Latest news from FE Week

Leadership and management provider hit with Ofsted ‘inadequate’ for recruiting ‘without integrity’

Ofsted has criticised a leadership and management provider that delivers training mostly online for allegedly recruiting apprentices without “integrity”.

Libra Europe Consulting Limited (Libra) was judged ‘inadequate’ by the education watchdog in its first full inspection report that was published yesterday. The provider, which only started delivering apprenticeships in 2019, now faces having its funding contract terminated by the government.

Ofsted reported that “too many” of the company’s 155 apprentices are “not motivated to complete the work that coaches set” and a “substantially high proportion” leave their programme early.

Inspectors found that too often apprentices’ job roles “do not align with the requirements of the apprenticeship” they are recruited into, which are mainly leadership and management programmes from levels 2 to 5.

Ofsted warned: “These apprentices are unable to produce the correct level and standard of work that is required of the apprenticeship.”

The inspectorate also found that Libra’s leaders and managers continued to recruit apprentices throughout the pandemic “despite knowing that many employers were unable to release apprentices to complete their training”.

Ofsted has placed a much bigger focus on the “integrity” of learner recruitment since the introduction of its education and inspection framework in 2019.

Bob Heward, managing partner at Libra, said his company “wholeheartedly disagreed” with Ofsted’s view that apprenticeship recruitment was done without integrity, but his firm did not challenge the inspectorate.

He told FE Week: “We don’t necessarily agree with them but it’s pretty pointless arguing. We’d say there’s a huge amount of subjectivity. Ofsted talked about having a lack of integrity with regard to onboarding learners and something I disagree with wholeheartedly. Our view and the reality of what that learner is doing is very different. It just feels the cards are stacked against us.”

Ofsted’s report said those in charge at Libra have now implemented new processes to improve the recruitment of apprentices but it is “too early to see the full impact of these changes”.

Heward confirmed his company will now exit the apprenticeships space.

He said there has “not been a lot of support” for a new apprenticeship provider, especially for one that entered the market just months before the Covid-19 pandemic hit.

“We have done everything we can to stick by our learners even when funding was being exhausted. We tried everything we could to get them through,” he added.

Ofsted did find during its inspection that most apprentices enjoy their training sessions and demonstrate respect and courtesy for their coaches and colleagues.

Leaders and managers were also praised for having a clear rationale for the curriculum that they offer, in response to local and national employers’ skills needs, and for recruiting staff who have the appropriate industry expertise and qualifications to teach apprentices.

Cornwall secures adult education and skills powers in £360m devolution deal

A £360 million devolution deal has been announced by the government this morning which will see Cornwall local leaders given powers over skills and the adult education budget among other responsibilities.

The announcement, teased in the chancellor’s autumn statement, is set to be signed today between the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Cornwall Council.

The area will get an elected mayor, and among its powers will be control over the adult education budget (AEB) and where it is commissioned, as well as involvement in skills provision through avenues such as local skills improvement plans (LSIPs).

The AEB for Cornwall will be fully devolved by 2025.

According to the government, nearly half of England is to be covered by devolution deals as a result of today’s news.

Mark Duddridge, chair of the Cornwall and Isle of Scilly Local Enterprise Partnership, said: “The devolution of the adult education budget from central government to Cornwall Council is welcomed as it will enable more tailored support to be provided to thousands of Cornwall’s residents every year to develop the skills they need for life and work.

“That will also allow employers to access a better skilled workforce they need for businesses to grow and thrive, particularly in Cornwall’s foundation and growth sectors.”

The deal being signed today at Cornwall Spaceport is subject to a local consultation beginning next week, as well as agreement from the council and parliamentary approval.

Other responsibilities in the deal will be around transport, housing, tourism and culture and heritage.

Levelling Up minister Dehenna Davison said the deal would “spread opportunity ad unleash this great area’s full economic potential,” while Cornwall Council leader Linda Taylor said the deal “provides clarity in uncertain times and would allow us to make future plans with confidence”.

The deal follows the announcement in the summer that York and North Yorkshire will get devolved powers, before a deal covering Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire was confirmed in the autumn.

The chancellor in his autumn statement announced a deal for Suffolk, although more details have yet to be unveiled for that, and said the government is in advanced negotiations with leaders in Norfolk.

Other county deal areas under negotiation are Devon, Plymouth and Torbay; Durham; Hull and East Yorkshire; and Leicestershire.

The government said that all parts of England that want a devolution deal will be able to negotiate one by 2030.

Apprenticeship underspend shrinks to £11m in 2021/22

The amount of apprenticeship funding handed back to the Treasury shrunk to just £11 million last year, reigniting fears that the apprenticeship budget could go bust soon.

FE Week last month revealed that more than £2 billion of apprenticeship levy funding had been returned to the Treasury unspent in the four years after the levy’s launch in 2017, with £604 million alone in 2020/21.

In response to a written parliamentary question from Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Olney, skills minister Robert Halfon this week provided figures for 2021/22 for the first time, which revealed that £11 million of the £2.4 billion ringfenced budget was unspent last year.

This is despite government data showing that starts in 2021/22 were 11 per cent down on 2018/19 – the year before the pandemic hit when a near-£500 million underspend was recorded.

A much lower underspend appears to have been recorded in 2021/22 despite starts dipping overall because of soaring numbers of higher-level apprenticeship starts, which are expensive to deliver. Government data shows 31,000 more level 4 and above starts were recorded in 2021/22 than the 75,000 in 2018/19. These higher-level apprenticeships now account for around one in three apprenticeship starts overall.

The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education first warned that the apprenticeships budget was heading for an overspend back in 2018. A National Audit Office report a year later said there was a “clear risk” the programme was not financially sustainable under current arrangements, and costs of training apprentices were around double what was expected in 2015.

But pressure was eased when the Covid-19 pandemic hit in March 2020 and numbers of new starters fell.

Responding to the shrinking underspend, Jane Hickie, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said her organisation has “long warned that the apprenticeship levy risks running dry in the near future”.

She explained that last year’s spending included an additional £219 million for enhanced employer incentives, but strong demand from learners and employers had resulted in increased starts – demand AELP expects to continue.

She said a Treasury commitment to top-up the future apprenticeship programme budget by nearly £200 million by 2024/25 was now “vital”.

In 2019, a Public Accounts Committee meeting heard from the Department for Education’s then-permanent secretary Jonathan Slater, who warned of hard choices to be made if demand on the pot did spill over, suggesting a need to potentially prioritise some apprenticeships.

Then-skills minister Anne Milton later said one of the most palatable solutions would be a “pre-apprenticeship salary limit” to make high earners ineligible and ensure the levy was being used to fund genuine training where needed.

Since then, the sector has fought for greater transparency over the levy underspend. It culminated in the DfE finally being forced to reveal the numbers last month following Freedom of Information requests by FE Week.

Stephen Evans, chief executive of Learning and Work Institute, said: “I think what we are seeing is particularly the impact of the growth of higher apprenticeships which are more expensive per person and last for several years.”

He warned that “if we are going to run out of money it will be small firms and younger people that get squeezed, and we definitely don’t want that”.

Evans explained that one of three things needed to happen – accept if larger firms spend more on higher apprenticeships there will be less for smaller firms; introduce a cap on the amount that can be spent by a business on higher apprenticeships; or bankroll further funding by upping the levy contribution or pumping in more government cash.

He added that staying close to the budget “is a good thing, because the budget is there for a reason,” but added: “We need a bit more transparency from the Department for Education about how much is being spent and also what their projections are based on current levels of demand, otherwise we are having this discussion in a bit of a vacuum.”

Halfon reiterated the department’s commitment to increase apprenticeship funding from £2.5 billion to £2.7 billion by 2024/25, and added: “It is encouraging to see last year’s strong recovery in apprenticeship starts. Supported by the incentive payments for employers and training flexibilities, employers had the confidence to offer new apprenticeships and to deliver them in the way that works best for their business.”

Providers fail in high court to stop ‘draconian’ contract termination

Two apprenticeship providers have had their funding contracts terminated by the government after a failed high court challenge.

Quest Vocational Training Limited and All Spring Media Limited hired the same law firm to launch separate legal actions against the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s “draconian” decision to end their agreements after Ofsted slapped both providers with a grade four this year.

The providers claimed there were factual inaccuracies and disproportionate judgements made by the watchdog, including that inspectors failed to take into consideration the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. They argued that it was “unreasonable” for the government to cancel their contracts based on a disputed report.

One of the providers, Quest, was successful in forcing the government to overturn an initial suspension on starts in September while it took Ofsted on through a judicial review. However, the Dorset-based firm ultimately failed to overturn the inspectorate’s grade in court, which led to the ESFA immediately terminating its contracts last month.

It was at this point that Buckinghamshire-based All Spring Media decided to discontinue its legal claim against the agency.

Quest, which was ordered by the high court to also pay for the ESFA’s legal costs, declined to comment on the outcome of its case and whether the provider will be forced to close. All Spring Media has said it will be able to continue as apprenticeships are just one part of its offering.

Training providers have long complained about the harsh intervention regime adopted by the ESFA. The agency has the power to end all funding agreements for training providers when they receive a grade four Ofsted report.

A spokesperson for All Spring Media said the ESFA was provided with witness statement evidence to support its position as to why its grade four Ofsted report was “factually inaccurate and unreasonable”.

Despite this, the agency “maintained that it could, under its contract, terminate on 30 days’ notice without reason…given that the ESFA contracts are model form agreements, this position allows the ESFA to terminate at any time without reason on notice.

“Therefore, any improvements made by a training provider after an ‘inadequate’ rating will usually not be able to be evidenced in a monitoring visit by Ofsted because the training provider would have likely already been removed from the register of apprenticeships training providers”.

The spokesperson for All Spring Media told FE Week its ESFA contract allowed for other “less draconian measures than termination”, such as contract monitoring, but the agency “did not accept that the other monitoring measures were proportionate steps to take in the circumstances”.

Private providers often threaten legal action against Ofsted grade four reports and subsequent ESFA contract termination where they feel the judgement is unreasonable, but they rarely follow this through due to the significant cost involved.

Most providers, whose business is predominantly apprenticeship training, are usually forced to close as a result.

The most high-profile high court case against a grade four Ofsted inspection report involved Learndirect in 2017. The company was the country’s biggest training provider at the time. Its lawyers argued that inspectors had a “predetermined” negative view of the provider’s apprenticeship provision, and that Ofsted’s sample size of apprentices was not large enough to reflect the size of the company.

Ofsted won the case which led to the ESFA terminating Learndirect’s funding contracts worth over £100 million. The provider was then forced to close, which put 1,600 people out of work and 70,000 learners needing to find other providers to complete their training.

QVT was formed in 2012 to provide apprenticeships for the health and social care sector. It initially operated as a subcontractor but became a main provider in 2017 with its own direct funding contract. The provider employs more than 50 staff and was training almost 700 apprentices at the time of Ofsted’s inspection last year.

QVT declined to comment on what contract termination means for its future.

All Spring Media launched in 2011 and delivers a various skills training courses for the film and television industries. It has six staff on payroll and works with several freelancers. Almost 140 apprentices are now being transferred to alternative training providers.

All Spring Media’s spokesperson said apprenticeships are “just one intervention in a sector that is seeing one of the biggest skills challenges in its history” so it will “continue to support a pipeline for diverse talent for the film and television industries”.

Both companies instructed Alice Straight, a solicitor for Lester Aldridge, to handle their litigation.

Sixth form college staff walk out in strike over pay

Staff across England walked out on Wednesday in the first national sixth-form college teacher strike in six years, with one union leader warning disruption could be repeated on a greater scale next year.

Members of the National Education Union (NEU) took action at 76 colleges after voting overwhelmingly in favour of a strike over pay. Like their colleagues in schools, most sixth-form college teachers have received below-inflation pay rises of about 5 per cent.

The NEU said the action was “strongly supported”, although it would not say how many of its 4,200 eligible members walked out. It is understood no college had to close.

The union is currently balloting teaching and support staff members in schools. The NASUWT and leadership union NAHT are also balloting members for action.

University and College Union members in colleges held industrial action over the autumn over a separate pay offer from the Association of Colleges, while there was also unprecedented strikes in universities this week.

Mary Bousted, the NEU joint general secretary, said the union would “seek to coordinate further action” in sixth-form colleges with wider walkouts.

“The strength of feeling across the public sector is as one. Today is a warning shot to government if they continue to take no action on calls for a fully funded, above-inflation pay rise for teachers.

“This demonstration of anger will be even more visible should, as we expect, NEU teachers and support staff in schools and academies across England and Wales vote to take strike action in 2023.”

About 60 staff at Woodhouse College, a sixth-form college with academy status in Barnet, north London, were eligible to walk out, with about a third joining a picket outside the gates on Wednesday morning.

Laura Wall, an English teacher and NEU rep, said the issue was “pay stagnation”, which made teachers feel “undervalued and left behind”.

“We’ve worked incredibly hard. We’ve struggled away through the pandemic teaching. We did all the [teacher-assessed grades] and [centre-assessed grades], put all this work in and we’re still having to ask and beg for pay rises that reflect what’s going on in the in the larger economy.”

Sarah Alaali, who has taught maths for nine years, said she had considered opting out of her pension “just so I could afford to keep paying my mortgage. I don’t feel like the government values education.”

John Brennan-Rhodes, the college’s head of maths, said his biggest fear was colleagues leaving the profession.

“I love working here. I’m not really angry at the college itself. I think that they should be given more money so that we can earn more money.”

David Makepeace, a physics teacher, pointed to the government’s decision to scrap the cap on bankers’ bonuses.

“Now they’re back where they were earning loads of money. And yet we haven’t been compensated for all the hard work that we’ve been doing over this time, working through Covid, like the nurses, like other public sector employees.”

The Sixth Form Colleges Association acknowledged salaries were being “eroded”, but said funding was lower for their members than other settings, leaving them without the resources to “meet demands for such a high pay rise”. The DfE was approached for comment.

Supporting delivery of Sustainability Education to meet future skill demands

We are in the midst of a climate-critical decade. The 10 New Insights in Climate Science as referenced at COP27 have suggested urgent global action to reverse the growth of global greenhouse gas emissions is needed if we are to reach anywhere near the Paris Agreement or Net Zero strategies.

By 2030 the Green Jobs Taskforce has set an ambition for two million green jobs in the UK. These green jobs will require green skill development in the talent pipeline. Recent recommendations by the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) have suggested that Awarding Organisations can promote Education for Sustainable Development by ensuring they have adequate specialist qualifications alongside embedded sustainability skills across all qualifications.

At Pearson, we are responding to that call to action by incorporating sustainability education throughout our reformed BTEC National qualifications. In addition, we have produced Embedding Sustainability, A Support Guide for BTEC Nationals, designed to provide guidance on embedding sustainable green life skills in a meaningful and pragmatic way. In doing this we hope to support the mission of colleges and schools to achieve their own sustainability targets in line with the DfE Sustainability and climate change strategy.

Supporting the delivery of sustainability education

One of the major challenges is how we address sustainability. FE Week recently reported sustainability as the fourth functional skill. Sustainability should not be an optional add-on but neither should it be something that is synthetically forced into an unfitting curriculum.

The Pearson School Report indicated that 43% of teachers would like climate change and sustainability thread throughout the curriculum. It also indicated that 61% of teachers feel that the current education system does not successfully develop tolerant, sustainably minded global citizens.

According to the Leadership for Education for Sustainable Development in the FE Curriculum report by the Education and Training Foundation, whilst 3% of all FE learners are enrolled on qualifications with some sustainability or green skills, only 0.5% are enrolled on qualifications with significant sustainability content, and in the vast majority of cases those individuals were studying Geography or Environmental Science type qualifications.

There is a real enthusiasm amongst teachers, lecturers, schools and colleges to deliver key green skills across the curriculum regardless of subject. We have recognized that there are a multitude of opportunities to incorporate the discussion of sustainability topics throughout the BTEC Nationals, which we’ve outlined in Embedding Sustainability: A Support Guide for BTEC Nationals.

Sustainability is best understood when it is applied in realistic contextual situations, it is only then that learners feel able to articulate ideas of sustainability, to positively impact challenges in sustainability. We hope that this sustainability guide will offer an opportunity to implement sustainable themes into your teaching practice without any significant impact on preparation and delivery time.

Why deliver sustainability skills?

We are in a world with 1.8 billion young people between the ages of 10 to 24, according to UN Youth In Action, the largest generation of youth in history. Young people are increasingly aware of the challenges and risks associated with the climate crisis. Students Organising for Sustainability in UK demonstrate that young people are keen to take action to work towards a sustainable future. Sustainability needs to be at the forefront of learning, so that a future focused curriculum provides young people with the skills they need to address the climate emergency.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has suggested that there will be a wealth of new employment opportunities in sustainability, amounting to 14 million jobs by 2030. Our sustainability guide will assist in embedding sustainability skills across the curriculum to create a workforce that is appropriately skilled to undertake these sustainable roles.

“The Further Education (FE) and Training sector has a critical role to play in combating climate change and achieving sustainability and social justice both nationally and globally. There isn’t a subject nor industry that won’t be touched by sustainability so it’s vital all learners become sustainability learners. Awarding Organisations can influence significant change in what knowledge, skills and behaviours learners are developing through their course, so it’s great to see Pearson working to embed sustainability education across its portfolio as well as developing specialist sustainability qualifications.” Charlotte Bonner
National Head of Education for Sustainable Development, Education and Training Foundation

Ofsted gives first ‘limited’ rating to college for meeting skills contribution

Ofsted has handed out its first “limited” rating for skills contribution, as part of recently introduced enhanced inspections of colleges.

Strode College received an overall ‘good’ Ofsted rating this week following a visit by inspectors in early October, but scored the lowest rating possible for its work to meet skills needs.

Enhanced inspections for colleges launched in September this year and includes an assessment of how well the college is contributing to addressing skills gaps in the local, regional and national economy.

The outcome of this assessment is not subject to a separate report, but included as a part of the overall inspection. Inspectors dish out one of three ratings for the skills contribution section – limited, reasonable or strong.

Strode is the fourth college report to be published with the additional skills section, but is the first to get a “limited” rating.

Two of the others – Derwentside College and Sandwell College – were given “reasonable” and one – Newham College – received a “strong” rating.

A spokesperson from Strode College said: “Extended EIF [education inspection framework] criteria are very precise and the failure to meet one of the criteria sufficiently, is effectively a limited grade. The college has made significant strides within the local community within the last few months, culminating in a new strategic plan, which was approved by the board in September 2022.

“Ofsted acknowledged the amount of work and direction of travel that the college had made in a short space of time, but despite best endeavours it was unfortunately unable to successfully meet all the criteria.”

Ofsted’s updated handbook said a college’s skills contribution will be judged to be limited if inspectors did not consider leaders to have engaged enough with employers and other key organisations like local enterprise parnerships; did not involve employers and relevant bodies in the design and implementation of the curriculum; were not clear how they contributed to skills needs; or did not teach students the skills they needed.

Colleges are given a week’s notice to line-up chats between inspectors and key stakeholders in the local skills economy it works with, such as local enterprise partnerships, chambers of commerce and employers.

Evidence gathering includes conversations with college leaders, meetings with stakeholders and employers, and information in published documents, such as college skills plans and local skills improvement plans.

Strode College said it struggled to get organisations to talk to inspectors at the right time, and said there had also been some confusion on what was additionally required in the new inspection framework compared to the previous one.

In its report, Ofsted recognised that governors had only recently published a new skills strategy for the college, and said “leaders do not yet ensure that they identify the full range of employer and stakeholder needs, in order to make a sufficient contribution to meeting these in a way that benefits the locality and region”.

It highlighted a new English and maths functional skills curriculum for staff at Yeovil District Hospital to gain qualifications to move into more senior roles.

But the report continued that skills gaps in existing manufacturing, digital, construction, electro-technical and transportation businesses “are starting to be identified” but actions were “yet to have an impact”.

Inspectors said learners did develop their skills well, but employers were not involved enough in the design and implementation of the curriculum.

It did, however, praise leaders for being informed of major capital projects underway in Somerset and how the college could best contribute to those, including training programmes in the £23 million Glastonbury Town Deal projects.

While Strode College was rated ‘good’ overall, this was a downgrade from the ‘outstanding’ it received in 2014. It appears the rating was brought down by provision for learners with high needs, which was judged to be ‘requires improvement’.

Ofsted’s handbook says the skills evaluation is a “sub-judgement” that feeds into its assessment of quality of education and leadership and management. Despite Strode receiving a “limited contribution” on its skills contribution, its quality of education and leadership and management ratings scored ‘good’.

Plan B guidance for 2023 exams confirmed

Schools and colleges will have to collect student performance evidence again this year in case exams are cancelled, government has confirmed, despite half of those consulted saying it will increase workload.

The Department for Education and Ofqual have confirmed their plans for “supporting resilience in the exam system” in 2023. The guidance tells schools and colleges to collect and retain evidence to be used for potential teacher grades for GCSEs and A-levels.

The two organisations said it was “very unlikely” exams would be canned, but “good public policy means having contingency, even for extremely unlikely scenarios”.

The government faced fierce criticism for not having an “off-the-shelf plan B” when exams were cancelled for a second time in early 2021 due to the pandemic.

A three week consultation was held this term on draft guidance, which aimed to “improve and streamline” the process by creating the “minimum possible burden”, while allowing a “broadly consistent approach” across all students.

But half of teachers, senior leaders and schools and colleges that responded said the arrangements would not prevent additional teacher workload.

However, only 94 school and college staff replied to the consultation, which had a total of 213 responses.

Only two-thirds of respondents said the guidance should remain in place beyond 2023. Ministers plan to consult on this in the summer term.

‘Guard against over-assessment’

The government and Ofqual said schools and colleges should plan test opportunities in line with their usual assessment approaches, such as mock exams. These can be varied if a school or college needs more evidence, they said.

But they stopped short of repeating advice on the frequency of testing from last year’s guidance, which said a “sensible approach” would be to test once a term.

Teachers should also “guard against over-assessment”, and normally would “not need to spend longer on these assessments than they would on their existing” test plans.

Ofqual made some tweaks to its proposed guidance, such as clarifying evidence can be kept digitally or physically, and that students should normally only be assessed on the content they have been taught.

Students should be supervised during tests, but schools and colleges don’t need to use external invigilators.

Exams workload warning

Overall, 158 of 213 respondents agreed the guidance was helpful.

However the DfE and Ofqual said a “key theme” in responses was the impact on teacher workload in creating, marking and moderating assessments.

One senior leader responded that there was “no question” the system added to teacher workload, adding: “Marking and moderating two sets of exams instead of just one set of mock exams doubles the workload.”

But officials said they had not stated the number of tests that should take place.

One exam board told the consultation it feared students may focus on responding to assessments rather than focus on learning opportunities.

And a centre said “previously valuable formative assessments” could be turned into “magnified high-stakes” tests which impacts their motivation and corrodes their “love for learning”.

In response, officials said the guidance aimed to help schools and colleges to use arrangements “that work best for them and their students”.

Some schools and colleges said there would be costs involved, such as those associated with storing the evidence.

Ofqual said it recognised this, but said costs should be “proportionate to the aim of preparing for the eventuality that exams cannot go ahead for any reason, having learnt from the experiences of the past three years”.

The DfE will continue to monitor school and college financial health and cost pressures they face, they said.

Meanwhile, Ofqual has decided to go ahead with plans to provide exam aids, such as formulae and equation sheets, in 2023 GCSE maths, physics and combined science exams.

More than 93 per cent of respondents said they agreed with proposals for a maths formulae sheet in 2023, and over 95 per cent supported having an equation sheet for physics and combined science.

Two Point Campus: Can a game teach educational leadership?

What if there was a game where you could run a college, experiment with course design and curate your students’ experience? What if it had a 90s nostalgic animation style, just like Theme Park when we were kids? What if I could convince FE Week that I had to play it for essential research purposes and the greater enlightenment of our sector?

No, the campus management strategy game, Two Point Campus isn’t a fever dream but an actual virtual reality. Whether you open a campus from scratch or dive into an established institution with deeper problems, your role is to ensure students are educated, have the facilities they need and graduate having had a good time along the way.

Is it fun? Well, fun is a relative term. My 11-year-old son took mere minutes to reach his review judgment: “This is so tragic. You are literally playing a game about education.”

Perhaps it’s just not his demographic. Or perhaps I should have my own X-Box. Either way, while I like to think playing a game that simulates a college in my spare time is a marker of my passion, I reluctantly accept that he has a point. I don’t imagine farmers are playing Tractor Simulator after a day in the fields.

But as it’s based on sophisticated AI, requires fine-tuning of campus experience and forces you to pick between competing demands, that counts as professional development, right? And who expects that to be fun?

In the real world, politicians’ fantasies about ‘Harry Potter studies’, 21^st-Century skills and low standards lead to a constant flow of reform and accountability. In Two Point Campus, however, the challenge is not to protect your institution from interfering policy makers. Instead, the challenges range from saving it from its own grand, ancient, and expensive buildings, to crafting the perfect experience for students of robotics, to working out how to pay for it all. Educate, nurture and expand is its simple formula for success, but sometimes you have to pick.

The uncertain correlations we face in FE are replaced with cheerful causation

In order to make it a game, the uncertain correlations we face in FE are often replaced with a cheerful causation. Build it and they will come, at least in the early levels. A toilet and a well-placed coffee machine will increase happiness. That book or that machine will have an immediate and measurable impact.

Like a general further education college, campus life in this virtual world is eclectic: learners in chef whites rub alongside art students and the more STEM-focused. And, as in real life, your campus’s success relies on the success of all, measured not just in grades, but friendship and overall experience.

In a way, that makes it more realistic than those political fantasies, where academic outcomes are the be-all-and-end-all. Indeed, it reflects exactly what our students tell us in surveys and conversations: that their social experience, the food we provide and what it costs all matter as much as anything learning related.

But as the economic crisis cuts even deeper into colleges’ and families’ budgets, our real choices start to become ever starker. So while Two Point Campus’s AI pushes players to offer a diverse curriculum that meets the demands of all students, back in reality adult student recruitment has collapsed over the past decade, and courses face the twin challenges of enrolling enough students or finding the staff to teach them.

This reality jars with prime minister Sunak’s and skills minister Halfon’s push for a ‘British Baccalaureate’ for further education, not to mention the renewed vocational focus through T levels and short, sharp higher education that tackles our skills and productivity gap.

No matter how creative a leader you are, as any Two Point Campus player could tell you, big ideas need big investment. And if skills education is going to fulfil the promises others have made for it, that investment is needed now.

In the meantime, this game may not prepare anyone for the rigours or educational leadership. But it is fun and food for thought, not least because its artificial intelligence is more hopeful than anything emanating from Westminster.