoring students during an exam.

Cheating definitely needs to be managed in online exams, but applying maximum levels of surveillance is not the shortcut to prevent it. The goal should be to create conditions where students can focus on the exam itself, not the feeling of being watched.

By spreading risk across these layers and embedding integrity across the entire exam structure, institutions can demonstrate they are not reliant on surveillance alone to validate results. This is also critical for GDPR compliance and addressing student privacy concerns, as it reduces the need for excessive data collection.

As demand for physical space and student numbers continue to rise, a one-size-fits-all approach to assessment is becoming less viable. Hybrid models allow institutions to tailor assessment strategies accordingly, aligning delivery methods with learning outcomes and practical constraints.

Instead of viewing hybrid models as an integrity trade-off, institutions should think of it as a design challenge that needs to be addressed not just through technology but also with governance and strategic intent.

Modern learning requires a flexible approach

Learning and assessment cannot be thought of as a binary choice between paper and digital. It’s not about replacing one form of assessment with another, but rather an opportunity to create exam systems that are capable of scaling with physical campus demands, accessible and fair for students, and able to withstand the financial pressures many higher and further institutions are currently navigating.

Institutions that embrace hybrid assessment models will be better positioned to balance academic demands with operational realities, while meeting evolving student expectations. In a sector shaped by growing student numbers and limited resources, flexibility is no longer a nice-to-have but an operational necessity.

Whitehall targets limit flex, mayors tell spending watchdog

Mayors with new devolution deals are complaining that targets dictated by Whitehall are limiting their local flexibility, according to a report by the national spending watchdog.

Seven mayor-led combined authorities now have integrated settlements, or “single pot”, deals that give “greater funding flexibility” to address local needs.

The deals mean that the combined authorities are handed a single multi-year funding pot running from this financial year to 2028-29, with spending organised into six “themes” such as skills and employment support.

This replaces a system of grants for specific funding streams, such as the adult skills fund and skills bootcamps, that are ring-fenced and renewed annually.

But according to the National Audit Office (NAO), agreement about what targets mayors should work towards was delayed until March this year due to a “tension” between mayors and government departments that previously controlled the funding.

In a report ‘Devolution in England: funding and accountability’, the watchdog said mayors felt the targets, set out in pre-agreed “outcome frameworks”, were too strongly shaped by national priorities, contained too many output measures, and were “limiting their ability to reflect local need”.

Mayors told the watchdog some departments were “initially reluctant to flex” on the number of targets, with the Department for Work and Pensions demanding specific outcomes, and the Department for Transport initially proposing 44 separate indicators.

Some mayors told the NAO they felt government departments treated them as “delivery arms of central government”.

But one department told the spending watchdog their approach was “deliberate” and aimed at managing delivery risk due to mayors proposing targets that “lacked a clear logic or baseline”.

Defending their approach, government departments told the NAO that the targets were a necessary part of accountability to ministers and Parliament, which ultimately approves all public spending.

But performance reporting burdens on mayors are currently “greater than initially envisaged” in the English Devolution white paper, which promised to replace “top-down micromanagement” of local leaders with “locally accountable autonomy”, the watchdog concluded.

Due to the tensions, the NAO said negotiations leading up to March were “protracted and resource intensive” and called on mayors, government departments and the Ministry for Housing, Local Government, and Communities, to ensure targets in future deals are “proportionate” and reflect the minimum assurance needed.

It also called on the government to strengthen local scrutiny arrangements, minimise the amount of performance information departments ask for, and to agree outcomes frameworks in a “timely manner”.

Reports from combined authorities show that outcome frameworks were supposed to have been agreed by January this year, but slipped until mid-March, shortly before the start of the new financial year.

In an update in March, South Yorkshire Combined Authority said the delays were due to demands from the Department for Transport and “relatively late” inclusion of targets linked to the government’s construction skills package, which is overseen by the Department for Education and Department for Work and Pensions.

It added that the targets only reflect funding streams in the integrated settlement, rather than “everything we care about in South Yorkshire”.

What are the targets?

Skills-related targets agreed by West Yorkshire include numbers of residents enrolling on education courses, starting a supported employment programme, or completing an industry placement.

While some annual targets such as numbers of learners progressing to a level 3 qualification for the first time have “baseline” figures, several do not.

The Greater London Authority has agreed to a target of 33,200 adults being trained to progress in or towards key sectors over three years, against a baseline of 13,000 in 2023-24.

Combined authorities are held to account for their performance by “programme boards” of government officials who meet with mayoral teams every six months to discuss progress.

The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act, which received royal assent in April, will also give extra scrutiny powers to committees of local councillors from April next year.

This includes the power to carry out thematic inquiries, to require key people from a combined authority to attend meetings and answer questions, and a duty to assess value for money of decisions mayors take.

The West Midlands Combined Authority, which has a trailblazer integrated settlement which launched in 2025-26, a year earlier than most areas, has already set up a new local scrutiny committee.

At its first meeting yesterday, officials told reported that three out of ten outcomes were rated ‘amber’, with the remaining seven rated ‘green’.

Its target of increasing the number of residents receiving level 3 qualifications was rated amber, as only 9,812 learners started a such a programme against a target of 14,200.

Gareth Thomas, a skills policy consultant, said: “The use of nationally set targets does support management of allocations across the country, as well as national statistical analysis and statistical publications, however it does potentially restrain the impact budgets can have locally.

“For example, if we want to compare the performance of England (or the UK) to other OECD countries we need a common measure.

“National measures and headlines are important for national statements and political headlines. This may also have something to do with why we still have such measures.”

He added that some of the adult skills related targets related to enrolments and achievements appeared to be based on DfE “thinking” and could evolve following skills policy moving to the DWP and Andy Burnham becoming prime minister.

An MHCLG spokesperson said: “We welcome the National Audit Office’s report’s recognition of the significant progress made to move power and funding into the regions, empowering mayors to make decisions that work best for their communities.

“Our English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act gives mayors unprecedented powers over planning, transport and local growth, making it easier and quicker to devolve powers out of Whitehall to regions across England.”

McFadden’s skills adviser to stay on with bigger remit

Pat McFadden’s expert adviser on skills has had his role extended to the end of the year, with a widened remit now covering artificial intelligence, apprenticeships and reducing NEETs.

Praful Nargund’s appointment, which reports directly to the secretary of state for work and pensions, began in January as a six-month post due to end this month.

The unpaid role will now run until the end of December, with an increased minimum commitment in the department increased from 2 to 2.5 days a week.

Nargund announced the extension himself on social media yesterday alongside an amended press release from January containing a rewritten remit and job description. He confirmed he would continue alongside his role as director of the think tank The Good Growth Foundation.

The role description initially led on supporting the transfer of adult skills policy from the Department for Education to the Department for Work and Pensions.

It now includes advising on the secretary of state’s AI priorities by “working with officials to apply technology to labour market interventions and build the department’s long-term capacity to respond to the impact of artificial intelligence on work and employment”.

It also now includes supporting the government’s target of 50,000 additional youth apprenticeships and the department’s wider agenda to cut the number of young people not in education, employment and training.

Nargund was appointed by McFadden as a direct ministerial appointment, a method that doesn’t require open recruitment. Unlike special advisers, direct appointees are not civil servants and do not hold any executive authority.

He was Labour’s parliamentary candidate in the Islington North constituency in the 2024 general election, standing against the party’s former leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

He served as a governor at Capital City College and was a member of Labour’s council of skills advisers.

McFadden spoke at a Good Growth Foundation event last week to float a new bursary aimed at the apprenticeship “benefits penalty”.

David Gallagher, NCFE chief executive, 1980–2026

“David seems to revel in non-conformity,” one of David Gallagher’s college reports read, “but no doubt his natural ability will get him through.”

Gallagher told FE Week in 2021 that he was suspended three times during his A Levels, and could account for only one of them. He had finished the paper with half the time left, decided he had done enough, and walked out of the hall.

He came close to being thrown out of education altogether. Twenty-five years later, he was running one of the country’s oldest awarding organisations.

Gallagher, NCFE’s chief executive since March 2019, died on Sunday, July 5, aged 45, six months after telling the sector he had cancer. He is survived by his wife and two sons.

‘I want to be a decent human being again’

The youngest of six, Gallagher grew up in Middlesbrough with a father working the North Sea rigs and a mother retraining as a social worker. School, when it came, had little to teach him. “I never really felt like I needed teachers,” he said. “I just needed work setting.”

By 14, he had given up on it. Then his mother was diagnosed with a brain tumour, and afterwards had a stroke, and could not work again.

He turned down university, took a job at BT, was out too often and in debt, and got by with a gift for solving problems. “I was a high-functioning lunatic, really,” he said.

At 24, it caught up with him, in a run of losses that arrived together: his job, a close friend’s father, his girlfriend’s mother, and then his girlfriend dumped him. “I spent a lot of time looking in the mirror,” he said, “and I didn’t like what I saw.”

That was what pushed him towards education and skills. “I thought, I want to be a decent human being again,” he told FE Week. “It wasn’t wildly altruistic.”

The boiler test

He became a personal adviser on New Labour’s welfare to work programme, working with people whose histories of abuse, neglect, prison and care made his own difficulties look small. He took to getting up two hours before work to make sure clients reached their appointments with him.

Petrina Lynn, then the Learning and Skills Council’s head of skills for the north east, hired him. She was the first real leader he had worked for, he said, and “my second mum”.

Senior roles at Working Links and Ingeus followed, through the turbulent arrival of payment-by-results contracting, and later a spell as commercial director at Babington. Colin Scott, who mentored him at Working Links, remembered a young colleague who challenged the status quo “sometimes over zealously”, and who joked years afterwards that he had learned to “nod his head and wag his tail” instead.

Stephen Evans, chief executive of Learning and Work Institute, who knew him from those years, said what stood out was “his commitment to social justice and making sure everyone has a fair chance in life regardless of background”.

Interviewing at Working Links, Gallagher was asked what one thing he would introduce to the sector. Professional recognition for frontline advisers, he said. “I find it baffling people have to have a licence to fix my boiler” when nothing qualified the people who helped someone rebuild a life.

In 2011 he founded the Institute of Employability Professionals, building qualifications from level 2 to level 4 and an apprenticeship standard. He called it the achievement he was proudest of.

Eighteen months to the top

He joined NCFE in September 2018 to run its end-point assessment business. Six months later he was chief executive.

He inherited an organisation he thought had lost its thread, and asked 13 senior leaders why they came to work. “I got six different answers, and seven people who didn’t know.”

He turned NCFE back towards its charitable purpose: half a million pounds into a WorldSkills UK Centre of Excellence, a £1 million assessment innovation fund and backing the Good for Me Good for FE campaign.

NCFE was one of the first two awarding organisations contracted to deliver T Levels, and Gallagher led it through significant Ofqual intervention when early delivery went wrong. He was unusually willing to talk about it, later calling the experience “brutal but necessary” and offering to help others avoid it.

‘A waterfall of mistrust’

At the Federation of Awarding Bodies’ 2023 conference, he described a “waterfall of mistrust” running through the sector, and said the toll of regulatory pressure on professionals’ health was something the sector should resist

He served as FAB’s vice chair for two years and was elected chair last December. He never took up the post, standing down after his diagnosis.

FAB chair Tim Bennett-Hart said Gallagher’s openness about his failures as well as his successes was “refreshing”. “It is a profound shock to know that he will not return to challenge our thinking.”

Rob Nitsch, FAB’s chief executive, said Gallagher “had a bold vision and was tenacious in its pursuit”, and was “always ready to assist others”. Ofqual chief regulator Sir Ian Bauckham, whose organisation Gallagher spent much of his time challenging, called him “an extremely experienced and knowledgeable force in the vocational sector”.

‘He took chances on people’

Philip Le Feuvre, NCFE’s chief operating officer, worked alongside Gallagher for six years and described him as both boss and friend. Gallagher “believed passionately in the potential of people”, he said, giving them opportunities and building their confidence “with his relentless positivity”. When things went wrong, he stood by them.

He was also forever fired up about the next idea. “He used to joke that my job was 90 per cent about reining him in,” Le Feuvre said. And he was uncompromising about where work stopped. Gallagher took calls from the school run and the side of a pitch, but his boys came first, and he expected the same of his staff.

Ben Rowland, chief executive of AELP, said he “was never afraid to speak plainly, challenge constructively or stand up for what he believed was right”. David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, pointed to “a shared commitment and passion for a fairer and better education and skills system”.

Zoe Lewis, principal and CEO of Middlesbrough College, remembered a Boro lad “through and through”, who talked about serious things with “his renowned twinkle in his eye”.

The chef and the essay

Gallagher’s last article for FE Week ran a year ago this week. It attacked the idea that technical education should be made to look academic, and led on a question he thought answered itself: would you hire a chef on the strength of an essay about sauces, or would you taste their cooking?

Then he set the policy argument aside and wrote about his sons. One a natural sportsman, the other having to work at it. One who remembered and regurgitated, one who needed to learn a thing several ways before it stuck. One who followed the rules, one who challenged them without hesitation.

He would never say one was better than the other, he wrote. He loved them for their differences.

‘Look out for each other’

The morning after he told the sector about his diagnosis, Gallagher woke to hundreds of messages and filmed a reply on his phone.

He thanked everyone, said he felt fortunate, and asked for one thing back.

Be kind, he said, and not only to the people closest to you. Let someone out at a junction. Hold a door. Make somebody a cup of tea. Give a colleague credit for a job well done. Send a note to someone you have not spoken to in years.

He knew how it sounded. “I’m not being all sanctimonious,” he said. “I’m often in too much of a rush to be kind.”

He signed off: “Look out for each other, and I’ll see you soon.”

Colleges caught offside by rules on staff send-offs

Colleges are still breaking government spending rules on exit payments almost four years after they were reclassified as public bodies, FE Week has found.

The Treasury’s ‘managing public money’ rules mean that FE colleges need Department for Education sign-off before making large staff severance payments, including those worth £50,000 or more.

But DfE figures released via a freedom of information request show that in 2024-25, of 28 special payment requests, six colleges made “retrospective” requests once cash had already been paid out. Officials subsequently rejected four of these requests.

In 2023-24, the first full academic year following reclassification, 35 special payment requests were made, 12 of which were retrospective and half of those were rejected.

This academic year, data running up to June shows that colleges made five retrospective requests, with officials rejecting two so far.

In cases where DfE officials or ministers refuse to support retrospective requests, colleges can face extra government scrutiny, including formal intervention, and are forced to publicly flag the rule breach as a regularity “qualification” in their financial accounts.

In its 2024-25 accounts, Windsor Forest Colleges Group reported making a £23,282 special severance payment to a former junior staff member “without the requisite approval” from the DfE. Colleges were required at the time to request approval for payments worth more than three months of the recipient’s salary.

According to the college’s recent board minutes, CEO Gillian May told governors the rule breach was an “oversight” by the HR and finance teams that only “came to light” after the sum was paid.

May, who left the college in May to become a deputy FE commissioner, said the payment was significantly higher than the employee’s three-month figure because the potential costs of going to an employment tribunal were a bigger risk.

She added the DfE rejected the request as it did not want retrospective approvals to be “taken as precedent”.

A spokesperson for Windsor Forest Colleges Group declined to comment on why its former staff member was threatening court action, or what internal steps it has taken to avoid future rule breaches.

Capital City College breached the rules the year before, after making a special payment in 2024 without “documented approval”.

According to its 2023-24 accounts, the breach occurred because the college “anticipated” approval so made the payment in advance “to minimise potential costs”.

The DfE initially approved the sum but later changed its decision to “non-approval” because the payment had already been made.

A Capital City College spokesperson said: “Severance payments have a role to play where they are in the best interests of all concerned and represent value for money.

“We hope to avoid situations where such payments are necessary, and the case cited dates back to 2024.

“The appropriate steps were followed with the DfE, with no action taken against the college.”

Severance payments are a routine part of an employee’s job ending and can include outstanding salary, holiday pay and redundancy pay, as well as compensation or a contribution to legal costs.

LTE Group, one of the largest colleges in the country, made 58 severance payments in 2025, down from 91 in 2024.

However, it only made one special severance payment in 2024-25, worth £7,100.

Only ‘exceptional’ circumstances

The Treasury’s managing public money rules are designed to ensure public sector bodies such as colleges, government departments and quangos are working to “high standards of probity”.

Guidance for colleges, set out in the DfE’s college financial handbook, says special severance payments should only be made in “exceptional” circumstances as they can set a poor example to the public by appearing to “reward failure”.

It adds: “Colleges must not use special severance payments as an easy alternative to proper management action, to avoid difficult decisions, disciplinary processes, unwelcome publicity, or reputational damage.”

Currently, colleges must ask for approval before making special severance payments of £50,000 or more, if they are included in an exit package of £100,000 or more, are made to a staff member earning more than £174,000, or if the payment is made alongside a confidentiality agreement or other “novel, contentious or repercussive” aspect.

In recent years, the DfE has updated its rules, including by removing a three-month salary trigger for approval where the payment was under £50,000, and increasing the higher earner threshold from £150,000 to £174,000.

Next year’s handbook clarifies that government approval is also required from next month if legal advice determines that a college has more than a 50 per cent chance of winning a claim at an employment tribunal or in arbitration.

The highest value of special payment requests came in 2023-24 when they totalled £1.7 million.

Good money management

Association of Colleges deputy chief executive Julian Gravatt said the managing public money rules were placed on colleges without notice in November 2022, when colleges were once again classified as public sector organisations.

He added: “Some of the rules make sense, but it never made sense to require civil service sign-off for some quite trivial decisions.

“In the three-and-a-half years since these changes, we’ve had some cases where colleges didn’t apply the rules properly and where they had to seek retrospective approval. But we’ve had just a handful of qualified audits on their accounts and, as time has gone by, the DfE has raised some of the thresholds to limit their checking.

“Ultimately, college governing bodies and senior leaders are the ones responsible for managing public money. In the main, they do this very well.”

BIIAB locked out of door supervisor training over ‘concerns’

Awarding organisation BIIAB has been blocked from registering learners on three security qualifications after Ofqual raised serious concerns.

The intervention covers the level 2 door supervisor, level 2 door supervisor (refresher) and the level 2 security officers qualifications awarded by BIIAB, which is a subsidiary of Skills and Education Group.

Learners who registered for the courses on or before July 2 can continue their studies, but under additional controls.

Between them, those qualifications accounted for around 24,800 certificates in the year to March 2026, over 90 per cent of BIIAB’s private security sector certificates issued.

Ofqual said it would not publish the full details of its legal direction due to the “sensitive nature” of “some requirements”.

The regulator said it took action to protect public safety after “serious concerns” emerged about how BIIAB was delivering door supervisor and security qualifications.

BIIAB must carry out additional assurance work to ensure the validity of results and qualifications of current learners, Ofqual said.

The crackdown builds on regulatory action taken last September, when BIIAB was required to carry out further checks before issuing results for certain qualifications.

BIIAB issued 18,100 certificates for the main door supervisor award in that period and 6,660 for the refresher, which licence holders must now complete before they can renew. Fewer than 50 certificates were issued for the security officers award. It’s unclear how many training providers will be affected.

Ofqual has been working with the Security Industry Authority (SIA) to tackle qualification fraud as part of its counter fraud action plan.

BIIAB suspended one of its training providers in 2023 from using its qualifications after a BBC exposé uncovered fraudulent training.

The awarding body was one of just six awarding organisations approved by the SIA to deliver door supervision, public space surveillance (CCTV) and security guarding courses.

The SIA has now removed BIIAB from its course finder tool for the three listed qualifications.

Integrity of qualifications ‘at risk’

Amanda Swann, Ofqual executive director for delivery, said: “It’s important for public safety that people who hold these qualifications must have received the appropriate training.

“The public needs to be confident that people working in the security sector are properly qualified.

“We will not hesitate to take action where our conditions have not been met and the integrity of qualifications is at risk.”

Emma Beal, interim chief executive of BIIAB and CEO of Skills and Education Group, said: “We are aware of the situation and are working with Ofqual on a specific matter related to a small number of qualifications within our BIIAB portfolio.

“Quality assurance, our customers and learners remain our highest priority.”

Tim Archer, SIA executive director of licensing and standards, said: “Protecting the integrity of the SIA licence and mandated entry-level training that SIA licensed operatives require is essential for both public safety and public trust and confidence in private security.

“The public needs to be confident that people working as private security operatives have undergone the training required by the SIA to the standards set. We welcome this action by Ofqual.”

NAO: Construction skills package faces ‘risks’

The government faces “significant risks” to delivering its promise of 60,000 new construction workers by 2029, a spending watchdog report has warned.

This includes how potential workers, training providers and employers respond to its £625 million “construction skills package” announced in March 2025, following the Labour government’s pledge to build 1.5 million more homes over the next three years.

The package includes £98 million for an industry placements programme, £100 million for construction focused skills bootcamps, and £38 million for new foundation apprenticeships, as well as a cross government and industry “constructions skills mission board” set up to help address sector challenges.

Estimates of additional construction workers created by the package that have been shared with the National Audit Office (NAO) include 25,600, or 42 per cent of the total, through the industry placement programme, 15,900, or 26 per cent, through skills bootcamps, and 10,000, or 16 per cent, through foundation apprenticeships.

But an NAO report published today warned that the initiatives’ success is “uncertain” due to a reliance on employer confidence, which is facing “challenging trading conditions”.

Internal assessments of the package’s show wavering confidence since the package’s announcement in March 2025, with confidence falling to ‘red’, or unlikely, in October due to delays in agreeing policy decisions about the industry placement initiative, agreeing devolution arrangements with the Treasury, and “staffing shortages”.

This red rating came a month after the machinery of government change saw responsibility for the package handed to the Department for Work and Pensions from the Department for Education.

Since April the rating has been at ‘amber’, or probable, following external “advisory support” brought in by the DWP to help agree an internal “portfolio reporting approach” ahead of most initiatives starting. The government is moving closer to publishing updates on the package’s progress, the NAO said.

The government audit body recommended that the DWP and DfE, which both have responsibilities for initiatives, should “strengthen” how they oversee the package and maximise value for money.

They should also consider how to respond to “lower-than-expected” performance data and provide “greater transparency” about how the programme is progressing through annual updates.

Government estimates suggest that 317,000 more workers will be needed to meet the 1.5 million new homes pledge, 130,000 for the plan to upgrade five million homes with solar panels and heat pumps, and 445,000 for new infrastructure such as schools, prisons and hospitals.

However, in the 2025-26 academic year, as at April 2026, only 74 learners started foundation apprenticeships, against the DWP’s assumption of 1,000 for the full year.

Other initiatives in the package include £90 million for an enhanced high value course premium for construction and safety training, £75 million for free courses for jobs courses, £100 million for construction technical excellence colleges, and £80 million for project-based capital investment.

The NAO noted a lack of evidence about whether initiatives such as construction technical excellence colleges and the teacher and industry exchange programme are effective.

But it said the government is taking “sensible steps” to develop them, including a “co-design” approach to technical excellence colleges and sharing best practice while the exchange programme is being tested from “ground up”.

However, hopes that 25,600 more workers will come through the industry exchange programme are “ambitious”, they added.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the public accounts committee, said: “Today’s NAO report sets out the scale of the challenge for the construction sector: delivering the government’s ambitions would mean an unprecedented expansion of the construction workforce.

“As a chartered surveyor, I see first-hand a sector already stretched by acute skills shortages, high vacancy rates and an ageing workforce.

“While the £625 million package to train up to 60,000 workers is welcome, this alone will not be enough: we will ultimately need hundreds of thousands more workers in the sector.

Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: “The government is taking action to address shortage of skilled construction workers as part of its ambitious commitments for housing, infrastructure and energy efficiency.

“Success will depend on employers having the confidence and capability to offer placements, apprenticeships and jobs.”

A government spokesperson said: “This government is committed to building the homes and infrastructure Britain needs to grow, and delivering thousands of job opportunities across the country.

“After years of underinvestment left a dire shortage of construction workers, we are supporting businesses to take on the staff they need through hiring incentives, foundation apprenticeships, and our £625m package to support up to 60,000 more workers by 2029.

“The opportunities are there – we urge businesses to come forward and take them up.”

Construction’s risk-based assessment foundations to be copied across sectors

A risk-based approach agreed with the construction industry will be extended to apprenticeship assessment reforms across all sectors, Skills England has confirmed.

The move means concessions secured by construction employers following months of lobbying are not unique to the sector. Skills England will assess each apprenticeship occupation according to its level of risk, allowing assessment requirements to be tailored across safety-critical sectors including engineering, manufacturing, food and drink, automotive, nuclear and life sciences.

A Skills England spokesperson told FE Week: “Risk profiling is an important part of the apprenticeship assessment reform process and will continue to be moving forward for all sectors.

“We have learnt a lot from our work with the construction industry on how we can deliver these reforms in a way that meets sector needs.

“There will not be a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, we are looking at risk within each occupation to understand the nuances and how we can best support learners and employers.”

The government’s original reforms prompted opposition from a coalition of construction and built-environment organisations, which warned the changes risked “dumbing down” apprenticeships and allowing unqualified learners to pass.

A wider alliance of employers from the government’s industrial strategy priority sectors later lobbied ministers over concerns the reforms could weaken assessment across other safety-critical industries.

The reforms replace the end-point assessment model with new assessment plans that introduce sampling of knowledge and skills, give mandatory qualifications a stronger role in some standards and remove the independent assessment of behaviours.

Skills England paused the reforms for construction in December and established a construction taskforce involving industry bodies, the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB), the Construction Skills Certification Scheme (CSCS) and the Building Safety Regulator.

The taskforce this week said it had now agreed a methodology that uses risk profiling to tailor assessment requirements according to the level of occupational risk.

Occupational groups will be able to mandate assessment methods, reduce the use of sampling for higher-risk skills, set tolerance levels and align assessment plans with industry competence standards and card schemes where appropriate.

Skills England told FE Week it had adopted a risk-based approach throughout the reform programme, but said its work with construction had helped refine the model and improve consensus-building between occupational groups and government officials.

No special treatment

Rob Nitsch, chief executive of the Federation of Awarding Bodies, said the outcome reflected months of coordinated lobbying.

“Whilst it has been overly painful and taken too long to shape up, it is pleasing that we are now seeing a standard-by-standard approach across all sectors that reflects the risk profile of individual apprenticeship occupations,” he said.

“The construction taskforce has been a significant contributor to the wide-ranging alliance that has got us to this point; employers and apprenticeship assessment organisations, with support from the federation, have also stood up to ensure that we now have an approach that is safe and appropriate.”

England has around 700 apprenticeship standards. Around 300 have already begun or completed the assessment reform process this year, and the rest – including those deemed to be a safety-critical occupation – are due to start in the coming months.

Several employer bodies said they either expected or had already begun adopting risk-modelling approaches with Skills England.

Louise Cairns, chief executive of the National Skills Academy for Food & Drink, said her sector had not yet received formal confirmation but expected risk profiling to be applied.

“The food and drink sector is highly regulated and high risk in many occupations,” she said.

“Risk profiling should not be exclusive to construction but done for all sectors and occupations as a matter of course to retain the credibility of apprenticeships.”

However, she warned several food and drink assessment plans had already been reformed.

“My concern is we have already had several apprenticeship assessment plans go through the process, where if risk profiling was done I am certain Skills England would have allowed us to mandate more knowledge and skills. I will be going back to them to seek guidance.”

The Institute of the Motor Industry also welcomed Skills England’s confirmation.

“It is encouraging to hear that, prompted by enquiries from FE Week, Skills England is now committed to building on its work with the construction industry to ensure that safety-critical apprenticeships are fit for purpose for other sectors,” an IMI spokesperson said.

“We look forward to working with them to discuss how automotive apprenticeships must take into account the ever-increasing complexity of vehicles on UK roads – from high-voltage electric systems to connected digital technologies and emerging hydrogen powertrains.”

‘Skills England actually listened’

Meanwhile, Enginuity has spent recent months working directly with Skills England to develop a separate risk-profiling model for advanced manufacturing.

Chief executive Ann Watson said discussions began after employers feared engineering could become “the next construction” in terms of widespread employer concern.

“We did, I think very positively, get to a point where Skills England were actually listening,” she said.

Enginuity has since developed a model that allows employers and Skills England to jointly assess occupational risk before determining appropriate assessment methods for each standard.

Watson said highly safety-critical occupations, such as aerospace, would require robust assessment, while lower-risk occupations could justify greater use of sampling.

She added that the model had deliberately been designed so other sectors could adopt it rather than being limited to manufacturing.

Cogent Skills, representing nuclear and science employers, said Skills England had advised it was developing a risk-based approach and the sector anticipated the construction model would be rolled out more widely.

The organisation said employers now wanted clarity on how the approach would work in practice where apprenticeship standards span industries with very different levels of risk.

For example, engineering standards can be used in workplaces ranging from vending machine servicing to nuclear facilities, meaning any risk model would need to reflect widely differing safety requirements.