Focus feature: Student safety and criminal exploitation

What happens after a serious violent incident plays out in a college? How can colleges best support students and communities around criminal exploitation? Jess Staufenberg looks at whether safeguarding responses and violence reduction units are working

On a Friday afternoon in February, a 16-year-old boy was stabbed outside Milton Keynes College. He wasn’t a student at the college, and neither was his attacker, but he was known to many college students. He staggered onto the campus.

Lindsey Styles, inclusion and safeguarding lead, was soon on the scene, trying to get an ambulance to the teenager. “The poor young man had collapsed, so students and staff ran out to administer first aid,” she tells me. “They responded amazingly well, doing CPR, trying to staunch the blood and save the boy’s life.”

The ambulance arrived quickly – but they couldn’t save him. Later the hospital rang the college to thank them for their efforts.

How does a college cope with this sort of terrible incident? How can safeguarding against criminal exploitation of students be as effective as possible?

FE Week has researched the subject and found 17 colleges in the news since 2014 for a serious violent incident on or near the college.

In 2021, for instance, a student at Richmond upon Thames College, who was also a refugee who had fled war in Afghanistan, was stabbed and killed. In 2020 at Riverside College in Liverpool, students were stabbed at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, very close to the front door.

But sometimes the incident happens inside college itself, or continues inside. In 2019 at Havering College, a stabbed student was brought into the library for treatment. In a much rarer case, in 2019 a gang with knives entered Runshaw Sixth Form College in Lancashire.

It’s important to say colleges are largely very safe environments, and not to overstate the threat of violence. But providers also say violence and criminal exploitation is increasing.

Oldham College students practicing emergency street first aid

Back at Milton Keynes College, Styles is clear the impact can be devastating. “Staff and students were deeply distressed by it. We responded immediately by having counsellors to help staff and students to offload.”

Aside from therapeutic support, the next issue was misinformation. The first police officer had incorrectly reported that the victim was a college student. Following a review, the college has now set up a telephone hotline for the media.

“If there’s an incident, now there’s a designated number to prevent misinformation.”

The college also wrote a “more specific” emergency “step-by-step plan”, around how to manage traffic and parent requests.

But interestingly the college chose not to ramp up security measures, such as knife arches and more stop and search procedures.

“We don’t want students to feel we are searching them every time they come in,” says Styles. “This is about young people feeling safe, and acting in a safe way – not about feeling threatened and so acting in a threatening way. It’s about de-escalation not escalation.”

It’s about de-escalation not escalation

Instead, knife arches were showcased to students by police officers as a “learning activity”, says Styles. Talking frequently to local community leaders is especially important, she adds.

It’s an important area of debate. Two months ago City & Islington College paused stop and search checks introduced in February in response to concerns about local knife crime and student safety, after students said the measures left them feeling “violated” and staged a mass walk-out.

Nationally, criminal incidents have risen in line with austerity cuts since 2010. Last year there were around 41,000 offences involving a knife or sharp instrument, which was a drop on 2019/20 ̶ but still 27 per cent higher than in 2010.

At the same time the number of police officers in England and Wales has been cut back: a staggering 20,600 fewer between 2010 and 2019. The reoffending rate remains high ̶ in 2020, 39 per cent of children reoffended.

Drugs-related criminal activities have also received more attention. National Crime Agency figures show at least 14.5 per cent of referrals were flagged as county lines issues last year, compared to around 11 per cent in 2019.

Oldham College students graduate after completing the Greater Manchester VRU funded Street Doctors Step Wise, street first aid programme

A flagship response from the government has been violence reduction units (VRU), launched in 2019 as cross-agency groups, with police, health, education and local government representatives.

For 2022/23, £64 million will fund 20 violence reduction units (VRU), split across eight regions: for instance, £7 million has gone to London, £3.4 million to Greater Manchester, £880,000 to Bedfordshire and so on. These share information and signpost providers to services.

Eddie Playfair, senior policy manager at the Association of Colleges, said colleges in all regions are reporting engaging with their nearest VRU. They also say “the number of issues and referrals is greater”.

“Colleges are much larger than schools and draw students from a wider catchment area, so it means the cross-agency violence reduction work is really important,” he added.

Now Playfair and other college leaders have fed into the third interim report by former children’s commissioner Anne Longfield, as part of her Commission on Young Lives, focused on criminal exploitation.

Longfield met with staff from eight colleges at the end of March for the ‘colleges’ section of her report: Kirklees College, Shrewsbury College, Bolton College, Cheshire College, Orbital South College, Liverpool College, South Thames College Group and Stoke College.

The report, published in April, emphasises better inclusion of vulnerable young people at risk of criminal exploitation, but notes “it is clear from our conversations the college sector feels it is often an afterthought in national policy discussion”.

One suggestion is youth development facilities could be based inside colleges.

“Why spend youth investment money on new shiny buildings when colleges have many sports and arts facilities that could be open for longer?” the report quotes a college leader.

It chimes with Longfield’s view that colleges can play a key role in her goal for inclusion to be “baked” into the accountability system, she says. She notes many colleges are “almost inclusive by default” because they take in so many disadvantaged students, including the 14-to-16 age range as alternative provision.

Given that 60 per cent of 16-to-19-year-olds attend college, Longfield wants to “do more work” with the sector and is also holding a 16-to-24 age range roundtable soon.

“I’d like to look at exclusions in colleges, but also the number of kids who fall off courses,” she adds. “Sometimes they drop out in a matter of weeks.”

One college the commission team visited is Kirklees College, in West Yorkshire. Polly Harrow, assistant principal for student experience, echoes Longfield’s concern about students excluded from FE due to criminal activity.

“Every college has their own threshold of what they will tolerate ̶ there can be exclusions in areas of this country where students are excluded more quickly than elsewhere. But do we always understand we might have a very, very frightened human here, who might be under threat? We are sometimes criminalising young people who are afraid, traumatised or being exploited.”

Harrow was driven to introduce a trauma-informed, restorative justice approach at the college following an awful personal experience: her husband’s brother was murdered by a 17-year-old.

“When that 17-year-old was 24, he was released from prison, and we went through that process of restorative justice and sat opposite that person. The fact is, if we can do this here, then we can do it in education.”

Harrow says the key is “really respecting the student voice” on the issues at play.

In such discussions, students are often shocked to discover that those who die through knife crime often die on the weapon they are carrying.

Delivering trauma-informed and restorative justice training to colleges is the Greater Manchester VRU, whose education lead is Rebecca Bromley-Woods, on secondment from The Manchester College. (In 2016, the Manchester College received national media attention when two students were stabbed in an argument outside the canteen.)

The interventions are co-designed with students, but it’s important they don’t compound a feeling that students are unsafe, says Bromley-Woods.

This also helps to counter social media, “which amplifies and escalates” violent incidents, she explains.

“People involved in serious violence are low numbers, but there’s now more people on the periphery following it on social media. That fuels a perception they have to keep themselves safe and maybe carry a knife.”

There’s now more people following the violence on social media

Social media sharing also makes violence more normalised, adds Bromley-Woods. “It’s like violence is almost accepted because it’s online, it’s not real. We’re potentially headed for a culture of acceptance, where it’s seen as the norm by too many groups.”

The VRU, which delivers against a violence reduction strategy, also delivers training on “safer searches” of students and on neurodiversity and inclusion.

John Poyton, chief executive at Redthread charity, which is the joint secretariat for the All Party Parliamentary Group on Knife Crime and Violence Reduction, says an “incident” is a “teachable moment” for colleges, but long-term prevention is all about knowing the wider context.

He points to sociology professor Carlene Firmin’s work on “contextual safeguarding”. Firmin’s approach counters the traditional safeguarding model of students focused “on the home, in isolation” and calls for public services to look for abuse outside the home too.

“It could be about training up council workers cutting the grass in parks, because actually where are young vulnerable adolescents going to be sleeping? Probably on a bench.

“It’s about looking at all the contexts,” says Poyton, adding that the contextual safeguarding framework “fits well” with violence reduction strategies.

Finally, in terms of how best to support young people at risk of criminal exploitation, staff should again listen to students. Suzanne Taylor, assistant director at Barnardo’s (also the joint APPG secretariat), said students report wanting access to peer support and a trusted adult, rather than a referral to a professional service.

“They want support to come to them, in their context,” she explains.

It’s clear that colleges face extremely difficult situations around criminal exploitation and violent behaviour. Take this situation: just last month, a student at Crawley College brought in a fake gun, pulling the trigger in order to scare people. He will now serve more than five years in a young offenders’ institution. It’s such a complex scenario to unpick.

And how effective is the government’s response, including VRUs? In April, the Home Office announced the VRUs and “hotspot policing” are “working”, and have supposedly prevented 49,000 violent offences.

But can better information sharing and signposting really undo such huge loss of personnel among police and youth workers, and cuts to FE funding?

Meanwhile, protecting students aged 18 and over, when they are classed as adults, remains a “cliff edge” of support, experts warn.

There’s some brilliant practice happening, but much more to be done. Let’s hope the Commission on Young Lives, and the Home Office, work with and support colleges as closely as possible.

Expand skills minister role to tackle youth unemployment crisis, says report

The government should create a new minister for skills and youth employment role that is shared between the Departments for Education and Work and Pensions to help tackle the NEET crisis, a think tank has said. 

The recommendation was made in the ‘Finding a NEET solution’ report by the education and skills think tank EDSK, which was published today.

EDSK’s paper said that on current trends it will take over 150 years before there are no longer any young people who are ‘not in education, employment or training’ (NEET) in England. 

The think tank made a number of recommendations to tackle the issue, including calling for more money for the 16 to 19 bursary fund and the removal of level 7 apprenticeships from levy funding. 

“After two decades of failing to make any notable progress in reducing the number of young people who become NEET after leaving school or college, it is time for government to look again at why thousands of students are still leaving our education system every year with poor academic results and low self-esteem,” said Tom Richmond, director of EDSK. 

Richmond said this “failure” to engage many young people is needlessly driving some of them out of the education and training system by undermining their motivation, aspirations and confidence over the course of several years. 

“It is then left to taxpayers and society to subsequently spend considerable sums of money trying to bring these young people back into the fold later,” Richmond said. 

“Not only is this desperately inefficient from a public expenditure perspective, it is also a tragic waste of young people’s talents,” he added. 

The paper noted that at the end of 2021 there were over 700,000 16 to 24-year-olds classified as NEET in England – equivalent to 1-in-10 young people. 

“Worse still, despite endless initiatives and interventions from successive governments, the proportion of young people who are NEET after leaving school or college stands at 12.6 per cent – just 0.4 per cent lower than in 2016, and only 0.7 per cent lower than two decades earlier,” the report said. 

The think tank made 14 recommendations to the government to tackle the issue, including the creation of new roles and responsibilities in government. 

EDSK said that to create clearer accountability and responsibility in government for preventing young people from becoming NEET, the current role of ‘minister for skills’ at the Department for Education (DfE) should be converted into a ‘minister for skills and youth employment’. This role would be shared between the DfE and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

EDSK called for the government to remove level 7 apprenticeships from the scope of the apprenticeship levy. 

“The requirement for 5% ‘co-investment’ from non-levy paying employers towards the cost of training younger apprentices should be scrapped,” the report said. 

The aim of this would be to stimulate more demand for, and supply of, apprenticeships for young people. 

Another suggestion is for the government to create a new service called ‘CareersLink’, that would coordinate the support available to young people who are at risk of becoming NEET. 

Authors of the report said that more support for young people within schools and colleges was needed. To tackle this, they argued that the 16 to 19 bursary fund should be increased from £150 million a year to £225 million a year for the start of the academic year 2022/23. 

EDSK also said that financial incentives could be used to encourage more employers to recruit young people into schemes like apprenticeships, traineeships and T Levels. 

“To build capacity among employers to recruit and support young people, financial incentives ranging from £500 to £5,000 should be available to organisations offering apprenticeships, traineeships and T Level placements,” the report said.

The DfE was approached for comment.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 389

Rachel Nicholls

Chief Executive, Inspire Education Group

Start date: July 2022

Previous Job: Deputy CEO, Inspire Education Group

Interesting fact: Rachel is a keen sportswoman and currently has a gold handicap of 12, she once played four rounds of golf in one day for Cancer Research, teeing off at 4am in the dark!

Matt Laws

Vice Principal- Technical and Vocational Education, Shrewsbury Colleges Group

Start date: May 2022

Previous Job: Assistant Principal, Dudley College of Technology

Interesting fact: Since 2014, Matt has supported international education authorities in designing and delivering leadership programmes in countries such as South Africa, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and India.

George Ryan

Press and PR Manager, Association of Colleges

Start date: May 2022

Interesting fact: George’s signature party-piece/go-to karaoke is singing Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights word-perfect, in falsetto, with appropriate dance moves.

Stressed and nervous but determined to prove themselves: the students sitting exams for the first time 

“You joke about it with your friends – ‘we’re the year that didn’t do exams’ – but you do think you got the easy way out,” says Blackpool Sixth Form College student Megan Taylor, 18. 

As the sun beams in through huge glass windows in a room on the college’s second floor, offering tree-topped views across the Fylde coast, Taylor is one of six students giving their views on the return of exams this summer – the first since pre-Covid 2019. 

For Megan, the chance to take exams is about “self-credibility and self-fulfilment… You don’t have to worry about what other people think about you going through your young adult life and not having an exam”. 

It’s a common theme. Earlier in the day we had visited South Shore Academy, also in Blackpool.  

Students preferred to be taking exams. One said they were “more accurate”. Another didn’t want “Covid grades”. 

‘The dynamic has changed’ 

But they were all nervous. A few talked about it being stressful. One of the reasons behind this, according to head Rebecca Warhurst, is that year 11 pupils have “not had the peers to look up to in the same way, due to lockdown.  

“We noticed a change in ambience and dynamic but, with wellbeing at the heart of everything we do, we have been able to fully support our students.” 

Ofqual allowed adaptations this year to try and smooth out some of the Covid disruption. One year 11 pupil at South Shore said being able to take in a formula sheet had “taken the stress off our shoulders”. 

But the youngsters – we spoke to around 10 across years 11 and 10 – also said the extra adaptations just added more things to get used to. Some exams this year will have reduced content, and there have also been coursework changes. 

The government confirmed this week that exams would return to full subject content coverage. While the intent is to return to normal “as quickly as possible”, it has not ruled out allowing exam aids and advance information in next year’s exams.  

The year 10 pupils at South Shore think it only fair they should get some help. “We did miss a lot of school too,” one said. Another felt they had not properly settled into the independent learning of year 10 because of Covid disruption. 

Speaking after the visits, Saxton said her heart was set on assisting pupils but, with her regulator hat on, the right thing to do is to check the evidence after the use of aids this year. The government will “monitor the path and impact of the pandemic” before deciding. 

‘Classrooms are being taken out of action’ 

But back to this year, and schools and colleges are facing their own disruption amid a surge in students requesting access arrangements and reasonable adjustments to exams. 

South Shore would usually have a handful of pupils asking to do their exams in a separate room. This year it is 20, most of whom say they are too anxious to sit in such a big room. 

Four in five of the 527 heads surveyed by the Association of Schools and College Leaders said the level of stress and anxiety among exam students was higher than in pre-pandemic years. A similar number said they had received more requests from pupils to take exams in separate rooms.  

A survey by training provider communicate-ed of 146 school and college staff found the average increase in referrals for extra exam help was around 30 per cent. The most popular requests were to sit the exam in a separate room, be given extra time, use a word processor or have supervised rest breaks. 

But more than half of respondents said they felt their centre would not have the capacity to accommodate all the requests, as well as being overwhelmed by the time needed for the associated admin.   

Stuart Ormson, assistant principal at Blackpool Sixth Form College, said students were “struggling to cope with anxiety and stress more generally. But that is becoming more and more challenging trying to house it. It’s taking classrooms out of action.” 

In the meantime, the college is looking to repurpose a restaurant as an exams hall. Unity Academy in Blackpool is looking at using 22 rooms for 120 exam pupils. 

Saxton pointed to the lack of familiarity with exams – for both pupils and new staff – as a contributory factor. She said schools were going “above and beyond in a new way” to provide such support. She hopes things will get closer to normality next year. 

But the issues are also exacerbating invigilator recruitment struggles. Blackpool Sixth had already lost some of its most experienced invigilators, who don’t want to “take the risk” after Covid. The ASCL survey found more than a third of heads had not recruited enough invigilators.  

Ofqual has relaxed some rules, including extending the normal ratio of one invigilator for every 30 pupils to 1:40. But staff we spoke to said they wanted to stick with 1:30 as having more adults in the room makes pupils feel more at ease. Blackpool Sixth has trained some of its senior leadership team as invigilators. 

Challenges for new teachers, too 

Like their pupils, many of the Blackpool schools’ early career teachers (ECTs) had not yet experienced exams. 

Stephen Cooke, head of nearby Unity Academy, who joined us during the South Shore visit, said new teachers not knowing the exams process “puts a lot of pressure on the more experienced staff.  

“So you have pressure at both ends. Although a lot of ECTs have been through it this year, so a lot of that worry will disappear quickly.” 

This all follows an unrelenting few years for staff. South Shore had to defer an Ofsted inspection this year because 22 people were off.  

They collapsed year groups into the hall, with classes taught by new teachers or non-specialists, just to keep the school open. 

South Shore serves eight of the country’s 10 most deprived neighbourhoods. Sixty-two per cent of its pupils are on free school meals.  

During Covid the school, like many of its neighbours, had to provide resources such as pens and paper to families. They also gave out dongles with 30GB of data as some parents did not have internet access, but live streaming lessons meant that was sometimes burnt through in a day. 

Warhurst added: “We’ve all been through the same storm, but in very different boats.” 

The school is making great progress with a literacy-centric approach that includes 40-minute form periods where teachers read books to pupils. The current year 10s, the first group to go through a programme where progress is tracked via the New Group Reading Test, run by GL Assessment, saw their average standardised age scores shoot up from 86.2 per cent in year 7 (well below average) to 94.6 per cent (average). 

But, overall, the Blackpool heads felt the pandemic had exposed the inequalities between poorer pupils and their peers. Ofqual has admitted it was unable to come up with a solution that ironed out those differences.

However, with a “roll your sleeves up” attitude, staff have battled through to give students the best possible shot – and it means a lot to the youngsters.   

Blackpool Sixth Form College student Lloyd Paterson, who hopes to study journalism at university, said exams offered him the chance to “prove I can do it. I didn’t have that fulfilment when we finished school”. 

“I don’t want people looking back and seeing us as ‘the year that didn’t do GCSEs’,” added Taylor. 

In search of new college governors: DfE opens tender for board recruitment service 

Around half a million pounds is up for grabs to set up a new governor recruitment service for colleges at risk of intervention. 

The successful bidder will have three years to place at least 134 governors on college boards in return for £458,000. 

Colleges “identified by department colleagues” will have access to the service which will seek out new board members for them for free from September 2022. 

FE Week understands that the new targeted recruitment service will replace the Inspiring FE Governance programme, which was open to all colleges and training providers with governance vacancies. 

Procurement documents seen by FE Week show that at least 50 per cent of governors recruited by the successful bidder will have to be women and at least 30 per cent must be from black, Asian and other ethnic minority backgrounds. 

At least 80 per cent of newly sourced governors must be in post for at least six months. 

Governance experts have welcomed the new service and its requirements on the winning supplier to increase diversity on college boards. 

Fiona Chalk, founder and CEO of Governance4FE, told FE Week that investment in governor recruitment “shows an important direction of travel on the professionalisation of college governance.” 

The diversity and skills sets of college boards was flagged as a priority area for the government in its 2021 further education white paper, Skills for Jobs. The document committed the DfE to provide “more support for college corporation boards to develop their capacity and build a diverse membership that better reflects their local areas”. 

As well as bolstering board membership, the white paper also promised a review of the process for paying board chairs, refreshed guidance on the appointment of senior leaders and new requirements for regular external governance reviews. 

Firms bidding to win DfE’s recruitment contract will be expected to ensure that “cognitive diversity” and “diversity of knowledge and experience” is considered alongside traditional equalities characteristics such as gender, age, race, religion and sexual orientation. 

This new service will only be available for colleges referred to it by the DfE itself, likely through its territorial teams and the further education commissioner. 

This isn’t the first time struggling colleges have had access to free governor search support. 

The government funded a pilot of a fully subsidised governor recruitment service in 2020/21. The £110,000 pilot contract was won by Peridot Partners. 

Peridot’s director of education practice Drew Richardson-Walsh told FE Week that the department’s focus on diversity was “really positive” and revealed that 36 per cent of governors recruited through the pilot were women and 38 per cent came from a BAME background. 

While tender documents state that colleges “experiencing considerable difficulty” can apply directly to the DfE to access the service, Chalk said that a lack of a sector-wide universal service for governor recruitment was “disappointing, but in this case understandable”. 

The Inspiring FE Governance matching service was launched by the Education and Training Foundation in 2017. Unlike the recruitment service DfE are currently tendering for, Inspiring FE Governance was accessible to all colleges and training providers. An independent evaluation of the programme said that it had been “largely successful” and that the DfE had agreed to continue to fund the ETF to run it in 2021/22. 

This has not been the case, however. The ETF’s national head of governance development, Kurt Hall, confirmed that “the DfE has decided to replace Inspiring FE Governance with a revised programme of support for the recruitment of governors. 

“As part of the ETF’s ongoing efforts to provide high-quality training in this area for the sector, we are developing new qualifications for governance professionals, as well as offering a variety of other programmes and support for college boards. We are excited about this programme of leadership and governance support and more details will follow on this in due course.” 

Bootcamps should become a firm fixture of the national skills fund

Digital skills such as cyber security are more important than ever, and bootcamps are a good delivery model, writes Caroline Fox

As well as reporting the tragic consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on the ground, the media carries regular stories of a propaganda war being conducted in cyberspace.

Teams of IT experts are trying to get round state-controlled outlets to explain to the Russian people what is really going on. 

Meanwhile, away from the warzone, governments, businesses and educational institutions across the globe have been reviewing the security of their own IT systems in case they are on the receiving end of cyber attacks from Russia.

Of course, cyber attacks from Russia are nothing new (GCHQ has reported that UK ransomware incidents doubled during 2021). But the war has brought home how vital it is for us to protect our essential utilities, of which IT networks are one.

It is therefore particularly important that the government and the mayoral combined authorities have made digital skills a key priority in skills bootcamps.

As a delivery partner for the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA), we are running programmes for cyber security analysts within our digital bootcamps offer.

As the name implies, bootcamps are by definition short (up to 16 weeks) and so no one can become a cyber security expert overnight by participating in one of these courses. A credible degree of core IT knowledge from prior learning is required. 

Nevertheless, within the space of a few days, the learner can acquire new skills and knowledge to help augment an organisation’s ability to protect its own or a client’s cyber security. 

This is where the reforms in last year’s skills white paper represent a genuine step forward in giving the country the skills it needs for the economy to grow. 

Bootcamps should be better aligned with other programmes like Restart

It’s heartening to see government recognition through bootcamps that learners can top up their existing skills in ways directly relevant to fast-evolving employer needs.

In this sense, bootcamps are one solution to addressing post-16 education’s perennial challenge of providing obvious routes for progression. 

Another major advantage of bootcamps is that their content can be relied upon to be up to date. In many areas, such as ICT, the speed of technological change can be very rapid. This means that by the time a student has completed a medium-term course of study for two years, new areas of priority may have emerged. Bootcamps can close that gap in knowledge.

Partnership is a recurring theme in the reforms for both higher and further education, and bootcamps point to a complementary model of provision gained from the combination of FE colleges and independent training provider-delivered bootcamps. 

The latter can also draw on the ITP strength of good employer engagement.

In terms of the wave 3 expansion of bootcamps that the DfE announced in January, real thought and imagination have gone into the design of the latest procurement. This includes the invitation for ‘bespoke’ bids for digital.

But there is still room for improvement. For instance, bootcamps should be better aligned with other programmes, such as Restart, the job support programme for universal credit claimants. At the moment, learners who have signed up for a bootcamp can still be referred to an additional programme, which then takes priority.

Unfortunately this can disrupt a learner’s progress towards securing a positive employment outcome.

Providers have also been confused by the plethora of national and devolved procurements for bootcamps. The DfE’s announcement of a dynamic purchasing system (DPS) will reduce the number of tenders, but a DPS relies on providers keeping capacity in place with no guarantee of future funding.

Nevertheless, the case is growing to make bootcamps a firm fixture within the national skills fund.

We can see on the international stage just how important cyber security skills are for every nation. Here in the West Midlands, bootcamps have become one of the most sought-after methods to obtain the additional skills required.

Are you tackling cultural poverty among students?

Ofsted is inspecting for ‘cultural capital’, but limited experience of the world is still holding learners back, writes Josh Spears

Have you ever felt like more and more learners are struggling to answer essay-style questions, not because they don’t know the facts, but because they lack good analysis?

Maybe, like me, you teach GCSE English Language re-sit, where learners struggle with fiction and non-fiction writing tasks.

Or you’re vocational studies, or A-level, wondering just why the evaluative elements of a student’s work just seem to fall flat.

It might just be because your students are living in cultural poverty.

I only really put the name cultural poverty to this issue at the start of 2020, defining it as “learners being unable to engage with creative and social concepts due to a lack of personal experiences that take place in the wider world”. So far it is holding up well enough.

To put it more simply, let’s ask this question: how can we expect a learner to write creatively about a time they went to a forest, if they’ve never been to one?

Just this year, a re-sit cohort went on a college visit to a gallery in Middlesbrough and nearly all of them had remarked that they’d never been to Middlesbrough. Darlington is 16 miles away. Yet they’d never been once.

High travel costs, lack of access to transport, no knowledge of activities. These are the bedrock of cultural poverty.

It worries me that those in cultural poverty can be at greater risk of fake news and radicalisation as they lack the ability to judge truth, having been exposed to little debate, coupled with that feeling that the community has no use for you.

Those in cultural poverty can be at greater risk of fake news

Don’t mistake cultural poverty with the failed, classist theory of aspirational poverty, which has since been debunked by academic Morag Treanor, in 2018. Aspirational poverty suggested that the poor, working class of the country didn’t aspire to “good” jobs in law, health or any such profession where you exchange business cards over a Pret lunch.

But learners want to be the best ̶ it’s just they don’t always know what is out there to be the best at! Or they do know, and they want those roles, but they don’t know how they can get there.

We give them careers advice, but do we give them varied careers experience?

American professor E. D. Hirsch suggested that learners existing in this state lacked “cultural literacy”. This idea focused around a national “shared vocabulary of ideas”-̶ not just an awareness of historical dates but the ripple effect these events had on our shared “tribe”.

The concept of cultural literacy appealed so much to Michael Gove when he was education secretary in 2012, that it inspired think tank Civitas to produce the ‘Core Knowledge’ curriculum, boldly stating that they will create “culturally literate citizens”.

This is good… but it doesn’t solve the problem of cultural poverty, and not only because it seems to focus on schools, not FE.

What we need is more than just facts, dates and their impacts. Learners at FE age need to be brought into the world and given a stake in it, a way to give something of themselves.

They need to be paid as well, because all the good feelings and intentions you offer pale in comparison to money. If we don’t offer this, then a part-time job that a learner might mistake for a career surely will ̶ I’ve seen it happen. We need to compete to win them back.

Ofsted is now inspecting for “cultural capital”, which it is calling “the essential knowledge that children need to be educated citizens”.

It’s down to organisations to determine what defines culture and how it can be championed. My own college is now investing in one of the first professional development events focused entirely around cultural poverty and how to lift learners out of it with the right tools.

Calling it cultural poverty, rather than capital, is important: we don’t tell students on free school meals that they lack food capital, so why do it with culture?

We owe our learners a way out, and into the wider world.

I’ve seen cancel culture first hand in FE

There is an intolerance in the sector for people with views contrary to the prevailing ideology, writes Tom Bewick

The minister for higher and further education, Michelle Donelan, gave a really important speech recently. She set out the government’s plans to legislate to protect free speech.

Controversially, she also delivered a critique of so-called ‘cancel culture’ on campus, saying: “Where once we found critical debate and arguments were won on their merits, today we see an upsurge in physical threats and complete intolerance of opposing ideas.”

I believe that what Donelan said deserved to be reported on, at least by the sector press. Whether we like the ‘culture wars’ or not, they are a part of our national discourse.

The backlash I received on social media, from parts of FE, makes me think we have a problem.

I was the only sector leader to draw attention to the speech.

One FE commentator, Mick Fletcher, suggested cancel culture was, “fake news”, made up by a Tory elite looking to distract from austerity.

Former FE Week editor Nick Linford echoed a similar sentiment; posting an incredulous looking gif. Tagged to my twitter timeline, it read: “conspiracy times.”

Of course, they are entitled to their opinions. But what some people are guilty of in our profession, in my view, is straight out of the cancellation culture playbook. Not in the sense of an organised conspiracy. It’s more insidious than that.

For a start, telling people something isn’t real is known as ‘gaslighting’. If you don’t know what this phrase means, it refers to a colloquialism that is about manipulating an individual or social group to question their own sense of reality.

A gas-lighter engages in false narratives. An example of this in FE is the debate about whether colleges have actually been successful in securing more funding. The government’s cheerleaders pump out the false narrative that funding has increased.

Meanwhile, respected bodies, such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies, point out that in real terms, particularly relative to the recent past, FE is still chronically underfunded.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, those who point out this fact don’t generally get invited to join government panels or speak at sector conferences. They are cancelled.

Perhaps our FE leaders don’t believe we have a problem because we haven’t seen equivalent high-profile cases like that of Kathleen Stock? The academic was hounded out of her Sussex University post for expressing perfectly lawful gender critical views.

Similarly, education secretary Nadhim Zahawi has not been asked to intervene in any major rows affecting free speech in a further education college, unlike in a school recently, where a diocese allegedly tried to get a gay author banned from speaking to pupils.

FE staff write to me all the time saying they have been ostracised by colleagues

These examples display shocking levels of intimidation and bigotry. They should have no place in a modern society.

But neither is it right for those in FE to simply dismiss growing concerns about cancel culture and self-censorship as some sort of conspiracy theory. Gaslighting or not.

I’ve seen cancel culture first hand. I had to pull out of a live college production of my podcast after the principal insisted that a national mainstream media commentator was de-platformed, refusing to give a reason why. I said I couldn’t go along with that decision.

FE staff write to me all the time saying how they have been ostracised by colleagues or lost out on promotions for admitting that they voted for Brexit, as I did, in the 2016 referendum.

Others tell me how they voted for Brexit but simply self-censor because they fear the consequences of being so open about it.

Indeed, it is this intolerance in the sector for people with contrary views to the prevailing ideology or who refuse to be part of an ‘echo chamber’, that we should now tackle.

Putting hashtag ‘be kind’ on social media profiles, or sector leaders virtue signalling about the latest EDI strategy, are not going to be enough.

Freedom of speech must be at the heart of everything that FE stands for.

Without open and contestable debates, we all suffer. 

Are you lonesome tonight? Check how your colleagues and students are feeling

Social, emotional and existential loneliness may be affecting more of your colleagues and learners than you realise, writes Stuart Rimmer

Amid busy college corridors and offices, it might seem strange to talk about loneliness.

This week a charity that the FE sector has supported for many years, the Mental Health Foundation, has placed the focus on loneliness.

A 2020 government review suggested that 47 per cent of adults experience periods of loneliness.

Almost ten per cent of 16-to-24-year olds report they often or always feel lonely.

Sadly, higher social deprivation or lower educational outcomes also negatively impacts on loneliness.

Being single, divorced, unemployed or with poor health can increase chances of feeling lonely.

Younger people can also experience loneliness and isolation around issues such as sexual orientation, low self-esteem, starting a new course or new job, relationship break-ups, or moving to a new place, such as university.

When described in these terms, the people who can often feel lonely sound very much feels like an FE cohort. 

Loneliness is different to social isolation but students and staff might experience both of these.

It has links to long-term poor physical and mental health. Within each of our classes or teams we might easily find someone who feels lonely if we look hard enough.

People can feel lonely in relationships, excluded or on the edge of teams. People can feel lonely in a crowded room. 

The pandemic undoubtedly amplified loneliness and isolation.

Digital exclusion continues to be a huge contributing factor towards “designing in” isolation.

During the pandemic, both staff and students reported this and sought solace in the community of colleagues on site. But we haven’t fully considered a post-pandemic strategy. 

Loneliness and isolation in leadership roles is well-reported, with over half of CEOs in a Harvard Business Review study reporting loneliness.

Leaders can miss out on the social elements of work and friendships (this is not me looking for mates!). This can lead to a loss of empathy and lower tolerance levels among CEOs as a result, which can then impact on staff. Isolation is also linked to burnout. 

Leaders can miss out on the social elements of work and friendships

Teacher demands of the job can add further pressure and crowd out work life balance leading to social isolation.

In my own college the changing teaching styles post-pandemic, with moves towards digital or remote preparation and some support staff still working from home, has seen greater disconnection from teams. It is much easier to become professionally isolated.

I often speak of the importance of ‘teamship’ within departments and the wider college. Being connected and having a sense of shared values and belonging is the starting point for this but we’ll need to be proactive to ensure all members of the team are included.

The What Works Wellbeing Centre suggests there are three distinct types of loneliness.

Firstly, social loneliness: a lack of quantity as well as quality of relationships.

Secondly, emotional loneliness: loss or lack of meaningful relationships or belonging.

Finally, existential loneliness: a feeling of being separate from others, which is sometimes linked to trauma. 

For me, colleges are a place of connection and community. They have always proudly been a place for inclusion. We are a place of recovery and renewal. As we have said many times, we don’t always know the lives of students or colleagues beyond the college gates.

Beyond our educational mandates, creating connection is a college’s ‘super power’.  Everyone should be able to find a place to belong – to a class, a study group, a team.

The Good for Me, Good for FE campaign has now teamed up with the Mental Health Foundation to support concepts such as social prescribing (where social activities are prescribed for people’s health) and volunteering.

So, this Mental Health Awareness Week I’d encourage everyone to take that extra moment to check in with colleagues and all students.

Ensure everyone has a connection and, as ever, welcome everyone into our college communities.