Awarding bodies’ report reveals rocketing cost of regulatory burden

Awarding bodies are forking out more than £6 million a year complying with regulation that has risen “exponentially” over the past decade, according to new research.

Calls are now being made for a more streamlined system which reduces an “overwhelming and complex” regulatory burden – including abandoning a key policy in the skills bill to add the government’s apprenticeship quango to the list of bodies approving technical qualifications.

The findings have been published through a Federation of Awarding Bodies (FAB) report entitled Feel the Weight and shared exclusively with FE Week.

It shows that from 2014 to 2020, the number of regulatory bodies which set their own requirements and sanction regimes that awarding organisations must comply with across the UK grew from two to six.

Through a survey of members, the federation found compliance with these bodies costs an awarding organisation, on average, £4,618 per month and around £6 million as a sector annually. FAB believes “in reality” these figures will be much higher when including awarding bodies outside of their membership who deliver general qualifications.

However, the report does not provide estimates for how much compliance with regulators has changed cost-wise since 2014.

Unsurprisingly, specialist and niche awarding and assessment organisations reported particular challenges dealing with increases in regulatory burden. In some cases, small awarding bodies have chosen to surrender their recognition in some devolved nations.

“The current three country regulatory compliance in general is currently not only complex and high-maintenance but also high-risk, with the sanctions that Ofqual, Qualification Wales and the Council for Curriculum Exams and Assessment Regulation can individually impose, potentially for the same non-compliance,” one unnamed awarding body said in the report.

“There are benefits to regulation, but smaller awarding bodies are likely to find it increasingly difficult to justify, particularly professional and chartered bodies which already have an established reputation in their individual sectors for delivery of professional educational development.”

Reflecting on the findings, FAB chief executive Tom Bewick said: “Our starting point is that regulation is a positive thing for the sector. But equally, we must also monitor carefully the growth in regulatory burden for our members, which can stifle innovation and result in more cost and bloated bureaucracy that hampers progress.”

Ofqual, the main regulator for qualifications in England, said: “Our priority is to regulate on behalf of students of all ages, and apprentices. We look forward to continuing to work with the FAB, their members and other awarding organisations, working together with students as our shared compass.”

In addition, FAB’s report warns the implementation of the skills bill, which is currently making its way through parliament, creates “significantly more confusion” in the landscape for the regulation of qualifications.

One contentious reform is to hand the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education the ultimate sign-off power for the approval and regulation of technical qualifications in future.

Awarding bodies claim this is a retrograde step and would reverse the gains of independent regulation that parliament intended in 2009 when it set up Ofqual.

Unlike Ofqual, the institute is a non-departmental public body directly accountable to ministers, not parliament.

There is concern that IfATE’s new powers would therefore introduce a conflict of interest. Some also fear that having two regulators splitting responsibility for certain types of vocational and technical qualifications could create a muddled and cumbersome two-tier system of regulation.

The DfE said the measures in the bill will create a “single approval gateway for technical qualifications” via the IfATE, while Ofqual will retain its “statutory responsibility for recognising awarding organisations in England across all categories of both academic and technical qualifications”.

Apprenticeship funding band pilot finally gets underway

The proposed new model for deciding apprenticeship funding bands is finally ready to be piloted, the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education has announced.

Over the next 12 months the quango will invite trailblazer groups, on a voluntary and small-scale basis, to test the long-awaited process.

The pilot will initially focus on those apprenticeships unable to generate the number of quotes required by the current funding band allocation process, newly developed apprenticeships and those apprenticeships with no or low starts.

Around 20 trailblazer groups from various sectors are set to be piloted, but the IfATE said it was unable to provide a list of those involved.

The institute’s funding band consultation first launched in February 2020 and proposed a controversial new model that could see rates cut by over 40 per cent.

The institute then opened a second consultation on a revised “rates-based variable model” in August, which would essentially provide trailblazers with ready-made quotes. Trailblazers would also be able to provide additional evidence to inform a more bespoke level of funding, based upon the costs of teaching, consumables and mandatory qualifications.

However, concerns were raised that apprenticeships would become unprofitable if current ineligible costs – such as enrolments, inductions and initial assessments – were excluded from the new model.

A third consultation, this time by the Education and Skills Funding Agency, to decide what costs count towards apprenticeship training was then launched in December 2020 and is currently ongoing.

The outcome of the IfATE’s second funding band consultation is being held up by the ESFA’s eligible costs review but the institute is keen to plough ahead with testing its model regardless.

Any changes that are made to the funding rules from the ESFA’s review “will be reflected in the respective calculations of the new model”, an institute spokesperson said.

An IfATE update published last month said a key change made to the model presented during the most recent consultation is to remove the initial rates-based estimate from the proposed new approach.

This means that, in every instance, the trailblazer group will need to provide “specific, defined information” on various aspects of the individual apprenticeship being considered.

The institute said it believes the removal of the initial rates-based estimate of the approach will “strengthen transparency and provide a clearer and simpler process for employers and other stakeholders”.

Simon Ashworth, the director of policy at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said scrapping fixed inputs “is certainly a step forward” and should “result in proposed funding bands being more reflective of the real cost of delivery for providers”.

An IfATE spokesperson said trailblazer feedback “has been positive, with comments focusing on the improved transparency of the model and the control the trailblazer has in sourcing the best evidence on cost”.

Ashworth added, however, that if the ESFA’s review leads to new eligible costs being added, then all funding bands “will need to be updated to reflect these changes quickly”.

Minister refuses to offer transparency on apprenticeship levy spending

A top minister has refused to say whether the apprenticeship budget is still at risk of becoming overspent while revealing there are no plans to publish more transparent data on levy spending.

Joint HE and FE minister Michelle Donelan said the government is instead focused on the “key stats that really matter”, such as the number of people taking up apprenticeships and growing the programme’s brand.

She was speaking to FE Week to mark the 15th annual National Apprenticeships Week (read the full interview in our souvenir supplement – out on Monday).

Further education leaders and commentators have demanded greater transparency from the government on apprenticeship levy spending ever since the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education first warned the budget could go into the red in December 2018.

Months later the National Audit Office reported that the new-style apprenticeship standards were costing “around double what was expected” and warned of a potential “overspend in future”.

Then permanent secretary of the Department for Education Jonathan Slater told the education select committee in 2019 the levy budget “could be significantly overspent if we carried on, on the basis of current trends”.

Then skills minister Anne Milton later said the government was considering restrictions on employer usage of the levy, potentially by introducing a “pre-apprenticeship salary cap”.

But there has been radio silence from the government on the matter since then – perhaps partly due to the Covid-19 pandemic stifling starts numbers.

Donelan, who was appointed as universities minister in February 2020 and became joint HE and FE minister in September 2021, remained tight-lipped about the sustainability of the apprenticeships budget.

Asked repeatedly by FE Week whether the budget could be overspent in the near future, the minister dodged the question. “We are a government that has a primary focus on driving up apprenticeships at all levels, including degree apprenticeships, and I’m working with universities to ensure that becomes a reality year on year,” she said.

However, Donelan took issue with the notion that the apprenticeship budget could go “bust” as this “implies the whole thing is going to collapse, which is certainly not the case.

“I wouldn’t want anybody to be put off taking an apprentice because of this notion,” she said.

The minister, who also attends cabinet, added that the DfE is “always reviewing” the levy to “make sure that it is working as efficiently as effectively as it possibly can”.

The government has also been criticised since the launch of the apprenticeship levy for shrouding spending data in secrecy.

While there are vast amounts of statistics published about starts numbers, nothing is available for how much is spent annually by individual employers, whether they are levy- or non-levy payers, how much goes towards funding English and maths apprentices’ training, the ten per cent levy account top-up, and other aspects of the programme that the whole budget funds.

FE Week has been able to find out that some apprenticeships funding has been handed back to the Treasury in recent years, but very little national level data about levy spending is available.

Asked whether the government planned to make the spending more transparent, Donelan said “no… I think that the key stats that really matter are how many apprentices we have and how many employers we have got engaged because this is about ensuring that apprenticeships can open up opportunities for so many people.

“We’re really focusing on spreading apprenticeships and making sure that they’re a viable and available option across the country, because of the role that they can play in levelling up and reskilling and upskilling.”

ESFA to be stripped of policy role

The Education and Skills Funding Agency will be stripped of all post-16 policy and delivery duties following a major independent review of its effectiveness, FE Week can reveal.

Responsibility for those areas will be absorbed by the Department for Education from April.

The review, led by University of Sunderland vice chancellor Sir David Bell, will conclude that while there continues to be a need for the ESFA, its focus should be solely on funding. The agency will essentially become a contracts manager for post-16 FE funding, according to FE Week sources.

The Association of Employment and Learning Providers warned there is a “real risk” that leaving all policy decisions to the DfE will “fail to recognise” the operational challenges providers face, while the Association of Colleges said the move “makes a lot of sense”.

The DfE shared preliminary findings of the review, which was commissioned by the Cabinet Office in August, with FE Week ahead of the full report’s publication next week.

A DfE spokesperson said the review found the ESFA had too much post-16 policy and delivery within its remit.

Policy areas the ESFA currently controls which will switch to the DfE include T Levels, higher technical qualifications, apprenticeship off-the-job training, flexi-job job apprenticeships, the adult education budget and traineeships.

It is unclear whether the provider market oversight team, led by top civil servant Matt Atkinson, will remain in the ESFA or move to the DfE.

FE Week understands that the new consolidated unit will put school sixth-form policy with the wider post-16 sector.

Sector leaders hope that a more united post-16 unit within the department will result in more coherence and consistency in, for example, the opening of new elite sixth forms proposed in the government’s levelling up white paper.

Hopes could be dashed for those wishing for even bigger changes, however. Sue Pember, a former senior civil servant of skills funding in the DfE and now policy director at adult education body HOLEX, said it would be a “lost opportunity to not do something more radical”.

The full review should, in Pember’s view, recommend a “joint further and higher education funding body, or a separate body to oversee academy funding”.

‘A joined-up approach will be vital’

David Hughes, the chief executive of the Association of Colleges, welcomed the review’s policy decision. “It looks like the move we have wanted, with DfE taking more of a systems-approach to working with colleges, schools, independent training providers and universities and thinking about how those institutions can work collaboratively to meet learner, community and employer needs,” he said.

The ESFA has faced criticism in recent years from parts of the FE sector due to its handling of various procurement exercises, including the apprenticeship non-levy tender, multiple adult education budget competitions for independent training providers, and the European Social Fund.

Hughes continued: “It [the independent review’s decision] will allow the ESFA to focus completely on the work it does to ensure vast sums of public money get to colleges and others effectively and efficiently. That is a highly complex job and ESFA has a strong track record of doing it with relatively few errors and problems, something that should never be taken for granted.”

Jane Hickie, the AELP’s chief executive, wasn’t as enthusiastic. “With the DfE taking on all post-16 policy, there is a real risk that policy design and implementation fails to recognise the operational challenges providers face,” she told FE Week.

“A joined-up approach between the DfE and the ESFA will be vital in ensuring providers are able to successfully deliver a high-quality set of programmes for learners.”

A DfE spokesperson said: “Consolidating all post-16 policy and delivery within one group [will] enable a high-quality, outcomes-focused post-16 system that gives learners the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in their working lives and meet the needs of the economy.

“This will allow the ESFA to continue to focus on making sure that public funds are properly spent, and that value for money for the taxpayer is achieved.”

World-class skills will level up local communities

For the UK to attract the investment that will level up communities, we need world-class skills, writes Neil Bentley-Gockmann.

Introducing the long-awaited Levelling Up White Paper, Michael Gove listed some of the United Kingdom’s successes. He talked up the size and strength of the economy, the dominance of the English language around the world and our universities’ place as global research and development superpowers.

All things that have seen us succeed at home and abroad. However, he was right to make clear that we need a change of approach if the government’s ambitious plans to level up are to succeed. 

And we believe that a crucial change is the need to develop a world-class skills economy to complement our already world-leading knowledge economy. 

This means the UK being recognised as a global leader in developing world-class apprenticeships and skills to help create high-quality jobs for young people in key future sectors. 

And our mission at WorldSkills UK is to help deliver on that by mainstreaming international best practice with colleges and training providers. We want to help more young people reach the high-quality standards employers and investors need to create high-skill high-paid jobs across the UK.

That’s why we are ever more focused on developing world-class skills to support local economic development in three ways.

Firstly, helping boost the quantity of skills. We are working to inspire more young people, from all backgrounds, to reach their potential through apprenticeships and technical careers with the chance to become world-class through national and international competition-based training programmes. 

Last year the national finals of our competitions programme took place in over 20 venues around the UK, allowing us to showcase the talent and hard work of hundreds of inspiring young people. We then saw thousands tune in from home or their colleges to watch the winners announced in a special live show presented by Steph McGovern from her Packed Lunch studio.

Registration for our 2022 competitions programme opens at the end of February. The winners could end up representing the UK on the international stage at EuroSkills in St Petersburg in 2023 and the WorldSkills ‘skills olympics’ in Lyon in 2024. Those that do will follow in the footsteps of the young people currently preparing for WorldSkills Shanghai in October, showcasing to the UK and rest of the world what it means to be world-class. 

Secondly, increasing the quality of skills. From our international training programme we have created a Centre of Excellence which allows our international training experts to share their world-class teaching with educators and uses our partner NCFE’s expertise to fire excellence in skills development. 

Now in its second year, the centre is already working in depth with around 40 colleges and training providers. Thisnumber will increase again next year, reaching tens of thousands of young people across the UK, while we are also constantly improving our hub of world-class online resources. 

Thirdly, helping to promote our high-quality skills. Our Skills Taskforce for Global Britain is currently exploring how we make sure more parts of the UK can use high-quality future skills to attract and retain valuable inward investment. The taskforce will deliver a report in the spring with recommendations on how to bring skills and inward investment delivery closer together to get the high-skilled, high-wage jobs local economies need.  

Put bluntly, if you want to attract investment you need high-quality skills, and if you want high-quality skills you need inward investment. With global competition for inward investment getting fiercer every year, the UK must add world-class skills to its international calling card. 

The global locations successfully bringing in foreign investment not only have a sophisticated skills offer to attract investors, but also target firms for the high-quality skills they can bring and for the positive productivity and spillover effects they have on the local skills base.

If the government’s levelling up agenda is to be realised – and we are to grow, be internationally competitive and create high quality jobs – we must develop, deliver and promote world-class skills. 

Revealed: Organisations named the first flexi-job apprenticeship agencies

Fifteen organisations have been announced as the first flexi-job apprenticeship agencies. 

The agencies will act as employers for up to 1500 apprentices who, over the course of their apprenticeship, will be able to work within several different companies. The scheme has been designed to increase apprenticeship opportunities in the creative, digital and construction sectors where short term employment models are more prevalent. 

A £7 million competition was launched in August to find organisations that can develop “up to 2000” flexi-job apprenticeship opportunities.

The Department for Education have announced today that “up to £5 million” will be shared among ten of the 15 new agencies. The remaining five organisations have been admitted to the register, but won’t receive a grant. See below for the full list.

The proposed number of apprenticeship opportunities now set to be created through this part of the flexi-job apprenticeship scheme has also been revised down from up to “2000 to up to 1500.”

FE Week has asked the DfE to explain the shortfall, but they did not respond at the time of going to press.

The BBC and the NHS North of England Commissioning Support Unit are among the organisations that will receive a grant to set up their flexi-job apprenticeship programmes. 

BBC director general Tim Davie said: “The importance of growing skills and introducing fresh, diverse talent has never been greater than it is today. It is the perfect time to be launching the BBC Apprentice Hub in Birmingham. We are working closely with local creative businesses to give apprentices from across the West Midlands the skills and experience they need to thrive in this exciting industry. 

Flexi-job apprenticeship agencies will replace apprenticeships training agencies (ATAs) which, until 2018, could be set up to deliver a similar function. Remaining ATAs have now been advised that they will need to join the register of flexi-job apprenticeship agencies when the application window next opens. 

The agencies will have responsibility for recruitment and employment of the flexi-job apprentices as well as sourcing placements lasting at least three months with a series of employers. Apprentices must still complete the minimum duration required by their apprenticeship standard. 

The government expects the first flexi-job apprentices to begin their first job placements by the end of this month.

The secretary of state for education Nadhim Zahawi said: “Gone are the days when apprenticeships are restricted by a one-size fits all approach.  

“Through our dynamic post-16 reforms, we are investing directly in people, delivering prestigious and flexible apprenticeships which suits learners’ needs. 

“New flexi-job apprenticeships will not only help to deliver the skilled workforce needed to support a diverse range of sectors to grow, but it will create even more exciting opportunities for people to secure a great career.” 

A separate flexi-job apprenticeship pilot was announced in January. Unlike this model, where apprentices are employed by an agency, the second route will involve “portable” apprentices finding their own job placements with the support of their training provider.

Register of Flexi-job apprenticeship agenciesReceiving a grant
British Broadcasting CorporationYes
Calico EnterpriseYes
Evolve Apprentices LimitedYes
Inspira ATA LimitesYes
McGinley Support Services LimitedYes
MDS LimitedYes
NHS North of England Commissioning Support UnitYes
ScreenSkillsYes
The Mid Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce and Industry LimitedYes
Training and Apprenticeships in Construction LimitedYes
Careers Ladder LimitedNo
EN: Able Futures CICNo
HR Provider LimitedNo
Nottingham College ServicesNo
South East Centre for the Built EnvironmentNo
The register of flexi-job apprenticeship training agencies (10 February 2022)

Spending rules for 16-19 increase ‘sensible and proportionate’, say leaders

Colleges and training providers will have some flexibility over the extra funding going in to 16 to 19 study programmes from August, but leaders warn funding rates will still not be high enough.

As part of the government’s education recovery package announced in October’s spending review, an extra £800 million has been committed over the next three academic years to fund an additional 40 learning hours for students on 16 to 19 study programmes and T Levels. 

This will increase the national FE base rate by 8.4 per cent – rising from £4,188 to £4,542.

There was little detail at the time about how the extra funds can be spent by providers with concerns raised about possible restrictions on how the funds can be used and increased bureaucracy. 

Spending review documents described how extra study time “will be used for extra teaching and learning – including in English, maths and other subjects – depending on a students’ individual needs”.

The Department for Education published further guidance today which suggests providers will have more control over how to spend the extra funding than originally thought. It outlines acceptable uses of the extra funds, including more time on qualifications and supporting students who need extra help with maths.  

While the “primary focus” remains more time for teaching and learning, providers will be able to use to provide mental health and wellbeing support around a students’ individual needs. 

The examples provided include extra help with exam resilience and study skills, enrichment activities to “build social connection” and one to one therapeutic work with a mental health specialist. 

Providers are warned, however, that non-qualification activity like this must be put in place according to the needs of individual students, rather than spent on generic activities for whole groups of students, such as through tutorials. 

In return, providers will be expected to submit a “short” end of year report so the agency can check the extra funding is being spent appropriately. Although the agency advises that these reports should be no more than two pages in length, they list eight points that must be covered. 

David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges said: “It feels like this retains flexibility for colleges to do what they need to do to support learners to succeed. We’ve worked closely with officials to make sure they didn’t end up with massive new bureaucracy for what is a marginal amount of hours which is marginally funded.”

Neil Thomas, principal and chief executive at Dudley College of Technology told FE Week that “it is good to see maths and wider support being recognised as we are seeing a lot more students with these needs”.

The Sixth Form Colleges Association welcomed today’s guidance, describing it as “sensible and proportionate”.

James Kewin, the association’s deputy chief executive, said: “We particularly welcome the fact that activities linked to mental health support will be funded through these additional hours. 

“When combined with the wider announcements in the spending review, our members now have a degree of certainty on 16 to 19 funding they have not had for some time, along with a material increase in per student funding”.

While welcomed by college leaders, this extra funding will do little to ease impending cost pressures on next year’s budgets, such as staff pay awards, rising energy costs, inflation and the national insurance increase.

Hughes agreed that the funding “doesn’t address the cost pressures facing colleges”.

“Also, we shouldn’t have had to have had a pandemic to get the extra hours. We’ve been arguing for extra hours for five years based on comparators with every other OECD country where we lag a long way behind,” he added.

“It’s also a shame that it’s only funded at a marginal rate, when the overall funding rate for 16 to 18 is still 10 per cent behind where it was in 2010 at the end of the spending review.”

Disadvantaged students ‘effectively penalised’ for not studying A-levels, research finds

The gap in grades between poorer sixth form students and their better off peers widened in 2020, Education Policy Institute research has found.

Researchers said the gap was a result of A-level students gaining a whole grade more from teacher assessments than those who studied qualifications such as BTECs.

EPI said that because disadvantaged students are more likely to take applied general qualifications like BTECs, they may have lost out when competing for university places.

“Our research findings are very clear,” said David Robinson, report co-author and director of post-16 and skills at the EPI.

“These growing inequalities were driven by A-levels gaining more from the system of teacher assessed grades than applied general qualifications, which far more disadvantaged students take.

“The result is that poorer students could have lost out when competing for university places. These findings ought to alarm the government, and we hope that urgent action is taken to ensure that students taking BTECs and other alternatives to A-levels do not lose out again in 2022.”

The report found that disadvantaged students in 16 to 19 education were on average the equivalent of 3.1 A-level grades behind their more affluent peers across their best three qualifications in 2020, compared to 2.9 grades in 2019.

Students in 16 to 19 education in long-term poverty – those who spend at least 80 per cent of their school lives on free school meals – saw much larger gaps, and they have now widened significantly.

And the 16 to 19 disadvantage gap for students in this long-term poverty group stood at 4 grades in 2020, compared to 3.7 in 2019.

“Students from lower income families are less likely to study A-levels, which saw larger grade increases in 2020 than applied general qualifications such as BTECs,” said Cheryl Lloyd, education programme head at the Nuffield Foundation.

“This means that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds were effectively penalised for not studying A-levels, and the disadvantage gap in 16 to 19 education has become further entrenched.”

Sixth form and college students in some regions saw greater increases than in others. Grades increased the most in London and the East Midlands, but students in the North West, Yorkshire and The Humber and the North East only saw modest rises.

EPI said these regional differences have significant implications for the government’s “levelling up” agenda.

Bill Watkin, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, told FE Week: “Last summer’s grades were awarded on the basis of evidence gathered by teachers.

“Different centres approached the gathering of evidence in different ways, and students had different experiences of online teaching, covid health and assessment, so it is not surprising that there were inconsistencies.

“The freedom and flexibility for different centres to apply the rules in different ways to reflect variability in learner experiences was consciously baked into the system.”

Watkin added that students were always going to be awarded a grade based on the evidence that showed their best performance.

“Slip-ups and off-days that are the downfall of some students on exam days in more normal circumstances were not a factor, so it is not surprising that grades were up.”

He explained that the monitoring and moderation of grades by exam boards was inevitably limited and there was no appetite for another, even improved, algorithm.

“So, there was no mechanism to iron out the apparent inconsistencies. The grades awarded to students in the recently reformed and more rigorous AGQs, now with an external assessment (exam) component, suffered in comparison with A Levels.

“This matters because BTECs and other similar qualifications often represent a vital pathway for young people from more disadvantaged backgrounds to compete in the market for HE places and eventually professional careers,” he added.

The Department for Education was approached for comment.

Levelling up reforms don’t match scale of the challenge

Skills inequalities are holding back entire communities and cannot be solved on the cheap, writes Dean Hochlaf

To level up the country, we need to level up skills.

The much-anticipated levelling up white paper has made improving skills a core mission for the government, as it grapples with the entrenched regional inequalities which plague the UK economy.

However, while ambitious rhetoric is welcome, it needs to be matched with investment and reform from government. On those fronts, the white paper is unfortunately lacking.

Regional inequalities take many forms, but one of the most pernicious disparities has been across skills and education. The latest data shows that 71 per cent of those in London held at least a level 3 qualification or higher (A level or equivalent), while 58.7 per cent held a level 4 qualification or higher (higher degree or equivalent).

In contrast, in the north east only 55.1 per cent of the population holds a level 3 qualification or higher and these proportions are not much greater across the rest of the north and Midlands.

Exacerbating the challenge to improve skills in left-behind communities has been austerity.

Evidence from the Institute for Fiscal Studies highlights how per-pupil spending in colleges fell by 12 per cent between 2010-11 and 2019-20, while the adult education budget was two-thirds lower in 2019-20 than in 2003-04.

Further, due to a combination of increasing demand and the pandemic, the IfS estimates that an additional £570 million would be needed by 2022-23 just to maintain student spending in real terms.

Unless a significant funding boost is forthcoming, we face a future where funding remains below where it was at the start of the 2010s.

Yet, there are substantial economic gains to be made from investing in skills and the FE sector.

Previous research from the Centre for Progressive Policy suggests that boosting basic skills alone could help create just over 300,000 employment opportunities in the most deprived parts of England, stimulating a significant increase in economic activity.

For these gains to be realised however, there must be a concerted effort to increase funding and transform the existing educational system, which for too long has undermined the potential of FE institutions.

It is not clear from the white paper that the promised reforms are proportionate to the scale of the challenge.

An additional £550 million for skills bootcamps and the establishment of a future skills unit are fine initiatives, but their impact will be limited if the FE sector remains underfunded.

The designation of deprived communities as education investment areas is a step in the right direction. There is also mention of creating new “elite sixth forms.” Whether these can contribute to levelling-up will depend on the detail.

Rolling out local skills improvement plans can help coordinate action on skills between business and educators, but it is important that every part of the community can play a part in fostering an environment that develops skills that will produce benefits now and in the future.

The targets feel underwhelming

We need action to tackle skills inequalities which are holding back entire communities, but we cannot do this on the cheap.

The white paper does a fine job of setting out clear targets and recognising the critical importance of improving skills.

However, while it sets out several positive policy developments, they feel underwhelming given the scale of the challenge that faces the FE sector.

After years of underinvestment and a pandemic that has threatened the prospects of an entire generation, it is imperative that resource matches rhetoric.

The success of the levelling-up agenda relies on making sure our FE colleges and institutions can equip as many people as possible with the skills they need for the benefit of their communities.