The government has pledged to introduce legislation to support its lifetime skills guarantee policy and enable flexible training throughout people’s lives in the Queen’s speech today.
In her address to the state opening of Parliament, the monarch also promised that ministers would address lost learning during the pandemic.
Last night, Downing Street confirmed that a new Skills and Post-16 Education Bill will be introduced on May 18.
It will put into law the promised reforms from the FE white paper, including a new lifelong loan entitlement, local skills improvement plans and greater powers for the education secretary to intervene in colleges that fail to meet local needs.
The Queen’s speech included one sentence which addressed the topic.
Specifically, the monarch said: “Legislation will support a lifetime skills guarantee to enable flexible access to high quality education and training throughout people’s lives.”
Further detail on what the legislation will look like in practice is expected next week.
Prime minister Boris Johnson has said these new laws “are the rocket fuel that we need to level up this country and ensure equal opportunities for all”.
Education secretary Gavin Williamson added: “Through legislation, our vision is to transform the sector and expand opportunity right across the country, so that more people can get the skills they need to get good jobs.”
Documents published after the Queen’s speech said the main benefits of the Skills Bill would be:
●Offering adults across the country the opportunity to retrain in later life through the lifetime skills guarantee, helping them to gain in–demand skills and open up further job opportunities.
●Realigning the system around the needs of employers so that people are trained for the skills gaps that exist now and in the future, in sectors the economy needs including construction, digital, clean energy and manufacturing.
●Improving the quality of training available by making sure that providers are better run, qualifications are better regulated, and that providers’ performance can be effectively assessed.
Two years on, the sector’s ‘centres for excellence’ in special educational needs will be joined by mini-hubs. Jess Staufenberg looks at how the model is working so far
This week, the three colleges representing each centre officially start their third year. So what have they achieved so far? FE Week can reveal what they’ve been up to, with what resources – and how a drop in funding has come at the same time as a planned expansion of the model.
In June 2019, Derby College in the East Midlands, Weston College in the south-west and City College Norwich in the east of England won contracts to become the centres for excellence.
They were to get a slice of £1.2 million every year via the Education and Training Foundation, as part of the ETF’s wider “SEND workforce development” programme.
The need for sharing expertise was real then and continues to be now. There are 200,000 students in general FE colleges with a learning difficulty or disability, or about one in five students. Of those, only around 65,000 have Education, Health and Care Plans.
This means that mainstream colleges don’t get extra funding for most students, and finding that support from somewhere else is crucial.
“We noticed we couldn’t always get leaders to engage with SEND provision because they had so many other pressing priorities,” says Teresa Carroll, head of inclusion at the ETF.
“So we really wanted to address that with the centres. The majority of learners also haven’t got plans, so it was about using that resource really well.”
‘Community, curriculum, people’
City College Norwich got the focus of “community”, which largely means engaging employers. Derby College got “curriculum”, with a focus on inclusive learning pathways, and Weston College got “people”, with a focus on staff development.
Each centre has a “strategic leadership” focus on supporting CEOs and senior leaders, as well as a “community of practice” focus on webinars, resources and support for practitioners.
In the first year, the centres were supposed to reach 45 leaders and 360 practitioners, but the ETF says an additional 400 people were reached.
In the second year, the centres were asked to reach 90 leaders and 360 practitioners, and this time an additional 2,500 people were engaged with, says the ETF. The targets are even higher for 2021-22.
In its first year, Weston College worked with 30 leaders on putting SEND at the heart of college strategy through one-to-one conversations with their own CEO.
“I will sit down with the leader, and ask what’s on your shopping list? Then we will jigsaw together what’s needed,” says chief executive Paul Phillips.
In 2013, his college was recognised for its ‘outstanding’ SEND provision by Ofsted, and in particular for the “independent, enriched” lives his learners led as a result of the college’s approach. Phillips has also visited 19 prisons in the past two years to help with SEND provision.
Meanwhile, 1,000 participants joined the college’s “community of practice” conferences in the first year, focused on staff development. Participants are also invited to a “day in the life of Weston College” to look at its autism residential training facility and sensory base.
“People want to see it in practice,” explains Phillips. Sam Mayhew, head of inclusion at the college, says: “You’re giving both practical and operational ways for practitioners to work, and then supporting leaders about the strategic direction too.”
Meanwhile at Derby College, director of inclusion Sarah Le-Good and her principal, Mandie Stravino, have booked in senior leaders from other colleges for weekly sessions. Follow-up sessions with Le-Good are then offered half-termly or monthly.
For six colleges in need of significantly more support, the team has run “full two-day reviews” to help identify issues and a comprehensive strategy forward.
Overall, 60 leaders have been supported. Training has also been offered in topics such as “compassionate agitation”, which Le-Good describes as learning how to “ask compassionate, difficult questions” around the SEND provision on offer in a college.
City College Norwich has similarly engaged with leaders through one-to-one sessions with principal Corrienne Peasgood. They have been particularly interested in the college’s employability focus, she says.
Paula Ottaway heads up the college’s MINT Centre, which “is like an employment agency, where each young person is allocated a job coach. They’ve built up relationships with hundreds of employers over the years.”
The results speak for themselves: during lockdown, the college managed to get 40 young people with SEND into employment. Nationally, only six per cent people with a learning disability are in work.
The MINT Centre at City College Norwich
‘Employability spokes’
It is this employability focus that the DfE now wants replicated, FE Week can reveal.
As the pandemic has laid waste to job opportunities for young people – particularly those with SEND – the ETF is tendering for six new providers to come on board, as mini-hubs for best practice around engaging with employers. The ETF are calling these providers “spokes” to the three centres.
“We want those spokes in the regions where the centres aren’t,” says Carroll. The smaller amount of cash reflects the narrower focus: “This is a very particular piece of work around engaging employers.”
The invitation to tender goes out on May 21 and there will be £30,000 up for grabs to each provider, who will need to be Ofsted grade 2 or above and working in the north-west, north-east, Yorkshire and the Humber, West Midlands, London or the south-east.
Each will need a strong track record of securing employment for SEND learners and, alongside an employer, must deliver at least three joint activities to 150 participants. They will also be expected to run face-to-face activities in the region, online activities nationally, and hit all targets by March next year.
‘Drop in funding’
But even as it expands the model and raises targets, the DfE is not providing more money to the ETF for 2021-22. Instead the money has dropped, FE Week can reveal.
Whereas £1.2 million was provided in 2019-20 and 2020-21, this financial year the funding is about £1.18 million, says Carroll.
And that money does not all go to the centres: “over 80 per cent” goes directly to the three colleges each year, with the rest going on the ETF’s SEND workforce development, says Carroll. FE Week has roughly calculated that, if split evenly, this should amount to £320,000 per centre per year.
The ETF says this is a “reasonable calculation”, but refused to say exactly how much each centre receives yearly. The amounts will have “slightly differed between the centres, depending on their programmes of work”, they add.
The remainder of the cash goes to the ETF’s other SEND workforce activities, such as delivering courses and developing new resources, and also on an external evaluator of the programme, RINA, whose services cost around £16,000.
Corienne Peasgood, principal, City College Norwich
The centres for excellence have noticed the funding drop. Phillips says the funding is “not so good this year” and the college has done “a lot of supplementing” from its other funding pots.
Peasgood says the funding “went up a bit, then down a bit” while Le-Good says, “The targets are higher this year, and we are having to do it with significantly less income”. Phillips adds that “the funding isn’t proportional to the targets”.
Targets have risen steeply: for this coming year, 200 senior leaders and 3,000 practitioners must be reached. Le-Good explains that last year her target was to engage with 150 practitioners, but her college engaged 1,000, so that is this year’s target.
In a way it shows colleges are already managing some of the higher targets. But on less money it’s a tougher ask. It means that Derby College, for instance, will no longer be able to offer its two-day full review.
The other question is, are these the right targets? The number of staff engaged surely isn’t the end goal: why not better learner outcomes, or at least better Ofsted comments?
“We don’t really want to have hard targets, but we do want to see changes,” says Carroll. “We want to see more and more providers being recognised for their inclusive practice.”
Yet the centres are clear the real challenge lies in knitting-up all services – not just theirs.
“It’s about transition in and transition out,” says Peasgood. “How does this link to schools, and then adult services and employment? You can improve the middle bit, but if the transition isn’t improved, then we’re a bit of an island.”
Paul Phillips, chief executive, Weston College
It’s a valid comment. All three colleges sit in local authorities that have been blasted under “local area SEND inspections” by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission.
Phrases like “no coordinated response”, “long waiting times for diagnosis”, “poor access to services” and “lack of confidence among parents” make the reports for North Somerset Council, Derby City Council and Norfolk County Council damning reading.
If the government wants a system-led solution, Clare Howard, chief executive at Natspec, has a suggestion. Her organisation, which represents the 115 specialist FE providers for learners with SEND, would like to set up centres for excellence out of its membership network too.
“We want to run an equivalent to these centres for more complex needs, to provide the kind of training that is not happening locally. Mainstream colleges, schools and other providers are lacking this kind of expert support”.
The SEND centres have done much to support and upskill leaders and lecturers. Adequate funding, more expert partners, and a less embattled wider context would now allow them to really fly.
[UPDATE 11/05/2021: Downing Street has said the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill will be introduced on 18 May]
Ministers are set to introduce a new Skills and Post-16 Education Bill on Wednesday, according to reports.
It will follow tomorrow’s Queen’s speech and encompass the legislation promised in the FE white paper to create more local training and learning opportunities.
But what can we expect from the Bill? Here’s a recap of what has been mooted and what we’ve learned since the white paper was unveiled in January.
Make new local skills improvement plans legally binding
Central to the government’s reforms are the creation of local skills improvement plans, led by employers and in collaboration with colleges and training providers.
The plans will aim to make colleges align the courses they offer to local employers’ needs.
According to the white paper, the government “intends to legislate to put the employer leadership of local skills improvement plans on a statutory footing, strengthening the voice of employers in local skills systems across the country”.
Speaking at an FE Week webcast in March, the Department for Education’s director of post-16 strategy and architect of the white paper, Keith Smith, said putting the employer role on a statutory footing will do two things.
Keith Smith
“One, we want there to be real confidence in employers and business that they have a voice that will be connected into the system going forward. We want there to be true representation not just in the employer conversation, we want it to be meaningful. We want them to know they have a place and purpose in coming together in being able to articulate the shape of the skills system is put together and how it is prioritised.
“The second bit is of course we want it to become part of the core purpose in the skills delivery space that actually, whether you’re a college or part of the institution delivery, that there is a link that you have to pay due regard to those local priorities.”
Local skills improvement plans will form part of what the government is now calling a “skills accelerator programme”, which also incorporates Strategic Development Fund pilots announced in the white paper to create greater collaboration among local colleges and providers.
Give government new powers over further education colleges
The white paper said the government would introduce “new powers” that allow the education secretary to intervene “where local providers are consistently unable to deliver the skills priorities for that area”.
This will include new legislation to enable the education secretary to intervene where colleges refuse to deliver courses decided through local skills improvement plans.
Smith clarified this would be the case during FE Week’s webcast in March, although he said the extent of these powers was still being determined.
According to the white paper, the “strengthened” powers will enable the education secretary to “intervene locally to close or set up college corporations, bring about changes to membership or composition of governing bodies or review leadership, or take other actions where there are long term weaknesses.
“This includes the possibility of intervention within a local area, where there is evidence of issues affecting a limited number of providers. Use of these powers is envisaged only as a last resort, where agreement has not been possible through other means and there are no alternative options for resolution.”
Introduce a ‘lifelong loan entitlement’
The other part of the government’s white paper reforms that appears to involve legislation is the promised lifelong loan entitlement.
Part of the prime minister’s lifetime skills guarantee first announced last September, the entitlement will enable people to access four years’ worth of student loan funding across further and higher education providers to study modular provision throughout their lifetime.
The idea is to create a system that allows for more part-time studying while people are working.
The FE White Paper specifically said: “For the lifelong loan entitlement to be a success it is crucial that the user is at the heart of these reforms. Creating a more efficient and user-friendly system, meeting the needs of individuals, employers and the economy will require new legislation to move away from a system grounded in the concept of full years or courses of study. It will also require significant changes to Student Loans Company systems.”
However, the DfE has promised to first consult on the details of this entitlement and has set a rollout date of 2025.
Students will no longer wear face masks in school and college from next week, Boris Johnson has confirmed.
The recommendation that masks be worn in classrooms and by learners in communal areas will be lifted from May 17.
However, the rule that staff and other adults wear face coverings in situations where social distancing is not possible, including corridors and communal areas, will remain in place.
The prime minister told a Downing Street briefing that from next Monday, the government “will no longer require face coverings in classrooms, or for students in communal areas in secondary schools and colleges”.
The Department for Education had already said it planned to remove the recommendation in line with step three of the government’s roadmap out of lockdown.
Today, the prime minister confirmed that the next phase of restrictions would be relaxed from Monday.
Education secretary Gavin Williamson tweeted shortly after to say the decision has been taken as “infection rates decrease and the vaccination roll-out covers most adults”.
Pupils will no longer be advised to wear face coverings in schools and colleges from 17 May, as infection rates decrease and the vaccination roll-out covers most adults.
All other protective measures such as ‘bubbles’, extra hygiene & social distancing will remain in place.
— Gavin Williamson (@GavinWilliamson) May 10, 2021
Earlier this month, unions and scientists called for the recommendation, which has been in place since schools reopened more widely in March, to be extended to June 21 at the earliest. They warned that not doing so would have “consequences” for the health of young people and parents.
But the DfE said last week that it planned to remove the rule “as infection rates continue to decline and our vaccination programme rolls out successfully”.
Ofsted will review the impact its inspection framework has on staff wellbeing and the government has promised not to publish guidance outside of working hours as part of a new charter unveiled today.
The Department for Education and Ofsted have made 12 commitments as part of the new education staff wellbeing charter.
From the autumn, schools and colleges will also be able to sign up to a voluntary charter of 11 pledges, aimed at showing a commitment to “protect, promote and enhance” staff wellbeing.
One of Ofsted’s three commitments is to “review whether the framework is having inadvertent impacts on staff wellbeing (for example, creating unnecessary workload) and take steps to alleviate any issues”.
They will also ensure inspectors take staff wellbeing into account in coming to their judgements and monitor it through quality assurance and evaluation.
One of DfE’s nine pledges is to publish gov.uk updates aimed at education professionals “only during working hours”. However, exceptions include if there is a “significant user need” in publishing the information, or a legislative requirement
End of mental health stigma
The DfE also wants to break down stigma around mental health by building it into its “wider communications strategy on recruitment and retention, linking to existing campaigns that aim to tackle mental health stigma in our society”.
Schools and colleges who sign the charter commit to “placing wellbeing and mental health at the heart of our decision making.
“We will support staff to make positive choices for their own wellbeing and encourage a collegiate culture across and between all roles in the school or college,” it reads.
Pledges include having a “sub-strategy” for protecting school and college leader wellbeing and mental health, as well as “hold[ing] ourselves accountable” by “measuring staff wellbeing” and monitoring “rends over time”.
A charter schools and colleges can sign up to from the Autumn
The government will review the progress its made against the commitments in 2023. Schools and colleges will also be surveyed to gauge how much impact the charter has had.
The charter was drawn up by a group made up of teaching unions, several schools and colleges and mental health charity Mind.
This pledge was later confirmed in the Skills for Jobs white paper, which promised to “expand our flagship Institutes of Technology programme to every part of the country by the end of this Parliament”.
Institutes of technology are collaborations between colleges and universities, intended to deliver higher technical training in science, technology, engineering and maths subjects.
Bids in this second wave include proposals for IoTs led by the north-west-based Blackpool and The Fylde College, and by the University of Suffolk in the east.
The £120 million up for grabs will fund capital projects to create the institutes.
A total of 15 bids were received in stage 1 of the process. Of those, 13 applicants have been invited to progress to stage 2 which will “test the viability, feasibility and deliverability of proposals in more detail”.
Here is a list of the 13 bids, their lead sponsors, higher education partners, and sector specialisms:
Lead Applicant of IoT proposal
FE Core Partners
HE Core Partners
Sector Specialism
Blackpool and The Fylde College
Burnley College
Lancaster and Morecambe College
Nelson and Colne College
Preston’s College
Runshaw College
Edge Hill University
Lancaster University
University of Central Lancashire
Digital
Engineering
Health and Life Sciences
Manufacturing
Infrastructure (Built Environment, Energy and Transport)
Cheshire College South and West
Macclesfield College
Reaseheath College
Warrington and Vale Royal College
University of Chester
Agritech/Precision Agriculture
Digital
Engineering
Health and Life Sciences
Infrastructure (Built Environment, Energy and Transport)
Manufacturing
Chichester College Group
Crawley College
Brinsbury College
Haywards Heath College
North East Surrey College of Technology (NESCOT)
Worthing College
University of Brighton
University of Sussex
Construction
Engineering and Manufacturing Technologies
Information & Communication Technologies
DN Colleges Group
Barnsley College
Doncaster College (DN Colleges Group)
Sheffield Hallam University
The University of Sheffield, Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre Training Centre (AMRCTC)
A deeper understanding of T Levels by MPs will be crucial, writes Damian Hinds
Giving young people the best opportunities to set themselves on a path to quality is more important now than ever. For that, skilled employment is essential.
T Levels are a once-in-a-generation opportunity for our technical education and training. They will be key to putting the technical and academic paths on an even footing and equipping young people with the skills they will need for their future careers.
It brings together members of both the Commons and the Lords with a particular interest in technical education. It is a group with a depth of insight and experience, and from across the political spectrum.
We are fortunate to have as sponsors engineering company AECOM, the Education and Training Foundation and the Gatsby Foundation, with different and important perspectives on the subject.
At our first open meeting, it was great to welcome both the education secretary and the skills minister to speak and take questions. I was really pleased that such a wide variety of both colleges and businesses were able to attend.
Raising awareness of T Levels will be vital to success, and that includes making sure there is a deep understanding of T Levels in parliament, alongside awareness among businesses and families, stakeholders and the wider public.
MPs play a particularly relevant role, through their links to the colleges, schools and training providers and businesses in their constituencies.
‘Make sure all voices are heard’
With any new programme there are always public policy questions. In the case of T Levels these include the social mobility opportunity, ensuring diversity, careers advice and the link with onward destinations; and there is particular interest in how to optimise industry placements.
We want to make sure that the voices of young people, industry and the education sector are heard as the rollout of T Levels progresses.
A challenging and wide-ranging qualification, T Levels will appeal to a whole variety of students. The courses involve English, maths and digital skills, alongside broad core content for the principal discipline studied, and they allow for some more occupationally specialised content too.
The total time for a T Level is expected to be around 1,800 hours over the two years – a significant increase on most current tech-ed courses.
At the heart of the T Level is ‘on-the-job’ experience in a substantial industry placement of at least 315 hours (that’s about 45 days).
This is the chance for a student both to build their technical knowledge and skills, and to develop those workplace skills on which firms place such a premium.
It is this element – the placement – that has most often caught the eye both of young people and their potential future employers. One of the key success factors is going to be about sufficiency of quality placements, across the different subjects and across the country.
Big, collective commitment is needed from firms, especially with current pressures. But it is also a great opportunity for business to invest in and develop our nation’s talent pipeline.
It is essential that the qualification meets the needs of businesses. So employers have been involved in T Level design from the start, putting together course content and setting the parameters of assessment.
‘Get the message to parents’
Launching a new qualification against the backdrop of a pandemic is clearly challenging and keeping up momentum will be even more important. I know the first providers offering T Levels have been putting a lot of thought, and effort, into the roll-out.
Key to supporting the efforts of providers and businesses is getting the T Levels message to the people who are often the most influential careers advisers in a young person’s life: parents.
This is a formative time for T Levels as the subject range extends and more providers come on board.
Most importantly, it is the time when more and more young people will be looking to the T Level as the ‘NexT Level’ qualification that can get their career off to a strong start.
Restrict the funding new apprenticeship providers can initially access and use recognised milestones to help prevent failure, writes Jane Hickie
The Skills for Jobs white paper was a good opportunity to run a stock-take on where we are in terms of protecting apprentices and other learners in the FE system when things go wrong.
It is important to recognise that this is a two-way street in the sense that government and providers have an equal responsibility to ensure that a committed learner should be able to complete their course or programme without significant disruption.
When I first joined AELP five years ago, I sat in meetings with officials when AELP member providers were proposing improvements to how provider failures should be handled.
It must be said that there was a feeling on our side that subsequent improvements could have been introduced faster; but some have taken place, particularly since the ESFA appointed a director to lead on provider market oversight.
The pandemic has acted as a stress test for the sustainability of the provider supply base. While some providers have had to make staff redundant and use furlough, it is perhaps surprising that the number of actual provider casualties has been so low when programme starts have crashed.
Remember that in the case of apprenticeships, we are talking about an employer demand-led system.
So when the ESFA first raised in 2018 the possibility of placing a cap on a provider’s ability to grow, AELP expressed concern that this might interfere with the direct customer relationship between levy-paying employers and providers.
Now that all employers are on the digital apprenticeship service, denying choice over their external provider and imposing growth caps on good providers would be even more questionable – although we understand the government’s concerns about providers being “too big to fail”.
It is far preferable that Ofsted inspections and ESFA audits act as potential breaks on growth if things are going wrong.
Following the ESFA proposals in 2018, we recommended restricting the amount of funding new providers could initially access, and using recognised milestones.
These could include successful Ofsted monitoring visits, full Ofsted inspections and the ESFA’s provider financial assurance visits, to allow access to greater amounts until they become established.
‘Use a before, during and after approach’
AELP now believes in the light of the white paper that we should be adopting a “before, during and after” approach to provider monitoring and intervention. The “before” part is centred on a provider’s application to the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers.
The fact that we are on a second RoATP refresh in two years demonstrates that this aspect of the regulatory regime has not worked well, with many providers – even after the first refresh – not evidencing any delivery.
This time the government really must get it right. The Skills Bill in the Queen’s Speech may also address the question of individuals being “fit and proper” to run all provider types in the sector.
The “during” part necessitates a shifting of the dial and a far more proactive approach to prevention and support, rather than reactive intervention.
Last year the ESFA set up a large provider oversight unit, covering the 30 largest ITPs. This was a welcome move away from a one-sized approach to provider and risk management.
In the unfortunate event of a provider failure, we need a more effective process to protect learners
Alongside this, the focus should be particularly on Ofsted, including outstanding new provider monitoring visits in the short term to ensure all providers have had some level of quality oversight.
Then, in the unfortunate event of a provider failure or market exit, we need a more effective process to protect learners – the “after” part. That requires more transparency from the ESFA on the actions it takes.
We also need to return to those discussions of five years ago on how the support of the providers who take on the affected learners is properly and fairly recognised.
Tightening up the approach towards these three aspects of oversight will greatly reduce the temptation to become too preoccupied with how much a provider is growing in order to meet employer demand.
Taking a restorative approach so learners can say what they really think about sexual harassment is a powerful starting point, writes Tif Ward
For many staff in FE, there will have been a sense of familiarity in the claims of sexual harassment made on the Everyone’s Invited website, after the murder of Sarah Everard.
Some people on the website said they have felt unheard when they’ve made disclosures, because of the reactions of others. We know that young people sometimes report that their peers say that inappropriate behaviour is “banter” or just a laugh.
Young people can often feel as though they themselves have to be apologetic about what has happened, even if they were the ones who were uncomfortable. They don’t always know how to name what has happened to them in clear language, perhaps out of politeness or not wanting to be too challenging.
‘Using the right language’
That’s why we’ve focused on open, clear conversations at our college. It’s important to normalise talking about healthy sexual relationships.
We want to encourage students to use the right language – not “he forced me to have sex”, but “rape”, for instance. And we want to have restorative conversations, so everyone, not only females, can be involved.
This is particularly important because some families in further education can often blame the victim or minimise experiences. Parents might say, “Well, what do they expect if they get drunk?” or “I told them not to go out and hang with those friends, they’re bad for them”, and so on.
So we need individual conversations on a case-by-case basis about language, including the language they’re using and what that means.
In a recent session on consent at our college, some male students were very challenging in their behaviours and attitudes. They were condoning a victim-blaming approach. We ran a restorative approach where we asked the other students how that language made them feel.
It was done in an expert way, and several of the males in that group realised, and fell away from the main leader. He was then picked up by safeguarding, to try to understand why he held that view.
‘Listen to the student voice’
It’s hugely important we give learners the chance to be really open about what they truly think. A restorative approach is a starting point for resolving that.
These conversations often result in a peak in disclosures in college, from female students but from all students, too. The conversations trigger something, and now is their chance to get help.
Colleges can do further things to normalise conversations about healthy relationships. Staff need to be visible and available in communal areas to observe groups, to spot issues with power dynamics.
The conversations trigger something, and now is their chance to get help
Increasing student voice is really important, such as taking learners to forums with the police, the constabulary and the crime commissioner, and to the governing board, too. This means change is escalated to the most senior levels.
We must include all students. We must emphasise the importance of having male friends if you’re a girl, for example, and vice versa. We need to acknowledge that toxic masculinity affects both boys and girls, and boys can also be victims of sexual harassment.
We also need to build awareness around some vulnerable young people with special educational needs and disabilities as they explore their sexuality, and how they can stay safe. Sometimes other students don’t know how to respond if they are approached romantically by more vulnerable learners, so it’s about supporting them too.
Ahead of festivals, it can be a good idea to hold conversations on how to stay safe in these environments.
Meanwhile, adult learners on campus can be brought in to share their experiences.
Colleges are in a unique position because they interact with so many different sections of society – they engage with learners, employers, families, business groups and so on.
We have to be mindful that these open, restorative conversations can’t just be for tutorial time. They need to be undertaken across the whole board, with everyone
