At the Social Mobility Commission, we’ve consistently highlighted two issues holding back progress: policy churn and poor quality “evidence” guiding practice.
We are not alone in recognising this. Professor Frank Dobbin has written extensively about how widely accepted equalities initiatives often lack evidence and can even backfire. Education faces a similar challenge.
‘Deschooling’ disaster
A clear example is Knowsley’s secondary schools rebuilding programme in 2005. Backed by £157 million from Building Schools for the Future, education leaders opted for a radical redesign of the school environment to boost outcomes. Eleven Merseyside schools were replaced by seven new ones featuring no classrooms, open-plan learning zones, project-based learning, one-to-one supervision and teachers rebranded as “progress leaders”. Perhaps predictably, it failed. Chaos ensued, learning suffered. And Knowsley remained bottom of the GCSE ‘league table’.
Trauma-informed practice (TIP) is another educational approach being implemented without sufficient supporting evidence. While advocates cite fewer suspensions, improved teacher confidence and modest academic or attendance gains, most studies are small, qualitative and descriptive.
TIP troubles
TIP is often introduced alongside other whole school or college reforms, making it hard to isolate its true impact. Few long-term, peer reviewed evaluations or randomised control trials exist – hence the need for caution.
Being open-minded about new ideas is vital, but healthy scepticism is just as important and an uncritical embrace of TIP ideas may prove counterproductive. “Trauma informed” is so loosely defined that it can mean almost anything. If all behaviour is seen as trauma-driven, then behaviour management is compromised. This overlooks a simple truth: some people find it fun to break the rules – and teenagers like to test boundaries.
TIP also lacks an underlying theory of learning and fails to recognise that learning together in larger groups requires shared norms. Otherwise, teaching, learning and assessment – along with safety and wellbeing – become unmanageable.
Knowsley’s “deschooling” architects obviously had good intentions. But radical reform without due care and risk management meant they delivered an expensive failure that was paid for by taxpayers and, ultimately, by local families. Pupils from those schools are now aged 31 to 36. Today, 26.2 per cent of Knowsley’s adults have no qualifications (compared with 18.2 per cent nationally). And only 23.8 per cent have a degree level qualification (compared with 33.8 per cent for England and Wales).
Underperformance
The UK faces a serious problem of underperformance at school. We urgently need a solid, evidence-based consensus on how to tackle it. But this is something both simpler and more complex than it first appears.
Some places, such as London, have made substantial progress. Twenty years ago it was the laggard, and now it leads. Yet others remain stuck. Local authority data shows the same places – tending to be in post-industrial and coastal towns – consistently at the bottom.
Our Innovation Generation report argued that addressing this geographical unevenness should be a national priority. London’s success is attributed to many things, but it owes much to the foundations of consistent behaviour management and strong pedagogy, which have too often been ignored or poorly implemented elsewhere.
There’s also a tendency to believe that schools and colleges should be able to solve every societal problem, which underpins approaches such as “deschooling” and TIP. When results disappoint, we redesign the system to make it more accommodating. But in doing so, we often confuse the baby with the bathwater – and rarely improve outcomes.
Back to basics
Fundamentally we all learn in similar ways. So, while context matters, solutions which aren’t focused on the basics of behaviour and pedagogy are unlikely to work.
That does not mean, however, that these are sufficient on their own. London’s social mobility gains also stem from factors outside school and college. Family, community, neighbourhood, cultural aspiration and visible economic opportunities almost certainly play a role.
If we can better understand the factors that are present in places with strong outcomes, we can see more clearly what is missing in those that struggle.
I’ll explore this further in due course, but one thing is very clear. The solution will almost certainly not involve faddish, unproven approaches – especially when the risks of failure fall squarely on those who need the most help.
As head of a land-based college that has doubled in size, Jeremy Kerswell is attracting students from outside rural communities
And yet, Jeremy Kerswell is surprisingly reluctant to be photographed in his wellies. He fears that doing so might evoke a farming stereotype that is “the antithesis” of the image he wants for his land-based college, which he has “pulled up into the modern age into a very progressive, forward-thinking organisation” in his ten years as principal.
In that time, Plumpton has doubled in size, and Kerswell believes it has had the fastest-growing commercial portfolio of any college in the country.
Perception matters for Kerswell. He similarly believes that the Latin motif decorating a grand doorway that reads “labor omnia vincit” (hard work conquers all) evokes an old mentality of “you go to Plumpton if you’ve got big hands and a strong back” which is “not what this place or the farming industry needs”.
Instead, his college has been “showcasing a different story, working more with employers and schools to target a different audience”. Less than half its students now come from a rural background.
Plumpton’s students are today operating robotic milkers, analysing grape juice sugars in the college’s homegrown sparkling wine, and providing hydrotherapy to dogs. Plans are in place to incorporate data analytics into many of its courses.
It was a very different story when Kerswell arrived in 2015, when the college was “probably on the cusp of Ofsted ‘inadequate’ and a merger through an area review”.
At least six other land-based colleges have succumbed to mergers so far this century, and another (Hadlow in Kent) went into administration. There are only 11 independent land-based colleges left in England, and Plumpton is the only one in the South-East.
Plumpton College’s Latin motto above a grand doorway
Plumper provision
Kerswell credits “flipping hard work” and a “relentless drive to move into industries facing massive skills gaps” for the fact that Plumpton’s turnover has risen from £15.6 million to a predicted £31 million next year, 25 per cent of which is commercial income.
This means that Kerswell’s biggest challenge is keeping up with the pace of demand. Despite spending £30 million on capital projects, including a new agrifood centre and vet studies centre, he admits that “over four days a week you can’t get a classroom or a parking space” on campus.
In Kerswell’s 28-year career in education, he has never had to turn away students. But some of his courses for next year are already full, and being over-subscribed makes it harder to be fully inclusive. “If you’re over-subscribed, even the most inclusive of us – and I am – would be selective, and you’re going to pick not always based on academic attainment but on attitude and readiness to learn.”
Meercats, emus and a church
There is no shortage of animals about on campus. A menacing-looking snake is being hand-fed a mouse (thankfully through gauntlet gloves and large forceps) inside the animal centre, and new enclosures for meercats, lemurs and otters are being built ready for September.
Land-based colleges are the envy of the rest of the FE sector for their idyllic settings, and Plumpton, which turns 100 next year, is certainly no exception, with its main buildings looking out on to the rolling hills of the South Downs.
From classrooms, students can glimpse emus and donkeys, and a 12th century church that houses one of the oldest bell towers in the country.
It opens to the community once a week, with students “drifting in and having the sorts of conversations with people that you have with your grandparents”.
Kerswell prides himself on keeping his college in tiptop condition; he never seems to switch off from litter patrol.
“To teach people about horticulture, our grounds have got to be presented to the higher standards…when we’re making wine, the wine’s got to be flipping brilliant. That lifting of the bar isn’t just about pedagogy,” he says.
A 250-year-old walled garden that Plumpton’s horticultural students helped restore and now manage in nearby Stanmer Park has become an exemplar of the college’s high standards, and “done more for our brand than anything else”.
In four years, One Garden Brighton has had a million visitors and helped Plumpton secure a 70 per cent increase in 16- to 24-year-olds studying horticulture “bucking all the national trends” for the “very misunderstood” horticultural sector, which is generally seen as something “your grandparents did”.
But it is a “huge responsibility” for Plumpton as custodian of 2,000 acres of land, some of which covers a site of special scientific interest. Mishaps do happen. In 2020, the college was fined £50,000 after management failings caused slurry to pollute a nearby stream.
Kerswell admits it was “one of those career moments that you want to bury deep”.
“The bit that hurt was that it had been happening for years and years. It’s happened once on my watch, and I got years’ worth of hate,” he says, “but for every complaint that doesn’t hit your high notes, there’s an opportunity to learn.”
Jeremy Kerswell with a timeline of Plumpton College
Landex role
In addition to his role at Plumpton, Kerswell is chair of Landex – Land Based Colleges Aspiring to Excellence – which has nearly 40 members. And Kerswell believes there has “never been a more important time” for their sector, as it sits at the crux of the “three big global challenges” – food security, environmental sustainability and health.
But with so many other land-based colleges having merged with their local general FE colleges or college groups in recent years, Kerswell fears some land-based provision is being “marginalised”.
There are “not many examples” of merged land-based colleges where they are still “able to meet the strategic needs of the sector and community around them as effectively as they perhaps should” he says.
Whereas Plumpton’s strategic plan is informed by the land-based sector it serves, that is “not the case where land-based is a small faculty in a much bigger organisation”, he says, adding: “It’s very easy for that [designated specialist funding that land-based provision receives] to get lost and therefore not be spent in the right way.”
Kerswell sees Landex’s role as being to “ensure we’re protecting that investment”.
One of Plumpton College’s newer buildings
Kerswell wants to see more recognition in funding allocations for the capital costs of providing residential accommodation and travel, given land-based colleges’ rural locations.
And there is an opportunity for Landex to “far better promote the green skills agenda for environmental sustainability, as all too often conversations are about retrofitting and construction”. He points to how planning law changes mean every planning application needs to demonstrate how it will benefit biodiversity, which “requires a skill set that doesn’t exist in planning authorities at the moment”.
A surge of interest in environmental and sustainability issues is enabling Plumpton to “attract students that wouldn’t otherwise come here”, but jobs in environmental management are so abundant now that Kerswell says: “We could have twice as many students, and they would all still get jobs.”
But Landex’s lobbying role is complicated by the fact that land-based colleges are caught between the Department for Education (DfE) and the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs in their remit, which “have no relationship whatsoever”.
The plan is for Landex to get Skills England’s new CEOs out visiting a land-based college soon, so they “recognise the value of what we’re doing”.
A dog treadmill in Plumpton’s new veterinary provision
Fundings highs and lows
Kerswell is also concerned about the ability of colleges like his that are “responding to national skills needs” to access borrowing for capital projects.
When it became clear that Plumpton’s veterinary nursing provision was outgrowing its facility, it applied to become part of an institute of technology to access funding for new provision and planned on borrowing £2.5 million from lenders to make up a shortfall.
But then reclassification happened, delaying the project by 18 months as Plumpton worked on convincing the DfE to lend it the money instead. Because “we don’t give up”, the new facility finally opened two months ago, complete with kennel blocks, consultation rooms, and a hydro pool for dogs. In its mock-up veterinary practice, students can dissect eerily life-like £3,000 dog dummies with removable organs.
But the building is not quite finished (“because DfE played a hard game” on funding), with more rooms being added next year. The investment has had an impact on Plumpton’s financial health, with last year’s accounts stating that it was “disappointing to end the year in a deficit position”.
But there have been funding windfalls lately too; Plumpton got a “quite surprising” 30 to 40 per cent of more money for free courses for jobs than it had been expecting and made a “real success” out of level 3 courses in horticulture, land management and agriculture, with its two intakes a year having both been oversubscribed.
Jeremy Kerswell with one of Plumpton’s £3,000 dummy dogs
Politics and partnerships
Kerswell never realised before becoming principal (having previous been assistant principal at Bridgwater College) just how immersed in politics the role would be. But he seems to relish that side of the job.
Plumpton was, Kerswell believes, “a bit too complacent, cozy, nostalgic and paternalistic” when he arrived, and he was not surprised when it was rated as ‘requiring improvement’ six months later.
He took the helm just as Sussex was named in the first wave of area reviews and believes that “had we not moved so quickly in driving change”, Plumpton would “definitely” have been merged with East Sussex College of Chichester College Group.
Wine, wellies and robots
When Kerswell arrived at Plumpton, it was already producing large quantities of wine, but much of that was then consumed by its staff and students. Kerswell decided to turn the process into a commercial endeavour instead.
Next year, the college is expecting to sell £250,000 of wine, with the aim of becoming profitable over the next three years. But with the UK’s wine industry still in a fledgling state, there is a tension between wanting to demonstrate the quality of their wine and “not wanting to compete with industry”.
Kerswell says although the quality of English wine is good, there are issues with yield and productivity that affect prices and present a risk to the industry.
Plumpton is being supported by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to plant a new vineyard with a “level of automation and data analytics that we think will be the first of its kind globally”, to find ways of driving up productivity.
“When you add in all the robots, we should be able to demonstrate a different way of doing things,” he says.
Clutching my complimentary bottle of Plumpton wine that Kerswell hands me, we enter Plumpton’s “biosecurity centre” (where hands are washed and wellies are donned) before entering the college’s farm. With a “huge number” of animal diseases now circulating in Europe, hygiene is paramount.
The college’s robot feeder, which is meant to be pushing the cows’ feed towards them to ensure a constant supply, has “wandered off”. Luckily, the robotic milker lacks the ability to go walkabout and there is a steady line of cows waiting for it to milk them.
Plumpton College’s robotic milker
Kerswell argues that the robots create “different jobs with different skill sets”, rather than taking jobs away from farms. “They still need a stock person with husbandry skills, but farmers aren’t necessarily getting up at 4am and milking cows. They might be getting up at 6am and analysing the data that the robots are generating on each cow’s fertility, health and productivity.”
Data analytics is being embedded into many of Plumpton’s courses, and technologically advanced facilities havehelped it to triple its agriculture student numbers in three years.
The college has still retained its traditional milking parlour, so its students can learn both systems.
“We’re here to enable the community farming industry to come in and learn from what we do,” says Kerswell. “The future of global food production is about getting that right balance between feeding the world and saving the planet. Right at the heart of that has to be highly productive feeding systems, which is about individualized animal performance informed by data, enhanced by robotics.”
Plumpton’s new conference facility also provides a place for those currently working in the land-based industries undergoing a “once in a generation change” an opportunity to debate the issues facing them, including “tax, sustainability, productivity and uptake of technology and skills”.
Kerswell says some of them feel “in crisis”, and “ a lot” are “burying their heads in the sands”.
“We’re playing that pivotal role and bringing them together to talk about it.”
Disadvantaged students fall behind by a fifth of a grade in English and one eighth of a grade in maths compared with their better-off peers when resitting GCSEs, new research shows.
Analysis by the Education Policy Institute also suggests that colleges that enter larger cohorts for resits in the quick-turnaround November series achieve lower progress on average.
And the think tank found a “cluster of top-performing institutions” in the north west of England that outperform the rest of the country when it comes to resit results, while the south west is the worst-performing region.
Ministers have been warned that “significant disparities in GCSE resit success” require “targeted reforms”, such as new “proficiency tests” for English and maths.
David Robinson, the EPI’s director for post-16 and skills said: “Re-examining the policy in light of the new evidence we have uncovered should enable policymakers to take more informed, targeted decisions about the future of resits.
“The benefits of securing core numeracy and literacy skills are obvious, but so too is the impact on motivation for students who feel trapped on the resit treadmill.”
‘A negative cycle of failure’
Since 2014, students who do not gain a grade 4 in English and maths at school – roughly a third of all learners – have been forced to continue to study these subjects post-16.
The policy has divided the education sector, with some claiming it creates a negative cycle of failure and has been difficult to implement given staffing and funding constraints. Others have pointed to the success the policy has had in raising attainment of English and maths by the age of 25.
Pass rates do however remain low. In the 2024 summer series, 17.4 per cent of students resitting GCSE maths achieved a grade 4, while 20.9 per cent did so in English.
Today’s EPI report, funded by Pearson, used DfE administrative records as well as the National Pupil Database and Individualised Learner Record to conduct the analysis.
The study included students who started in 2015-16, 2016-17 and 2021-22 as these are the three most recent cohorts of students whose 16 to 19 education did not take place during the Covid-19 pandemic.
EPI found a “significant disadvantage gap” in resit outcomes. On average, disadvantaged students receive 0.2 grades less than non-disadvantaged students in English and 0.13 grades less in maths, the report said.
Researchers also found that female students make “slightly more” progress in English, whilst male students make “substantially better” progress in maths, by almost a quarter of a grade.
GCSEs better than FSQs
Students who need to resit English and maths can be entered for GCSEs, level 2 functional skills qualifications (FSQs), or “stepping-stone qualifications” – usually entry-level or level 1 FSQs.
EPI found that students who initially enrol on a GCSE achieve better progress on average over their 16 to 19 study than learners on the two other options, by almost half a grade.
Anne Murdoch, senior adviser in college leadership at the Association of School and College Leaders, said this “very valuable piece of research” shows it is “time for a fundamental rethink in how we assess English and maths”.
She called for “new proficiency tests” to be developed for literacy and numeracy that “demonstrate to future employers or educators that students meet a set of pre-determined standards, while giving every young person the dignity of a qualification”.
Murdoch added. “Crucially, these tests could be taken when the student is ready, rather than being dictated by the existing resit cycles.”
November resits: good or bad?
EPI also looked into a rise in the use of November resits, which take place just months after a student was told they did not pass. Those selected for this series are usually the most likely to pass among students who scored a grade 3 at school.
Researchers found that on average, students that enter for a November resit achieve 0.60 grades higher in both maths and English.
However, colleges and schools who enter more students onto November resits “see worse results over the entirety of their 16 to 19 study”, according to EPI.
It said: “Entering every student onto a November resit (compared with no students) lowers the average individual resit outcomes by 0.26 to 0.30 grades. This suggests that taking a blanket approach to November may harm students’ overall attainment.”
North west is strongest performer
EPI also found a “significant cluster of top-performing institutions in the north west of England”.
In maths, students in the north west make 0.10 more grades progress than the average, whilst in English they make 0.11 more grades. The lowest performing region in English is the south west – 0.10 grades less than average, and in maths it is Yorkshire and the Humber – 0.06 grades less progress.
In other regions, the report said the north east does “relatively well” across both subjects and the south east “does well” in English particularly.
The south west, west midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber “do relatively worse” across both English and maths, while London “tends to fall in the middle of the distribution, alongside the east of England and the east midlands”.
EPI said it is difficult to determine why the north west performs best from the data, but from a roundtable discussion it heard there is a “large network of English and maths teachers in colleges in the north west that regularly meet to share their experiences and best practice”.
Reform accountability measures
The think tank reiterated its previous call for a 16 to 19 student premium to help address educational inequalities and widening gaps between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged students.
It also wants government to consider reforming the 16 to 19 accountability measure for English and maths progress by “incorporating wider key stage 4 attainment”.
EPI said the research results show that prior attainment in other key stage 4 subjects “strongly predicts” resit performance, particularly for English. Accounting for this prior attainment in the English and maths progress measure “would improve the measure’s ability to capture institutional effectiveness in delivering resits”.
Colin Booth, chief executive of Luminate Education Group, which delivers over 4,000 GCSE English and maths resits each year, said: “Revealing the extent to which disadvantaged students are negatively impacted relative to their more affluent peers, this report should embolden policymakers in their efforts to reform the current post-16 resit environment.
“In the short-term, reducing the assessment burden and streamlining content could go some way to alleviating the pressure on learners. In the long-term however, it’s clear the creation of tailored English and maths GCSE qualifications, that are specifically designed for and only available to post-16 students studying vocational qualifications, is long overdue.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “This government has inherited a system with baked-in inequalities, but we’re determined to narrow the attainment gaps identified in this report and break down barriers to opportunity through our Plan for Change.
“That’s why we are requiring providers to teach students for a minimum number of hours, additional funding is given to support students with lower prior attainment and we provide fully-funded professional development options for English and maths teachers at level 2 and below.
“We will consider the concerns raised in this report as part of the government’s response to the curriculum and assessment review.”
Burnley College’s principal Karen Buchanan has resigned – months after she was mysteriously suspended, FE Week can reveal.
Staff were told today that Buchanan, who has worked at the college for almost 40 years, has officially stood down.
Buchanan left in March ahead of an Ofsted inspection for “personal reasons”. The college later announced she had been suspended pending an investigation. The reasons for her departure have still not been disclosed.
Burnley College today confirmed to FE Week that Buchanan has resigned from her position and “is currently serving her notice”.
The spokesperson added: “We naturally cannot comment on that investigation whilst it is ongoing.”
University and College Union (UCU) general secretary Jo Grady said: “Karen Buchanan’s exit from Burnley College cannot come soon enough, but the new senior leadership team has much to do to restore the workforce’s faith.
“The investigation must be comprehensive, and its findings made public, including the real reason for the principal’s departure. Until then, staff will rightly remain concerned about the strategic leadership of the college.”
Staff representatives previously told FE Week they were “left in the dark” about who was running the college.
The college later confirmed they had appointed deputy principal Kate Wallace as interim principal.
In a statement released last month, the college said Buchanan had been suspended, stressing that the move was “in line with its normal policies and procedures to ensure a fair and transparent process”.
Buchanan began working at Burnley College in 1986 as a part-time lecturer and became deputy principal in 2011 before leading the college in 2018.
The 10,000-student college is in a financially healthy position according to its latest 2023-24 accounts, which show a £1.9 million surplus, £21.5 million in reserves and an ‘outstanding’ financial health rating.
Almost 700 people are employed at the college which was rated ‘good’ by Ofsted in 2021, and last year self-assessed as ‘outstanding’ on the watchdog’s scale.
Its 2025 inspection outcome has not yet been published.
Burnley College boasts on its website that it is the “number one” college in England for 16 to 18 achievement rates on the government’s most recently published achievement rates table in March 2024, and claims to have held the position since 2018.
MPs have called on ministers to reveal how much of a £55 million pot earmarked for testing the new jobs and careers service has already been spent and how it plans to allocate the rest.
In a public accounts committee report into the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) on jobcentres published today, MPs warned that it was not “fully clear” how the department is spending the money to merge the National Careers Service with job centres.
The PAC said it was already several months into the financial year and highlighted the urgency of allocating £55 million to develop and test the new jobs and careers service in 2025-26 instead of making “rushed decisions at the last minute”.
DWP announced this time last year that it would overhaul Jobcentre Plus to focus on career advice, one of the Labour party’s pledges ahead of the 2024 general election.
The merger also came in line with the government’s target to raise the employment rate to 80 per cent.
The 2024 autumn budget announced £55 million would be used for the merger. The ‘Get Britain Working’ white paper followed, which said the money would be used to trial a “radically improved digital offer” and creating a more “personalised” service for jobseekers.
It also said the government would introduce coaching academies to upskill jobcentre staff.
The overhaul is part of a phased approach to a new jobs and careers offer. The government told PAC officials that it had spent some money the first phase for 2025-26, comprising the coaching academy and developing the digital services.
“The department envisages a ‘pyramid’ of support where many people will be able to access and self-serve using digital services, what it called a ‘jobcentre in your pocket’,” the report said.
It has also spent funding on “pathfinder projects” in some parts of England. Last month, Wakefield was announced as the first area to trial the “pathfinder” scheme, which comprises working with local employers to provide a “pathway into good jobs”, according to West Yorkshire Combined Authority and Wakefield Local Authority.
However, leaders did not specify how much funding was allocated to the pilot.
Today’s report said: “It has not fully allocated the £55 million in extra funding, and that funding is still available for good proposals coming forward from different parts of the organisation. It also did not indicate how much of the £55 million has so far been committed and how much is left to be allocated.”
It added that the DWP investment committee “closely controls” how it will hand out the funding and will commits money for different proposals in “packets”.
DWP officials told the PAC that the second phase would be rolling out initiatives that have worked, such as a trial placing work coaches in GP surgeries and engaging people outside of jobcentres.
The report said: “The department referenced a success story from Poplar in London, where it has seen positive results of people having conversations with a work coach in a setting that is not the jobcentre and getting different types of support. It said that it has a presence in the GP surgery and community centre, and that it is running practical and skills classes. It stated that results in the Poplar example seems to be making a big difference for people who are long-term unemployed.”
However, the report detailed concerns from MPs on the government’s ability to rectify the shortage of work coaches caused by the DWP securing “inadequate funding” from the Treasury and by recruitment and retention challenges.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the committee, said the government’s “apparently complacent” assurances that the work coach shortage would be mitigated by redeploying 1,000 coaches in 2025/26 “held no water with this committee”.
“The support provided by work coaches in jobcentres is critical to help people find employment and progress in work,” he said.
He added: “DWP has not had the funding for the work coaches who are trying to provide support in the here and now, while being allocated £55m to test out new approaches. At the time of our report it was not entirely clear how this money was being spent.”
The PAC also said although it supports the government’s long-term ambition of an 80 per cent employment rate, it is likely to be “very challenging”.
It therefore recommended the DWP should within six months work with other departments to publish a roadmap for meeting the target.
DWP should also set out the specific contribution of jobcentres to this ambition, including the arrangements for monitoring their performance, MPs added.
“Our report suggests the approach taken by government to achieve this radical shift and help individual claimants access the jobs market is currently in a muddle,” Clifton-Brown said.
A DWP spokesperson said: “We are ending the tick box culture that has existed in Jobcentres by delivering the biggest reforms since the early 2000s, giving staff the flexibility to offer a more personalised service to jobseekers – so they can be helped into good, secure jobs.
“We are also trialling ways to bring Jobcentres into the 21st century, using the latest technologies and AI to provide up-to-date information on jobs, skills and other support and freeing up their work coaches to help them.”
A north east college principal and a deputy have unexpectedly left their posts.
Tyne Coast College principal Mandy Morris and vice principal Diane Turner were allegedly escorted off campus last week in what has been described as an “internal staffing matter”.
An email to staff, seen by FE Week, said: “The principal and vice principal will not be available for the foreseeable future.” [See update at end of article]
The college group has refused to give a reason for their departure or say whether the pair are under investigation.
A spokesperson for Tyne Coast College said: “We can confirm there is no police related issue involved. This is an internal staffing matter. It would not be appropriate to comment further.”
Jon Bryan, northern regional support official for the University and College Union, told FE Week: “UCU representatives learnt the news regarding senior staff at Tyne Coast College on Monday [July 23] afternoon, at the same time as all staff members via an email. We have no further information.”
He said that two hours after the Morris and Turner email, UCU was told about a “number of our members who were faced with redundancy and would have no job to return to next term”.
“We have concentrated our time and efforts on representing our members over the last few days, as this was a shock to some people, coming so late in the academic year,” Bryan added.
A spokesperson for Tyne Coast College said seven posts are up for redundancy “following completion of the curriculum plan and budget setting exercise”.
Tyne Coast College was formed in August 2017 following a merger between South Tyneside College and Tyne Metropolitan College.
The college, led by CEO Lindsey Whiterod, teaches almost 10,000 students, employs over 500 people and sponsors an academy trust. It is rated ‘good’ by Ofsted while financial health is rated ‘requires improvement’, according to latest accounts.
Morris has over 30 years’ experience in education, including at Stockton Riverside College and Redcar and Cleveland College. She joined Tyne Coast College as interim principal in December 2021 before accepting a permanent role in 2022.
Turner joined the college in May 2022. She previously worked at education providers including Redcar and Cleveland College, Education Partnership North East, Middlesbrough College and Learning Curve Group.
[UPDATE: On Monday July 7 the college emailed staff again to announce that Mandy Morris will be leaving Tyne Coast College on July 18, 2025, and that Diane Turner left Tyne Coast College on June 30, 2025. The college has not provided a reason for their departure.]
A Leeds-based training provider that recently celebrated its tenth year in business has abruptly closed, with its owner blaming theft of employer contact data and a backlog of unfunded apprentices passed their end dates for running out of cash.
Around 30 staff at Springfield Training were told on Friday morning that the provider would cease trading with immediate effect. Around 750 learners were on programme at the time of the closure.
CEO and owner Noel Johnson told FE Week his company “ran out of road” after personally propping up payroll “for some time”, despite being “months” away from completing outstanding assessments and being “within sight of being back on track”.
Springfield’s closure comes months after it was the only apprenticeship training provider to have had its 2023-24 qualification achievement rates (QAR) redacted from publication.
Department for Education guidance states this occurs when the data it holds “does not allow us to calculate a reliable estimate and therefore provides an unfair measure of performance”.
Johnson said the redaction was the result of a rapid improvement in the provider’s achievement rates, which was a “pants” 37.5 per cent in 2022-23 and would have been 60.1 per cent in 2023-24. This prompted Springfield to commission a controls and processes audit, but that wasn’t the cause of the closure of the business.
“I can say quite honestly that the DfE haven’t closed us and weren’t looking to close us. But they weren’t looking to support us financially either. But, I get that they can’t,” he told FE Week.
Johnson said the financial burden of ongoing costs for apprentices that were passed their planned end dates that ultimately proved unsustainable for Springfield. He described a cascade of backlogs going back to the pandemic which he believes would have been manageable by September.
“We made a conscious decision to reduce recruitment so we could focus on getting those learners through. But I think I was over-ambitious on the number I thought we could get through.
“With each cohort, you’ve got to support them with revision, check-ins, and motivation – and it all comes at a cost.”
Apprenticeship starts
Springfield Training has been listed on the government’s apprenticeship provider and assessment register as “not currently starting new apprentices” since around March this year, but Johnson claimed the company has been able to take learners on, only pausing in May because “we just don’t have space for them”.
The most up-to-date available DfE apprenticeship starts data shows 104 starts at Springfield Training between August 2024 and January 2025 on standards ranging from level 2 engineering operative to level 5 leader in adult care.
Springfield was last inspected in August 2022 and achieved ‘good’ grades throughout.
Johnson described his relationship with DfE as “quite positive, albeit frustrating at times”. He kept in regular contact with Springfield’s contract manager and highlighted scoring well on the apprenticeship accountability framework measures “except for out of funding learners”.
“Three or four years ago, we had to pay some additional learning support money back at the time when most people did. We had all the evidence there and thought it met the funding rules. They disagreed.
“We have paid some back since then, but that’s not what this is about.”
Data theft
Springfield’s income took a surprising hit earlier this year.
In March, Johnson discovered that two former employees had “unlawfully” accessed and shared Springfield’s employer database with staff at their new training provider.
Johnson claims the rival provider then use the data to approach Springfield’s clients, causing reputational damage and an immediate £400,000 drop in revenue.
Springfield started receiving phone calls from its employer clients who said they were being told by this other provider “we know you work with Springfield Training – don’t work with them, come to us’”.
Johnson’s team was quickly able to identify the leakers. One of them had forwarded the database to their own personal email address and access logs showed it had been widely shared.
“They admitted to unlawful access,” Johnson said. “There were 15,000 individual accesses to our systems. It wasn’t just the individuals – it was the company they went to. The managing director, the business development director – they all had their fingers in it.”
The incident was reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office and Johnson has initiated proceedings for damages after the police advised it was a civil matter.
Team Springfield
While Johnson was in regular contact with the DfE and had spoken to officials just one day before the closure, no financial support was forthcoming. “They just said, ‘if you were a college, we would – but we can’t,’” he said.
Despite being on the cusp of recovery, Johnson decided against going to the banks for help.
“Although I could see an end to it, I’d already committed our savings,” he said. “If I was going to commit to taking out a loan as well, my exposure was increasing… We’ve never taken debt. We live within our means. We live quite modestly. And I didn’t want to expose my partner to the risk.”
Johnson is uncertain over whether he will re-enter the education or training sector in the future and will now focus on his other businesses, one of which is a Yorkshire-based spirits company he says he can now work to make “viable”.
In his email to staff on Friday, Johnson said he “was fighting until the last possible opportunity to try and find a solution”.
He told FE Week: “I can’t speak highly enough of the Springfield teachers and support staff. They busted a gut, they worked like trojans to get this stuff done. It’s sad. It’s heartbreaking.”
Springfield Training was founded in 2015 and celebrated 10 years of delivery last week before closure was announced.
Sir James Cleverly, who was education secretary for two months during the downfall of Boris Johnson’s premiership, has joined Parliament’s education select committee.
Cleverly will replace Patrick Spencer, the now independent MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, who was suspended by the Conservative Party following sexual assault allegations. Spencer has pleaded not guilty to two counts of sexual assault and faces a crown court trial next month.
A motion in the House of Commons this afternoon will officially discharge Spencer and appoint Cleverly to the education committee.
The Conservatives hold two positions on the committee. The other is held by Caroline Johnson.
Cleverly was appointed education secretary by Boris Johnson in July 2022. His appointment to DfE came in the wake of an exodus of ministers from Boris Johnson’s government in the summer of 2022, becoming education secretary after Michelle Donelan served just 35 hours in the role.
After two months, he was promoted to foreign secretary when Liz Truss became prime minister. And after last year’s general election, he stood unsuccessfully for leader of the Conservative Party. He’s kept a low profile as a backbench MP since Kemi Badenoch won the race.
This is not the first time the education committee has had members who were former DfE ministers. In the last parliament, Robert Halfon was appointed to chair the committee after a stint as skills and apprenticeships minister.
Committee Conservatives
Parliament’s education select committee has four live inquiries: children’s social care, further education and skills, solving the SEND crisis and higher education funding.
Schools minister Catherine McKinnell will give evidence to the committee tomorrow morning to answer questions on the government’s SEND reform plans. She will appear alongside DfE’s SEND director Alison Ismail.
Following Spencer’s suspension, the Conservatives have only had one representative on the committee, Caroline Johnson. In an evidence session for the committee’s further education inquiry last week, Johnson and the two Liberal Democrat members did not attend, leaving just Labour members scrutinising a Labour minister.
If the UK hits its net-zero target by 2050, it could be in part thanks to a little-known college-led network, the Green Skills Advisory Panel, set up to help solve the green skills shortage.
What began three years ago as a project led by Exeter College to bring together representatives from construction firms, colleges, training providers and government agencies for the south west, has morphed into a network extending as far as east Africa.
GSAP’s “changemakers” join forces at conferences and online in an attempt to decipher ever-changing net-zero policies and make the most of funding pots to get much-needed retrofitters, heat pump and solar panel installers trained up.
Eighteen UK regions now have their own GSAPs planned, with more in Malawi and Nepal. Discussions are taking place about launching one in Morocco.
Risky net ventures
This is mainly thanks to the work of GSAP’s chair, Exeter College executive director of partnerships and apprenticeships Mike Blakeley. He has lofty ambitions for GSAP to become “the leading voice of green skills in the country”, and adds: “I’d be massively proud because this country desperately needs it.”
Blakeley grew up in Torbay, where an imposing sea wall acts as a constant reminder of the grim consequences of climate change.
His passion for net zero is not puritanical, however. He still eats meat and travels regularly by plane. He once held a job with a different ‘net’ – crabbing on a deep sea fishing boat – and knows “what it’s like to be out there in a force eight gale with 20 foot waves crashing over”.
This speaks volumes about Blakeley’s appetite for risk, which is perhaps partly why he is so attracted to the notoriously high-stakes green skills agenda.
Part of the problem with ramping up green skills provision is FE is risk averse, he says.
While colleges in Sheffield, West London and South Wales have also boldly seized the mantle, some others “just don’t see it as their job to do this stuff”.
Electric dreams
But Exeter has “done the hard yards”. Blakeley says: “We know what it takes to set up a really good air-source heat pump or solar training centre, so people can learn from us.”
Exeter College’s proposed merger with Petroc College in north Devon is “exciting” for Blakeley as it would unlock opportunities to train workers for offshore wind farms being developed off the north Devon coast, part of a wider ‘Celtic flow’ scheme aimed at powering up millions of homes.
He has already written to one of the world’s largest offshore wind developers, asking for “insight” into its skills development plan. Blakeley believes the boats used to service the wind farms will be hydrogen-powered, so his team have also now begun work with partners to better understand that technology too.
“I feel privileged that I can look into some of these brilliant things,” he says.
Blakeley and I meet at the Voco Zeal hotel at Exeter’s Science Park, which recently opened becoming the first net-zero hotel in western Europe, and is almost entirely clad with vertical solar panels. Exeter College will soon be applying the technology at its own solar training centre.
Blakeley believes cladding all industrial buildings with solar roof and side panels would put the UK “ahead of the game” in hitting net zero and would remove the need for solar farms.
Not properly skilling up tradespeople for retrofitting can have dire consequences. Homes across the country have been rendered unsellable after being improperly insulated with spray foam. Blakeley puts such “bad news stories” down to the “underdevelopment of green skills,” which has led to those tasks being undertaken by “jobbing builders who don’t actually know what they’re doing, so it ends up as a disaster”.
Blakeley was inspired to take his GSAP movement national so regions could learn from other people’s mistakes in setting up green skills initiatives, as “the effort being put in to solve individual problems was immense”.
“With no national framework or network that sets out what we’ve actually got to do, you just get these initiatives whizzing like cheap fireworks – someone’s lit a match, and we’ve gone ‘bang’,” he says.
Beyond token gestures
Many building projects in the south west now have “some net-zero elements” such as a few solar panels, as “the token gestures are easy”. “We’re finding it harder to gain traction with the harder things,” Blakeley explains.
Labour shortages meant a retrofitting project in Exeter, intended to take six months, hadn’t been completed two years later, and no work can currently take place on a site in Plymouth designated for 50 affordable homes.
“There’s a tiny pool of labour that jumps between whoever wins the contract, but it’s never enough to deliver whole project areas. It’s an impossible challenge unless everyone works together.”
Exeter College has taken the initiative by launching a new construction innovation centre in an old industrial unit on the edge of town. It is also an overspill for its roofing skills provision, which has expanded by 300 learners since last year.
Part of the problem is that although skills plans are sometimes laid out in planning applications, because local authorities do not hold construction firms to account for them, many never happen.
Instead, Blakeley would like to see councils, contractors and training providers or colleges drawing up what he calls “skills plans plus” for large construction projects and green initiatives, to “create the formula for jobs”.
GSAP in action
Today I am attending one of the three networking conferences that his South West GSAP holds each year.
“This isn’t a talking shop – it’s about action,” GSAP’s chair, local consultant AJ Eaton, tells an audience of 80 people, mainly from the building trade, colleges and training providers.
“By bringing our FE providers on that journey with us we can make a massive difference,” he says.
The head of the south west’s net-zero hub, David Lewis, provides the lowdown on the latest government net-zero policy announcements.
Tidal energy is back in vogue.
Exeter College’s new retrofitting expert Paloma Hermoso laments how EPC (energy performance certificate) requirements are “no longer fit for purpose”, and there is an air of disgruntlement over how retrofit projects are subject to 20 per cent VAT but demolition is VAT free.
More positively, she talks through the new level 5 course in retrofitting the college is about to launch nationally.
It is one of 13 qualifications Exeter College has developed, including its own suite of insulation short courses in partnership with NOCN.
Courses include the UK’s first PAS accredited insulation courses (for retrofitting dwellings), allowing existing installers to upskill through a three-day practical course.
Eaton
Stop-start funding
Blakeley is hoping the college will be successful in its bid for £25,000 under the warmer homes scheme to offer a retrofitting course at a 40 per cent discounted rate. But that is still up in the air and the course starts in September.
It will be the sixth warmer homes-type scheme to have been rolled out nationally in the last five years, with its predecessors mired in red tape and supply chain bottlenecks.
Significant portions of pledged funding for retrofitting remain unallocated and are returned to the Treasury. Some £2.2 billion of the £6.6 billion pledged for building energy efficiency and heat decarbonization by 2025 remains unallocated, an E3G report found, including £1.5 billion specifically for the home upgrade grant.
This time around, an agency is understood to be planning to ensure the warmer homes scheme delivers its objectives, but that has yet to be formally announced.
“With no stabilised funding streams, it’s really difficult to plan and you can see the consumer confusion with the stop-start nature of warmer homes grants,” says Blakeley.
The quiet scrapping of the government’s public sector decarbonisation scheme which Exeter is a current recipient of, “seems counterintuitive” to Blakeley. “These confused, choppy waters that we’re in… means certain policies seem to be working against themselves”.
The college had been able to nurture “good business relationships” with the local tradespeople tasked with retrofitting its buildings under the scheme. “If they’re doing work for us, we generally strong-arm them into doing something else for us training wise,” he admits.
Devon and Torbay are in the early stages of forming a county authority without a mayor, but the lion’s share of net-zero funding is currently being channelled into mayoral combined authorities which, with a mayor, have a “very simple decision-making matrix”. “The drift to the red wall is massive, and everyone else gets left behind.”
Full tilt forward
It is hard to imagine Blakeley ever being left behind though. “Everything is absolutely full tilt forward” for him, and he admits that his “biggest mistake” with GSAP is “not allowing enough time to do everything”.
His own boundless energy also comes in handy as a dad of 17-year-old triplets. On a college staff dinner last week, he lost no time in pulling aside the restaurant manager to discuss apprenticeship opportunities, much to the amusement of his principal John Laramy.
Laramy and Blakeley
Scaling up nationally
When Blakeley talks to those in the construction trade about their skills shortages, he does so with the advantage of having had first-hand experience of their sector. He spent four years in ground work having left grammar school feeling disillusioned with academic learning.
“Had I been stood here 38 years ago, you would have found me knee deep in a trench, putting 50 meters of concrete in… my DNA is construction.”
He also worked for a pupil referral unit, an education charity, a land-based college and a training provider, and was chair of Devon & Cornwall Training Provider Network. His insight into different sectors came in handy when he set up GSAP in January 2022, initially as a “back of a fag packet-type activity”.
In November 2024, GSAP launched a national board with a focus on targeting key ministers and officials across Whitehall.
He admits other national sector bodies “probably” eye GSAP as competition with their offers. But the Department for Education has been “receptive”, and GSAP’s honorary chair, former skills minister Robert Halfon, “pushes us hard and says one voice has far greater impact”.
He feels fortunate he has “freedoms and flexibilities” to make things happen in the south west, including a sponsor (NOCN) to pay for its event catering.
GSAP does not charge for these events or for its training webinars, but the work “definitely pays for itself” by giving Blakeley’s team close access to “the biggest stakeholders in this game” to develop business with.
He sees the new industrial strategy and the clean energy workforce strategy as the “easy bit”, having seen many similar strategies go “by the by” over the years.
“It’s the implementation that’s the challenge. If this green skills agenda is as complicated and challenging as we know it is, working together will keep us inspired and make sure that we deliver an absolutely great product.”
