From refurbishing derelict community buildings to creating bat boxes for primary schools, members of the Good for Me, Good for FE campaign are assessing the efforts of college students and staff during Volunteers’ Week.
The campaign, now in its fourth year, helps colleges drive up community action opportunities for their students and raise the profile of the difference they are making.
Building foundations
Foundation learning and construction students at Nottingham College have transformed two community centres this year, gaining valuable skills along the way.
Guided by mentors from youth charity Volunteer It Yourself, students gained level 1 qualifications in painting, decorating and carpentry alongside their regular studies, even finishing projects ahead of schedule thanks to their early starts and late finishes.
Foundation learning student Kayden said: “I learned woodwork, painting and how to work in a team. It was fun to do with my friends and gave me confidence for other projects.”
Nottingham College students
Saving the bats and the bikes
Furniture-making students at Newark College, part of Lincoln College Group, were tasked by Newark and Sherwood District Council to come up with a way to protect diminishing bat populations in the area, with a focus on biodiversity and sustainability.
After presenting their prototypes, students were asked to make 55 bat boxes, one for every local primary school. They had to learn how to use power tools, as well as working to tight deadlines in their teams.
One student has taken the idea even further by starting their own business making animal houses using the skills they picked up.
Meanwhile, the college’s multi-skills students worked with police to fix up bikes that had been seized, or found and not claimed, so they could be put to good use.
Newark College’s bike repair project
Ten bikes were given to the college in a poor state. Students learned how to remove parts, renovate them, change the wheels and tyres and re-paint frames, all as part of close-knit teams that had to work to a budget.
The college reports that seven out of the 10 bikes were successfully repaired and were then offered to students who needed them to get to college and back. The success of the project has meant another four bikes have since been donated.
USP local legends
In partnership with Essex Youth Service, USP College’s ‘local legends’ group opened up a range of opportunities for students to make a difference to their community and work towards the new Good for Me, Good for FE volunteering micro-credential.
This year, USP College Students’ Union took the lead on campaigns and initiatives promoting cardiovascular health, including rolling out first aid training so students know how to respond and help those in cardiac arrest.
Other projects included sports students taking the lead on organising tournaments and calling up creative and design students to organise publicity.
USP’s local legends now meet weekly and bring in guests to help lead new projects throughout the year.
Prepare for awards season
The Good for Me, Good for FE annual awards event is now an established entry in the FE calendar that identifies, celebrates and shares the very best social action initiatives in colleges across the country, as well as recognising the dedicated staff and student volunteers that are making a difference.
Entries for this year’s awards will open in September. Those shortlisted will be invited to an awards ceremony at the House of Lords in December where winners across eight categories will be announced.
Concurrent Job: Policy, communications and research consultant, self-employed
Interesting fact: Jo’s flat is part of a converted convent that was designed by the same architect as the Royal Courts of Justice
Sally Burnell
Trustee, Prison Education Trust
Start date: May 2025
Concurrent Job: Director Communications, The Bar Council
Interesting fact: Sally loves dancing. She started learning tap as an adult and for a short while was in the same dance class as the late great comedian Victoria Wood
Craig Hanlon-Smith
Principal, London South Bank Technical College
Start date: September 2025
Previous Job: Vice Principal – Student Engagement and Centre Principal – North Kensington, Morley College
Interesting fact: The love of Craig’s life is Baxter the beagle, nothing and no-one shall ever come between them
A maths teacher fired by a college for refusing to use the name and pronouns of a trans student has been granted an appeal against a tribunal decision that ruled he was not unfairly dismissed.
Last year, the employment tribunal rejected an unfair dismissal claim from Kevin Lister, a teacher at New College Swindon from August 2020 until September 2022, who was found to have discriminated against a trans student and refused to comply with the college’s policy on gender.
The case will now be heard at an employment appeal tribunal after a judge ruled there were “arguable points as to the boundary between belief and manifestation” of belief under the 2010 Equality Act, and “unqualified rights to hold a belief” under the European Convention on Human Rights.
According to one legal expert the appeal outcome could have ramifications for all employers in education.
At a preliminary hearing last week Judge Beard labelled the appeal as “complex and raising point(s) of law of public importance”.
New College Swindon said it was “disappointed” with the appeal decision but remained “confident” its actions were “fair, justified, and did not amount to discrimination”.
Specialist employment lawyer Joanne Moseley from Irwin Mitchell told FE Week she had witnessed a growing number of incidents relating to conflicts of belief and freedom of expression.
She said: “I’ve seen many policies, including in the education sector, which don’t do enough to address and balance the needs of trans people protected under the gender-reassignment provisions of the Equality Act with the needs and rights of those protected under different protected characteristics, such as religion or belief and sex.”
The appeal comes after a significant Supreme Court ruling in April which ruled the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex.
Case begins
Lister was hired to teach maths at New College Swindon in August 2020, the same year student A, as named in the tribunal documents, started their A-levels at the college.
The following year student A asked Lister to refer to them with a male name and pronouns.
Lister was subject to a disciplinary investigation after the college received a complaint from another student that he refused to use student A’s preferred pronouns. The college also found Lister gestured towards student A instead of using their name, and on one occasion, wrote the student’s previous female name on the classroom whiteboard.
Lister also filed a safeguarding concern over student A being in “serious and imminent” danger from taking cross-sex hormones, though he later admitted having no evidence to substantiate his concern.
Lister was fired in August 2022 for gross misconduct for refusing to follow the college’s gender reassignment policy, which told staff to use students’ preferred names and pronouns. He was also barred by the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS).
Former principal Carole Kitching acknowledged at the tribunal that Lister also had protected beliefs, but he was sacked because of the way he manifested his gender critical views rather than those beliefs.
Lister brought claims of unfair dismissal, discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief and indirect discrimination in late 2022. All claims were dismissed in a judgment handed down in March 2024.
Appeal fight
Lister launched a crowdfunder in January 2024 called “Fight transgender madness in the education system” to fund cases against New College Swindon, the DBS and the Department for Education. The latter is for a judicial review “against the DfE’s actions to deliberately allow transgender indoctrination into our schools”.
At the time of going to press he had raised £34,288 towards his £50,000 target, receiving over 1,100 donations.
The employment appeal tribunal judge accepted two grounds of Lister’s appeal and said there were “arguable points” to assert the boundary between belief and manifestation in the Equality Act.
Lister argued the first tribunal did not consider the “inherently discriminatory” nature of the college’s gender reassignment policy and that the college attempted to interfere with his beliefs by making him adhere to the policy.
The hearing will discuss whether Lister’s contention that he “finds it difficult to use what he perceives to be the “incorrect” pronoun” was justified.
Moseley said that employers often manage issues “incorrectly” when staff members hold protected beliefs that don’t align with organisational values.
“For example, applying a hierarchy of protected characteristics and prioritising certain ones over others, possibly because of poor DEI training or allegiance to particular workplace schemes,” she said.
“The college in this case was seeking to balance these issues in the measures it took. Whilst each case is determined on its own facts, it is likely that the EAT case will give guidance that all employers can learn from.”
A New College Swindon spokesperson said: “Our priority is, and always will be, the safety and dignity of all of our students and staff.
“We will continue to cooperate fully with the legal process and look forward to resolving the matter at the appeal hearing in due course.”
Lister told FE Week: “This is a critically important case to both education and democracy. If I am successful, teachers in schools and colleges will be free from the demands to promulgate ideologies against their wishes.
“This freedom is one of the bedrocks of Western democracies, yet it has never been under more threat.”
Plea for guidance
The appeal case comes as colleges await trans guidance from the government.
The DfE published draft guidance for colleges in December 2023 and has yet to publish the findings from its 2024 public consultation.
New College Swindon urged the DfE to provide “clear, statutory guidance”.
“The absence of definitive national policy continues to place education providers in a difficult position,” a college spokesperson said.
Most adult apprentices are still studying for English and maths exams despite no longer being required to do so by the government, FE Week can reveal.
Ministers announced on February 11 that an exit rule, which forces apprentices without a GCSE pass to achieve a functional skills qualification in the core subjects to complete their training, was scrapped with immediate effect for those aged 19 or older.
Employers, training providers and apprentices were given a deadline of April 1 to decide whether to continue or stop English and maths study and update individual training plans.
Exclusive data, obtained by FE Week through a Freedom of Information request from the Department for Education, showed that of the 73,460 on-programme adult apprentices who were working towards at least one functional skills qualification at the time of the policy change, 43,830, or 60 per cent, had continued.
Another 1,540 (2 per cent) were on a break in learning, and 28,090 (38 per cent) had withdrawn from English and maths study.
Stephen Evans, chief executive of Learning and Work Institute and a member of the English and Maths Coalition, said: “It’s good that 60 per cent of apprentices are continuing with functional skills, but disappointing that 40 per cent aren’t and that most future adult apprentices won’t have this focus.
“While some sectors will have built high levels of English and maths into their apprenticeship standards and so feel they don’t need separate qualifications, we are concerned too many apprentices will be missing out on skills that are vital to their future lives and careers.”
Construction highs and digital lows
The DfE removed the functional skills exit requirement for adult apprentices in response to lobbying from parts of the sector, amid claims the rule was one of the biggest barriers in the apprenticeship system, causing stress for learners and high drop-out rates.
Estimates released this week by the DfE showed officials believe there will be between 6,800 and 10,200 additional achievements per academic year now the rule has been relaxed.
It is not yet clear what proportion of new starters, who would have been in scope of the functional skills exit requirement, are opting in or out of the courses.
For existing on-programme adult apprentices, FE Week’s FOI data showed level 2 and 3 apprenticeships had the biggest proportion of learners continuing with functional skills at 66 per cent and 63 per cent respectively.
Level 7 apprenticeships had the lowest proportion at 47 per cent, followed by level 4 at 51 per cent.
The DfE also provided FE Week with a breakdown by sector subject area.
Only digital had fewer than half (48 per cent) of apprentices choosing to continue functional skills. Business, administration and law had the next lowest at 54 per cent.
Seven other subject areas were in the 60 to 69 per cent bracket, while arts, media and publishing hit 70 per cent, and construction, planning and the built environment was 71 per cent.
Large digital apprenticeship provider QA Ltd told FE Week that only around 325 (25 per cent) of its 1,300 on-programme adult apprentices had opted to complete their functional skills.
A QA spokesperson said this was “driven by a mix of individual learner motivations and decisions made by our customers and varies significantly across learner demographics”. Those who have chosen to continue have done so because they want to “update and consolidate long-dormant skills”, for example.
JTL, which specialises in apprenticeships for electricians and plumbers, has 85 per cent of its 400 in-scope adult apprentices continuing with functional skills.
The provider’s operations director Clair Bradley said: “English and maths qualifications remain important in the building services engineering sector. For example, electrical apprentices are required to calculate voltage and power using formulas and, in both electrical and plumbing standards, learners study high-level scientific principles.
“A very small number of our apprentices have chosen not to complete their functional skills assessments in consultation with their employers (62 of an eligible cohort of 400), reflecting their specific individual or professional needs.”
‘Decent’ English and maths a ‘big enabler’ for businesses
Jill Whittaker, executive chair of hospitality apprenticeship provider HIT Training, told FE Week that over 80 per cent of her provider’s 4,000 adult apprentices were continuing with functional skills.
She said HIT has “always contextualised our teaching of literacy and numeracy for the sectors we operate in” which has led to higher success rates than the national average.
Most learners “really appreciate how important it is to them and to their lives” and the “vast majority of employers” HIT works with “see decent English and maths as a big enabler for their businesses and wanted to keep it in their apprenticeships as long as the apprentice was in agreement”, Whittaker added.
FE Week’s FOI data showed that similar proportions of female and male apprentices chose to continue with English and maths, at 60 and 63 per cent respectively. And 61 per cent of apprentices with learning difficulties have continued with the subjects, which was the same proportion for apprentices without a learning difficulty.
Simon Ashworth, deputy CEO of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said: “This early data suggests that apprentices are keen to continue studying maths and English as part of their apprenticeship, which is encouraging, given the value these subjects bring.
“The key change is that maths and English no longer act as a barrier to completion for adult learners; a shift we should aim to replicate for younger apprentices to ensure we avoid the unintended consequences of a two-tier system.”
A “voluntary” merger between two Cheshire colleges is expected next year following the announcement of a devolution deal in the region.
Cheshire College South & West (CCSW) and Macclesfield College are set to partner in July 2026 – a proposal that was first floated nine years ago.
If approved the unification will create the largest FE college in the region with more than 11,000 learners and an annual income of over £63 million.
Leaders said the merger was timely so the colleges could “play a leading role” in regional skills development when a new combined authority is created next year.
The Cheshire and Warrington Mayoral Combined Authority is expected to be ready for its first mayoral election in May, according to reports this week.
Public consultation and a period of due diligence into the college merger will now take place, with it expected to take effect from July 31, 2026.
A spokesperson for the colleges said: “The proposed merger, which both colleges describe as voluntary, would create a powerful new education group that will lead the way in skills development and post-16 education provision across Cheshire.
“The announcement follows the acceleration of the region’s devolution deal, prompting the colleges to take proactive steps to ensure that devolution delivers for every learner and community.”
Merger history
South Cheshire College and West Cheshire College merged to become CCSW following then-FE commissioner David Collins’ 2016 joint area review of the county.
The review called for a phased merger approach to create a “Cheshire general further education college”, first creating CCSW and then merging it in subsequent years with the then-Mid Cheshire College, Warrington Collegiate and finally Macclesfield College.
Instead, Mid Cheshire College and Warrington Collegiate merged in 2017 to form Warrington & Vale College, the second largest institution in the region with over 7,000 students currently on its books.
Macclesfield chose to remain a standalone college.
The proposal
College representatives told FE Week the merger aims to create a “more financially resilient and sustainable” education group.
Macclesfield College achieved a “requires improvement” financial health grade in 2023-24, according to its latest accounts, with a negative -1.63 per cent EBITDA, but is expected to bump up to “good” this year.
Both colleges are projected to maintain the “good” financial health rating for both next year and 2026-27.
Macclesfield was last rated a grade 3 by Ofsted in 2023 but was making “reasonable progress” according to a monitoring report earlier this year. CCSW has been rated “good” twice by Ofsted since it merged.
Union members working at CCSW are currently in dispute with senior management over pay.
University and College Union (UCU) regional official Matt Arrowsmith said: “Staff at CCSW are already in dispute with the college over senior management’s refusal to offer a decent pay award this year, and UCU members are being balloted for strike action.”
A CCSW spokesperson said the college is “committed to finding a resolution with UCU”.
Arrowsmith added that the colleges must provide “a cast iron guarantee of job security” for all staff.
Both colleges confirmed there were no planned redundancies as part of the merger.
A merger document signed by both colleges’ chair of governors and principals, seen by FE Week, which outlined leaders’ commitments to the proposal, said they would “act with integrity” regarding any future staff changes.
The document also promised to “create a college with a strong national and regional reputation whilst maintaining our local identities and accountability”.
A long-established London training provider has closed amid a Department for Education investigation.
Before entering liquidation last week, Prevista Ltd held publicly funded training contracts for apprenticeships, adult education and employment support.
It was one of 55 independent training providers to land a coveted national adult skills fund contract in 2023, worth up to £2.5 million a year.
Although the reasons for Prevista’s closure are unclear, FE Week understands it is under investigation by the DfE.
Prevista was first incorporated in 1996. According to its most recent accounts, the company had about 50 employees in the 2023-24 financial year.
Director Salik Miah and appointed liquidator Farheen Qureshi of Parker Getty Ltd did not respond to multiple requests for comment from FE Week.
Miah is understood to be the only director of the company, which has been owned via an employee ownership trust since 2020.
When previous owner and managing director James Clements Smith sold Prevista to the trust in 2020 it had a turnover of around £10 million and declared a profit of £987,000.
Its most recent accounts show turnover had dropped £3.7 million.
Prevista held an adult education contract with the Greater London Authority worth more than £1 million per year, alongside the national AEB contract with the DfE.
A GLA spokesperson said: “We can confirm Prevista Ltd was awarded an allocation by the GLA under its Jobs and Skills for Londoners programme. We are not able to comment further at this stage about any contractual arrangements.”
The DfE also declined to comment.
Prevista suffered a ‘requires improvement’ Ofsted rating in 2023 due to concerns about off-the-job training and subcontracted provision, but inspectors found the company was making ‘significant progress’ during a follow-up visit last year.
Prevista had over 1,000 learners in 2023 but the total had more than halved a year later, according to Ofsted’s reports.
In previous years the company held traineeship contracts worth up to £2 million per year and delivered about £1.6 million in apprenticeships training in 2022-23.
Prevista was also one of 23 providers that shared a £7.5 million Department for Work and Pensions contract for “provision of employment and health-related services”.
The national funding rate for 16 to 19 year old students will be bumped up to £5,105 in the next academic year following the government’s latest cash injection.
Education secretary Bridget Phillipson announced last month that an extra £190 million will be funnelled into 16 to 19 education from September 2025, £160 million of which will go to colleges and other providers who train that age group.
The sector was expecting the funding rate for young students on study programmes of 580 or more hours to rise 3.78 per cent, from £4,843 to £5,026.
This rate will now increase to £5,105, which is 5.4 per cent higher than 2024-25.
Other elements of 16 to 19 funding, including T Levels, disadvantaged and English and maths funding are also rising.
James Kewin, deputy chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, said this was a “good settlement given the fiscal climate” and when “compared to other parts of the education sector and wider public services”.
T Level funding rates, which were expected to fall following the DfE’s decision to reduce a 10 per cent uplift to 5 per cent, will shoot back up.
Colleges were expecting the funding rate for band 9 “very large” T Levels of 1,830 total planned hours for the programme’s two years to drop from £15,330 in 2024-25 to £15,188 in 2025-26.
But this will now increase to £15,430 from September.
Band 8 T Levels will rise from £13,926 to £14,146, band 7 will increase from £12,664 to £12,864 and band 6 will be boosted from £10,980 to £11,154.
Additional payments for disadvantaged students and care leavers will also rise: £570 for bands 4 and 5 students will lift to £609, the expected £347 for bands 2 and 3 will move to £371 and £772 for T Level students will increase to £825.
English and maths funding for resit students will also be boosted.
Per student per subject funding for band 4 and above will go up from £375 to £418, while bands 3 and 2 will move from £229 to £255 and band 1 will shift from £375 to £418.
And lastly, programme cost weightings for higher cost courses have been increased to “boost capacity in priority sector subjects such as construction, manufacturing and digital which are vital to economic growth”.
The table below shows what the seven programme cost weightings have moved from and to.
From
To
Base (1)
Base (1)
Low (1.13)
Low (1.15)
Medium (1.26)
Medium (1.29)
High (1.39)
High (1.44)
Very High (1.52)
Very High (1.58)
Exceptionally high (1.65)
Exceptionally high (1.73)
Specialist (1.975)
Specialist (2.09)
The £190 million funding pot was announced on the same day Phillipson accepted the School Teachers’ Review Body’s (STRB) recommendation for a 4 per cent pay rise in 2025-26.
The education secretary said the 16 to 19 cash boost for FE providers “will enable these institutions to address the immediate challenges they face in recruiting and retaining the expert teachers”.
Although it has no formal role in setting teacher pay in colleges, this was the first year the STRB was asked to provide the government with evidence about pay in colleges.
Colleges and unions have campaigned heavily for extra funding to close the pay gap that favours school teachers over college teachers.
The STRB’s report cited Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that the pay gap now stands at almost £7,000, or 18 per cent.
Further education college unions and the Association of Colleges will begin negotiations for a pay recommendation for 2025-26 next month. Meanwhile, sixth form college leaders hope the funding announcement can stave off further strike action.
All young people from households eligible for universal credit will be offered free meals in further education in what the prime minister has described as a “historic moment”.
The Department for Education said broadening eligibility for free meals in schools and further education would give 500,000 pupils and students access to the scheme, and claimed it would lift 100,000 children out of poverty.
At present, only students or families with a household income below £7,400 can claim free meals, a threshold education charities and unions have long criticised for barring children and young people in poverty.
The scheme is funded for 16 to 19 year olds in colleges, specialist colleges and training providers. Students aged 19 with an education health and care plan (EHCP) are also eligible.
Around 90,000 disadvantaged students in further education currently claim free meals alongside 2.1 million children in schools and 1.3 million infants through the universal infant free school meals programme.
From academic year 2026-27, all students and families in receipt of universal credit will be eligible to apply for free meals, which are currently funded at a rate of £2.61 per meal.
This year 377 further education settings received a free meals allocation, totalling nearly £37 million.
‘A truly historic moment’
Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer said: “Feeding more children every day, for free, is one of the biggest interventions we can make to put more money in parents’ pockets, tackle the stain of poverty, and set children up to learn.
“This expansion is a truly historic moment for our country.”
The announcement, ahead of next week’s spending review, follows reports the government’s wider child poverty strategy has been postponed until at least the autumn.
Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, called the extension a “a downpayment on our child poverty strategy”. No date has been set for its release.
Battling cuts to adult education has been the defining task for Stephen Evans at Learning and Work Institute, but money was no object when his career began at the Treasury under Gordon Brown, he tells Jessica Hill
Stephen Evans’ decade as chief executive of Learning and Work Institute (L&W) has been a fight against the relentless erosion of adult education sector funding.
When he joined L&W’s predecessor in 2014, £5.06 billion was spent on adult education. Last year, it was predicted to drop to £4.75 billion.
His career began at the Treasury tackling child poverty, but he says his proudest achievement is that L&W “still exists – and hopefully makes a difference”.
“It’s the small flashes of light I see happening across the country that give me glimmers of hope,” he tells me.
Stephen Evans, CEO of the Learning and Work Institute
Becoming a leader
Evans’s self-deprecating manner endears him to those he works with. And it does not come at the expense of substance and authenticity.
But his appearance as a fresh-faced policy boffin with a prodigious intellect meant when he first took on the CEO role, some were unsure whether he had what it took to lead the organisation through the stormy waters ahead.
He was deputy chief executive of L&W’s predecessor, the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE), when in 2015 financial concerns caused by government cutbacks sparked a merger with the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion. Government grant money had dried up and staff headcount had plunged from 80 to 45.
After NIACE’s CEO David Hughes left to head the Association of Colleges, Evans took the helm with some trepidation.
“My first concern was, I’ve got 45 people’s livelihoods in my hands,” he recalls. “If I get it wrong, that affects their jobs. And this organisation had been around for almost 100 years – I didn’t want to be the one that crashed it.”
His strong moral compass comes from his Catholic upbringing (he was taught by nuns). Evans’s mum worked for the benefits agency and his dad for a local authority. “Both were very clear, you should use your talents to help others and tackle inequality and injustice,” he says.
Ironically, Leicester Royal Infirmary where he was born stands within sight of the office that L&W retains in Leicester. His East Midlands accent gets stronger when he’s back in his hometown.
But I meet Evans on the rooftop garden of L&W’s London office in Vauxhall, in a building which also houses charities such as the Prison Education Trust.
L&W’s new home beside Big Yellow Storage feels “much safer” than their previous address next door to MI5, where bomb threats were a regular occurrence. “We’d get blown up in every James Bond film”, he comments wryly.
Stephen Evans, CEO of the Learning and Work Institute
A cloistered education
Evans never considered applying to Oxbridge until it was suggested to him by his business and economics teacher, who went on to tutor Evans for the challenge and “tried to persuade” his parents to swap their tabloid newspapers for broadsheets. Evans did not hold out much hope of success.
His “very intimidating” interview for a place at Queen’s College in Cambridge to study economics took place beside a log fire in a cloister, at a time when Evans “didn’t know what a cloister was”.
Many of his fellow students at Cambridge already knew one another from attending the same private school or playing lacrosse. Evans realised they were no cleverer than his former schoolmates but simply more privileged.
“It gave me a bit of a window on a world you don’t often see, then inspired me towards changing it,” he says.
Stephen Evans, CEO of Learning and Work Institute
Treasured times
Upon graduating, Evans was “chucked in at the deep end” as a policy advisor at the Treasury under Gordon Brown. On his first day he was sent to the Office for National Statistics to get advance copies of the labour market statistics and given just two hours to file a briefing for Brown on “what he should say about them”.
It was a golden age of flowing government coffers, and Evans and his team could pull numerous levers in the mission they were tasked with to eradicate child poverty.
Growing public services rather than dialling down spending provided Evans with plenty of job satisfaction.
His job was to get more lone parents into work through the national minimum wage, tax credits and employment support, and “invest in adult skills so people could improve their circumstances”.
He also worked in the Treasury’s productivity team (“like a think tank in the Treasury running projects”) where his brief included delving into the operation of ports and the pivotal 2006 Leitch review of skills.
This independent review, led by Lord Sandy Leitch, had similar aims to Skills England – “to identify the UK’s optimal skills mix… to maximise economic growth, productivity and social justice” and work out how to achieve it.
As a result of its recommendations, a quango, the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, was formed, and the statutory age at which young people could leave education was raised to 18.
Stephen Evans back in 2015
Reviewing regrets
A target was set for all employers to commit to training all their workers to level 2, the equivalent of five GCSEs at A-C, by 2010. But the onus was placed on businesses to provide the plan.
The Treasury had wanted to go “further and faster” on skills. But it was a “political decision” to give employers “one last chance” to achieve the Leitch review’s goals through incentives. If that was not successful, a “levy and compulsion” would be the next step.
Unfortunately, the subsequent financial crisis and general election derailed these reforms. Evans now regrets they did not force employers to go further.
Boris’s gods
Evans then became chief economist for the Social Market Foundation, a think tank aligned with the Labour government’s priorities at the time, where he relished the opportunity to debate issues that had been off-limits as a civil servant.
A year later he returned to the policy driving seat as director of employment and skills at the now-defunct London Development Agency.
In London, the mayor and the Greater London Assembly were tasked with making local policy decisions, while the agency was beholden to the Department for Education. “We could do anything we wanted as long as the DfE agreed, which meant we could do whatever the DfE wanted,” recalls Evans.
Boris Johnson swept into office in 2008 as mayor armed with a list of 12 projects he wanted to achieve, all named after Greek and Roman gods. Project Oracle was the mission to build an evidence base and share best practices, and Evans was tasked with commissioning Project Daedalus to support young offenders.
“The Wikipedia hits in that office building went up significantly after Boris came in”, as Evans and his team tried to work out who these gods were. Daedalus had created the world’s first prison to imprison the Minotaur.
Evans took what he had learned at the Treasury about measuring funding outcomes to prove the impact of the £80 million he had to spend. He set about making it go further by cutting the number of projects supported and limiting them to longer-term initiatives with higher success rates.
Stephen Evans speaking at an AoC event with his old boss David Hughes
Learning outcomes
But he concedes that for adult education, it is not always possible to quantify an intangible impact.
“The classic criticism of economists is that they know the price of everything and the value of nothing. I hope I don’t quite fall into that trap, but others will judge,” he says.
“Often, you’re not going to help people with multiple complex difficulties turn their lives around in six months. You need to work with them for years, and that’s where short-term funding doesn’t really help at all”.
He gives the example of the citizens curriculum, a programme piloted by L&W shortly after he took over, where adult learners co-design the curriculum content. Its evaluation focused on a range of targets, proving that participants were subsequently more likely to use preventive services than emergency ones, with less school truancy among children and fewer callouts for anti-social behaviour.
But having that focus on broader outcomes is “very difficult” in the world of public policy where – “to paraphrase the Lord of the Rings, it’s a risk of one scheme to end them all, as though just one project can solve the ills of the world. It can’t”.
While the projects saved money for the public purse, the challenge was that those savings were split between the NHS, the criminal justice service, DfE and the Department for Work and Pensions. “They didn’t all think, ‘well, let’s invest together, because we all care about these things’. That’s the nut we’re always trying to crack.”
Getting the nation learning
After two years as a director for training provider Working Links, he then became deputy CEO of NIACE at a time of acute funding pressures. Three-quarters of NIACE’s income came from a DfE grant.
He recalls how “all our eggs were in one basket, and the basket had a hole in the bottom”.
He and Hughes embarked on the merger with Inclusion, an employment-focused organisation which shared a similar social purpose, and L&W was born.
L&W has just launched the Get the Nation Learning campaign to champion lifelong learning, and the Festival of Learning, which it has run for over 30 years, has been rebranded as Get the Nation Learning to celebrate inspiring work in the adult learning sector.
A vital part of L&W’s role is also to “shine a light” on “the scale of the cuts” to adult education and skills, particularly when shiny new announcements such as the recent £600 million for construction training are made. “When you net that off against the reductions they haven’t announced to the adult skills budgets and the end of the Multiply programme, it’s not quite so rosy in the garden,” Evans says.
But the “flip side” of Evans’ basket – which he concedes still has a hole in its bottom – is that now he has “plates spinning everywhere” which he has to keep moving.
Evans is pragmatic that more government funding for adult education is unlikely to emerge in the short term so he is focusing efforts on getting employers – who are now investing 26 per cent less in training than they were in 2005 – to “step up”. It is “not right”, he believes, that graduates are three times more likely to get training at work than non-graduates.
Lately, Evans has been rereading his books about the history of skills policy in the UK to prepare for an L&W report showing how adult participation in FE has hit its lowest point since the aftermath of the Second World War.
The findings have prompted him to pause for reflection on how historically, adult education initiatives were often instigated by faith and community groups, and later by socially responsible employers such as Joseph Rowntree. “Fast forward to now, it’s always ‘what can the government do for us?’” he says. “We’ve lost that self-organising of employers and communities.”
Stephen Evans, CEO of the Learning and Work Institute
Devo challenge
Evans would like to see regional mayors topping up adult education from their other budgets to “get political salience for adult education” but concedes that boosting adult education is not viewed as a vote-winning policy.
Seeing adult education being deprioritised by the government while employers spend less on it too has been “pretty frustrating” for Evans during his time as CEO.
Our time is up, and Evans bids me farewell. “It feels so weird, rabbiting on about myself. You’ve done well not to look bored,” he remarks in his typical self-effacing style. Not at all, I assure him – it’s been fascinating.
