The Department for Education is assembling a new team of legislators to implement education secretary Gavin Williamson’s “ambitious vision” for reform in the upcoming FE white paper.
Job adverts went out earlier this month for two officers, one senior officer, one lead and one manager for a parliamentary team to work on the new Bill that has been labelled Williamson’s “top priority” and one that will have “a lot” of interest from Downing Street.
Under the auspices of the department’s Higher and Further Education Group, successful applicants, the adverts read, will have an “exciting, challenging and high-profile new role” working with senior leaders “on an ambitious reform programme”.
“You will work with and support the department, special advisers and ministers through the parliamentary handling of a Bill with a lot of interest from No10,” it continues.
Salaries will range from £29,363 for Bill officers to £61,014 for the Bill manager. All of the roles are on fixed term contracts, set to end in August 2022.
Responsibilities for the roles will include briefing ministers to take the Bill through Parliament, overseeing parliamentary intelligence and communications, and coordinating the FE Reform Parliamentary Ambassadors – MPs who were appointed by education secretary Gavin Williamson earlier this year to champion his reform plans.
Criteria for the Bill team ranges between roles, but the lead and manager adverts are looking for applicants “adept in influencing colleagues and negotiating solutions to problems” and with “expertise in building influential and trusted relationships across Whitehall and Parliament”.
The much-anticipated FE white paper is set to launch this autumn and is expected to include major changes to government powers over colleges and to how provision is arranged across the sector.
The Department for Education confirmed today that the white paper will be published “later this year”, despite concerns it could be delayed following the Treasury’s decision to hold a one-year, rather than multi-year, spending review in November.
Prime minister Boris Johnson has often highlighted further education reform as one his government’s top priorities, and brought in sector expert Professor Alison Wolf earlier this year from King’s College to advise Number 10 on FE policy for three days a week.
Wolf was appointed by Michael Gove in 2011 to run an independent review of vocational education, and she also served on the Sainsbury Review – which laid the groundwork for the government’s flagship T Levels – and on the panel for the Augar Review.
The DfE’s Higher and Further Education Group is led by a director general, a member of the department’s leadership team, whose responsibilities include overseeing further education provision, quality, restructuring and intervention, the adult education budget, and 16 to 19 funding.
The DfE began gearing up for major FE reform earlier this year by hiring a team of 16 senior advisers to “craft a wide range of policies” within the department’s higher and further education group, as reported by FE Week in June.
Applicants for all of the new legislative roles have until 11.55pm this Sunday (25 October) to apply. Video interviews will likely be conducted a fortnight after applications have been sifted through.
Ofsted has this morning published the letters from its first 10 “interim visits” of FE providers that are taking place this autumn.
The five-page letters include inspectors’ findings from interviews with both leaders and learners about the provider’s response to Covid-19, but do not include a judgement grade.
They include information about what actions leaders are taking to “ensure they provide an appropriate curriculum that responds to the reasonable needs of learners and stakeholders and adapts to changed circumstances”, as well as what steps staff are taking to “ensure that the approaches used for building knowledge and skills are appropriate to meet the reasonable needs of students”.
Inspectors also explore how leaders are “ensuring that students are safe and well informed about potential risks, including from online sources”.
Eight of the visits were to providers judged as ‘requires improvement’, while one was to a ‘good’ provider and the other was ‘outstanding’.
Ofsted announced in July that it would carry out these “interim visits” as part of a phased return to routine inspections, following a pause to this activity as result of Covid-19 in March.
The full inspection regime is currently planned to resume in January 2021, but this is being kept under review.
You can find links to each of the 10 interimn visit letters below.
The billion-dollar market for competitive video gaming is continuing to rise, with new jobs requiring fresh talent. And it’s not just about playing – like sports, the sector requires those with transferable skills in marketing, sales, coaching, commentary, editing and lots more. To facilitate this, new esports BTECs from Pearson and the British Esports Association aim to foster the workforce of the future, writes Pearson and the British Esports Association.
The worlds of education and esports are colliding.
Over the past few years, UK universities and colleges have begun offering courses in the space to help people get the skills to land a job in the burgeoning field.
Esports is a hugely popular recreational activity that offers many job and career opportunities around the world. It’s different from standard video gaming in that esports is competitive, it’s human vs human and usually has an engaging spectator element to it, like traditional sports. Viewers typically tune in to watch matches live streamed on platforms like Twitch and YouTube, as opposed to standard television channels.
Esports tournaments see amateur or professional gamers compete against one another for a cash prize. There are more than 40 esports games, including 5v5 battle arena game League of Legends, 1v1 sports game FIFA, 4v4 shooter Call of Duty and more. Some tournaments have prize pools of more than $1m, with the biggest reaching $30m and beyond.
Overall, it’s estimated that the global esports market will generate revenues of more than $1bn in 2020, with almost 500m viewers around the world.
Like sports, esports requires a host of talent across a range of disciplines, from commentary to coaching, marketing to management, broadcasting, production, PR, journalism and everything in-between. These skills are transferable, leading to a wide network of career pathways crossing into other sectors, for example sports, broadcasting, cybersecurity and the wider digital sphere and beyond.
Pearson and the British Esports Association recognise and welcome this, and are leading the way in esports education to create pathways for young people seeking careers in esports and other closely linked digital industries.
In April 2020, the pair linked up to develop the first esports BTEC qualifications of their kind in the world. Institutions in the UK and around the world now have the opportunity to offer these new level 2 and 3 qualifications to students as of September 2020, with funding confirmed in the UK from the Education and Skills Funding Agency.
Aside from this, British Esports has been developing a wealth of esports careers advice, and Pearson has been producing useful content for students, teacher resources and others to educate them, including this piece busting common myths around esports.
Today, there are a host of colleges and universities running esports courses in the UK, including Staffordshire University, The Confetti Institute of Creative Technologies, part of Nottingham Trent University, the University of Chichester and more. You can see a full list of colleges and universities involved in esports here.
The education sphere is also embracing esports’ competitive side as a recreational activity, too. More than 130 school, college and alternative provision teams take part in the British Esports Championships, a series of tournaments for students aged 12 and above. Matches usually take place in classrooms after school each Wednesday, but students are now also allowed to play from home in light of the covid-19 situation.
Teachers and students have reported a raft of benefits from the Championships, including increased attendance, behaviour and concentration levels. Other benefits of esports include the promotion of communication, leadership and social skills, greater reaction times, confidence, making new friends, having fun and more.
One such activity promoting the benefits of competitive gaming is World Esports Day. Taking place on October 24th, this will help increase awareness of the activity, with companies, teams, players and others getting involved with livestreams, gaming sessions, discussion panels and more, all whilst raising money for charity at the same time.
Kalam Neale, Curriculum Lead at Barnsley College, commented: “Esports education is providing a brand new, creative, digital learning environment where students are exceeding expectations, achieving high grades and developing personally, socially and holistically to become more confident individuals. They are employment-ready with the added opportunities for learners to progress onto Higher Education at university.
“The esports qualifications allow us as educators to continue to realise our vision for our learners, in order to transform lives, ensure learners have a great time, achieve their aims and progress onto their chosen destination in employment or Higher Education.”
For teachers and those in education who are looking for more information on how to get involved in esports, there’s the Esports in Education Summit, taking place online on November 10th, held by AoC Sport and British Esports and sponsored by Pearson. It’s free for teachers and leaders in education and registration is open now.
Twenty managers who currently cover 10 roles at Greater Brighton Metropolitan College (GB Met) were informed yesterday evening that they are at risk of redundancy.
No teaching or back office jobs are currently affected.
GB Met triggered formal FE Commissioner intervention earlier this year after it was granted an undisclosed amount of emergency funding from the government and its then-chief executive, Nick Juba, quit.
The college, which was formed by the merger of City College Brighton and Northbrook College in 2017, said its income has fallen “significantly” in the period post-merger and this has then been exacerbated by the impact of Covid-19.
Andy Green has been seconded from Chichester College Group to lead GB Met while a new permanent chief executive is found and is attempting to find savings through a restructure.
A spokesperson told FE Week: “The college has launched a consultation to restructure the leadership of the organisation to save significant costs and align its resources with the needs of a college of this size.
“The proposed structure is in line with the college’s aspirations both to recover its financial position and to improve the quality of the student experience.
“GB MET needs a strong and agile leadership team to lead it through the period of recovery. This is a difficult time for staff at risk but GB MET is committed to securing its future as a provider of outstanding education, meeting the needs of its local communities. To reach this goal, costs need to be saved and this is why a leadership restructure is required and being implemented.”
The spokesperson did not disclose how much money the college anticipates to save following the restructure at the time of going to press.
GB Met’s accounts show that its income sat at £41 million in 2016, which fell to £39 million in 2018 and then increased slightly to £40 million last year. The accounts for 2018/19 suggest the college’s financial woes could also stem from a £21 million redevelopment project for its Pelham Street campus which began in August 2019.
The financial statements state that there “remain some cashflow timing issues to be managed during the project”, which is scheduled to complete in 2021, and their forecasts “show that a short-term borrowing facility will be required”.
GB Met had received a diagnostic visit from the FE Commissioner in December 2019 following a grade three Ofsted report, but this was escalated to formal intervention following the request for emergency funding.
Many businesses which pay into the levy – those with an annual pay bill of over £3 million – find it “challenging to use for their training needs” and it has become a “barrier” to increasing their investment in training, the report says.
“Psychologically, many firms are reluctant to invest more in other forms of training when they still have lots of ‘unspent’ funds showing in their digital apprenticeship accounts,” it reads, adding that the rates at which businesses utilise their levy allocation is low because of the “restrictive nature” of how it can be spent.
Many employers have faced problems using the levy to upskill or retrain workers, often on higher-level programmes, because apprenticeships have to last at least a year and can last several on higher programmes, whereas most employees only need “top-ups” in their knowledge.
“The government has long promised meaningful reform of the apprenticeship levy, but has not delivered it,” says CBI director general Dame Carolyn Fairbairn.
Carolyn Fairburn
“It is time to end this failed experiment.”
The CBI recommends the government use the upcoming Spending Review to turn the apprenticeship levy into a “flexible skills and training levy”, which can be used for short modular courses, pre-apprenticeship programmes, product training, professional courses, and soft skills training, regulated by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education and the Office for Students.
Committing to keeping the rate at which companies pay a levy at no more than 0.5 per cent for the duration of this parliament is another of the CBI’s recommendations.
They also want the Treasury and the Department for Education to run a performance review of the levy system every three years, bringing in stakeholders like employers and providers, to monitor its progress against an agreed set of aims.
The 190,000-strong confederation has reported prolifically on the apprenticeship levy, calling for greater government investment but not always for reform.
However, a report from November 2019 urged the government not to go ahead with mooted restrictions to how employers could use the levy, saying limits on apprentices’ age, income or level of training would make over three-quarters of businesses and trade associations either “dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied”.
The Association of Colleges released a report on Friday which found over half of SMEs do not think enough is being done to help their businesses skill and reskill their workforce ahead of the end of the Brexit transition period.
Fairbairn said replacing the apprenticeship levy and introducing tax credits “would encourage every firm to invest more in the skills that are essential to the long-term success of their company and workforce”.
The research for this report was carried out by management consultants McKinsey & Company before the outbreak of Covid-19.
Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said: “Our priority is making sure people across the country gain the skills we know employers value and that will help our economy recover as we build back better from coronavirus.”
He highlighted the recent Lifetime Skills Guarantee announced by the prime minister and new incentive payments for employers of £2,000 for each new apprentice they hire aged under 25 and £1,500 for those aged 25 and over “in recognition of the value apprentices of any age can bring to businesses and to our economic recovery”.
“Our forthcoming WhitePaper will also outline plans to build a high-quality further education system that will provide the skills that individuals, employers and the economy need to grow and thrive,” he continued.
Ministers must come up with a new policy to allow 18- to 24-year-olds on universal credit to access free full-time education, writes Mark Corney
During the last great recession – the financial crash of 2008 – many young people shielded themselves from a collapsing jobs market through participating in full-time education. The same is happening in the Covid recession of 2020.
About 42 per cent of 16- to 24-year-olds were in full-time education, according to data for March and May this year from the Office for National Statistics. Between April and July, the proportion had risen to 45 per cent. And we can assume the share could be higher when we get the data for this September.
Data on enrolments for 16- and 17-year-olds are sketchy but some evidence is emerging for 18- to 24-year-olds.
There has been a slight increase compared to last year in the proportion of 18-year-olds who have enrolled on to full-time level 4 to 6 degrees, at 41 per cent by the end of September.
More graduates aged 22 and over have entered full-time teacher training courses than usual, while applications for full-time MBAs have risen dramatically and we expect numbers on full-time one-year master level degrees also to rise significantly.
Therefore, one of the few positives of this awful recession is increasing participation in full-time education. Inspect a little closer, however, and it is only one group of 18- to 24-year-olds who have been able to shield themselves from unemployment.
They can’t study full-time and claim universal credit
These will be young people who achieved a level 3 at age 18 or 19, who have gone into full-time undergraduate higher education and then upon graduation enrolled on to full-time post-graduate courses. The picture looks very different for young adults who did not achieve a level 3 at age 18 or 19.
Although unemployed 19- to 24-year-olds might wish to study full-time to achieve a first full level 3, they can’t. Why not? Unlike full-time higher education learners, they have no access to living costs support, such as maintenance loans. At the same time, they can’t study full-time and claim universal credit.
If they did enter full-time education, the Department for Work and Pensions would suspend their universal credit, the very thing that would permit them to live and study full-time.
The number of unemployed 18- to 24-year-olds claiming universal credit in July was 530,000 in England and this will rise as job losses mount in the winter. So what does the government say to an unemployed 20-year-old wishing to access free full-time education for a first level 3 when the DWP informs them this would end their universal credit?
Of course, the same unemployed 20-year-old could say they are willing to take out a full-time maintenance loan. But the answer is essentially: “Sorry, maintenance loans are not for the likes of young people without a level 3 in further education. They are reserved for those on level 4 to 6 degrees in higher education.”
No doubt the government would tell the unemployed 20-year-old that the chancellor has introduced a comprehensive active labour market strategy to get them a job, not more full-time study. Employers have been given generous wage subsidies to offer apprenticeships, kickstart jobs and traineeships.
But the second wave of Covid-19 is stalling the economy. There will be no V-shaped recovery in the youth labour market from January. Active labour market policies work during the upswing, not the downswing.
The government has a one-size-fits-all policy for youth unemployment: wage subsidies to employers. A second policy is urgently needed alongside it, which is to expand participation in full-time level 3 vocational training for 18- to 24-year-olds, supported by access to either universal credit or maintenance loans.
In England we have an education system for 18- to 24-year-olds that helps the most qualified to shield from mass youth unemployment, but expects the least qualified to compete.
There is still time for the government to help less-well-qualified young adults get through this terrible recession – but it must act quickly.
A college has announced plans to close its campus for a two week “circuit breaker” to combat rising coronavirus cases in its area.
With the backing of the University and College Union, Preston College has made the decision ahead of Lancashire’s move into tier three – the top level of England Covid restrictions – from tomorrow.
It comes as the National Education Union calls on all schools and colleges to close for two weeks at half term.
Preston College emailed staff earlier this week to say only essential work will continue on campus for two weeks from 19 October to 1 November. One of those week’s is during half term.
All learning will be moved online for the week before half term (commencing 19 October), and any staff not on leave over half term (commencing 26 October) will work remotely.
A statement on the college’s website says: “As the global pandemic continues to cause uncertainty, at Preston’s College we are doing all that we can to keep learners and staff as safe as possible in these challenging times.
“To support the maintenance of the current situation, we have taken the decision to move to remote learning for one week, from week commencing 19th October 2020. This means that for the majority of learners, regardless of their chosen course or level, they will be required to undertake lessons remotely for the duration of this week.
“This will allow Preston’s College to continue managing the global pandemic effectively and positively. It will reduce the need for travel to college, minimising both pressure on transport networks and social interactions, at what is clearly a critical point in attempts to suppress the spread of coronavirus nationally.”
From week commencing 2 November, all learners “will follow their normal college timetable, experiencing a combination of college and home-based learning”, the statement adds.
Infection rates have risen sharply across the North West of England with Lancashire – which Preston is part of – going into tier three lockdown on Saturday.
UCU head of further education Andrew Harden praised the college, saying that it has shown “real leadership”.
“It is scandalous that Covid cases continue to rise across the country, but the government still hasn’t told colleges to shut down for two weeks over half term as part of a national ‘circuit breaker’,” he said.
“Preston College has shown real leadership in halting in-person teaching for two weeks to protect staff and students, while it considers how best to teach safely under Covid. We call on all colleges to follow its example.”
Earlier this week, advice made on 21 September by scientists from the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) was released and recommended that teaching at all colleges and universities should be online unless “face-to-face teaching is absolutely essential”.
The government has since maintained that all colleges should stay open for face-to-face delivery in all areas of England.
SAGE also urged for the introduction of circuit breaker restrictions three weeks ago – a recommendation that Labour leader Keir Starmer has now backed.
Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said: “A circuit breaker could allow the government to get in control of the test, track and trace system, and get cases lower to allow the system to work better.
“Heads, teachers and staff understand the educational impact of this, but we also understand that in exponential epidemics early action is essential. Taking action now can avoid more disruption later.”
The traineeship tender is set to be deluged with “in excess of 3,000 bidders”, with the vast majority likely to miss out on a funding allocation, claims one consultant.
The Education and Skills Funding Agency finally launched the bidding process for 19 to 24 traineeship funding on 7 October, but it is being run on an “accelerated” timetable with a deadline for bids now just eight working days away.
Up for grabs initially is a slice of £65 million to be spent between February and 31 July 2021, which is split across nine regions in England – ranging from £20.8 million for London providers to just £2.6 million for the south west.
Jim Carley, a tender specialist in the FE sector, anticipates there to be “significant” demand with an extremely low success rate.
He expects “in excess of 3,000 bidders” based on eligibility and the level of interest and oversubscription seen on previous ESFA procurements, such as the controversial non-levy tender.
“However”, he added, “the number of contracts to be awarded will likely be well below half this number, based on the upper and lower contract value caps…Consequently, between 50 per cent and potentially as many as 95 per cent of bids submitted are likely to be unsuccessful”.
Carley explained that this is not to say that all but 5 per cent of applicants would put in a poor bid, it is “more a case of how many slices of cake can be given out in the form that they [the ESFA] have got”.
Just like with the non-levy apprenticeship tender, the funding agency is planning to apply a pro-rata methodology where there are winning bids of equal quality.
A minimum tender value of £250,000 has been set, so a provider would lose out completely if, after a new ranking method, they were successful but the pro-rata process took them under this value.
Writing in FE Week’s recently published traineeships supplement, Jane Hickie, the managing director of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, also predicted that competition “will be very fierce” as the tender does not have any provider eligibility criteria, only caps.
Caps, subject to sufficient turnover, have been set at £1 million for brand new providers, £2 million for current subcontractors, and £3 million for existing providers.
The pro-rate methodology deployed by the ESFA in its non-levy apprenticeship tender caused huge controversy, as many universities and Ofsted grade one training providers and colleges did not receive and allocation as their successful bids were dragged down below the £200,000 minimum threshold.
In a message to the sector this afternoon, the skills minister Gillian Keegan said: “We will be looking for providers and employer providers.”
FE Week understands that many large employers are considering bids, including NHS hospital trusts.
The traineeships tender is one way the government plans to triple the number of traineeships starts this year – as pledged by chancellor Rishi Sunak over the summer as part of his plan to combat youth unemployment following the coronavirus pandemic.
Three months into the job of shadow education secretary, Kate Green reveals she is a ‘policy geek’ who is most naturally at home advocating for others…
In many ways, the boots Kate Green must fill as shadow education secretary are big ones.
Both her immediate predecessors have powerful personal stories about social mobility that appealed to many. Angela Rayner, now deputy leader of the Labour Party, left school early, had a mum who couldn’t read or write, and went on to earn a seat in parliament against the odds. Her successor, Rebecca Long-Bailey, worked in a pawn shop and furniture factory before she became a solicitor. Both are northern women who were relatively young when they took the shadow education brief – Rayner was just 36 years old – and with their large personal followings, were touted for bigger things.
Green with students from Stretford High
You could see Edinburgh-born Green as the opposite. With parents who attended university, she doesn’t at first hand appear to have that compelling backstory of triumphing against the odds that politicians seem to crave (alternatively, that voters crave in politicians). And, as a former chief executive of Child Poverty Action, she already has the swathe of her career behind her – rather than appearing to be a new rising “star”.
But this may have big hidden advantages for the law graduate. A self-professed “policy geek” (much like shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds, another native Scot), Green holds an opportunity to win over colleges with a grasp of detail that perhaps neither of her predecessors, who were arguably better at talking in broad brush strokes about helping the next generation of Rayners or scrapping academies, were best known for (although to be fair to Long-Bailey, she didn’t have long to prove otherwise).
Green has worked with children and families for years – she’s a former director of the National Council for One Parent Families – so the role is likely to mean more than just the next stepping stone of her political career. Were Labour to win the next election, Green’s character may set her up well to bed down and tackle the nitty gritty policy issues others have ignored.
But that’s potentially a long way off, and some problems are more immediate. At the end of last month, Green herself was in hot water when she said the Covid-19 pandemic was a “good crisis” which Labour shouldn’t let “go to waste”, leading to Boris Johnson claiming her words revealed “the real approach of the Labour Party”. Green is total in her self-condemnation.
Green with students from Moss Park
“You know, if you want to be a politician operating at this level, it’s incumbent on you to do it really, really well. And on that day I slipped up, I made a mistake, and there is no room for mistakes at this level, there just isn’t. Of course everyone is human, but you have to do this job really, really well.”
Green seems to be a values- and details-oriented woman who is not out to amass a big personal following, but to nail her brief. She skirts over home life beyond childhood, and can’t lay hands on childhood photographs – suggesting she’s a private person. In that regard, she probably reflects her Scottish upbringing, one in which hard work and privacy were the norm (“I had no idea how my parents voted,” says Green). Her parents were from poorer backgrounds in west Scotland and had managed to become teachers, so education was seen as crucial. But a streak of rebellion grew in Green during that time, too.
One incident she remembers was her father, who was leaving his primary school headship for a teacher training college post, in conversation with a friend. “The friend asked, ‘Will your deputy [whom Green describes as an “amazing, formidable woman”] get your job when you leave?’ And my dad said, ‘Oh, they’d never give a school this big to a woman.’ I was sitting there thinking, ‘You have spent my entire life telling me I can be anything I want, and I’ve just heard you say to somebody else that actually I can’t’.” Green never told her father the impression the moment made on her, but says it and the lack of opportunity for women has stuck with her for decades. “I guess I’ve spent a lot of my career kicking back against that.”
First off, she left Scotland and arrived during the 1981 recession in London, where she would do 15 years at Barclays Bank. Her assessment is concise. “Banking wasn’t it, I didn’t enjoy it, and I wasn’t any good at it.” Why do it? Her parents recalled their own parents being jobless, including her grandfather, who would pick up work on the docks. Job security “was burned into my psyche”. Green now worries that in the upcoming recession, like her, young people could spend years just trying to find work they enjoy.
But a future direction began to form as the young Green reacted to homelessness in the capital under the Thatcher government by attending Labour Party meetings, which she “found a bit depressing”. But she persevered and eventually another party member, a teacher, suggested she stand for parliament. “I said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, people like me don’t do something like that.’ But the idea stuck.” She stood for parliament in Tony Blair’s landslide 1997 election for the Cities of London and Westminster, a Conservative stronghold, and lost. That experience, however, “changed everything” and she left banking. “I went to work in the Home Office for a couple of years. I learnt more in those two years in the Home Office about how the country is really run than I had ever understood before.” Her main policy interest at this point was criminal justice, since her degree was in law and she’d been a magistrate.
Green then left the civil service to stand and lose an election again, this time for the Greater London Assembly in 2000. “By this time I’m 40 and I’m thinking, ‘Look, what are you going to do with your life now? You can’t spend the next ten years going around losing elections̶get a grip’.” What did her parents think of this career move? “They hadn’t particularly wanted me to stand for election, they were nervous.” But when Green was elected in 2010 from an all-women shortlist to Stretford and Urmston in Greater Manchester, they were excited. The level of privacy at home is evident when she adds with a wide smile: “My mum came out to me as a Labour Party voter!”
Green visiting Coventry School in July 2020
The delay to becoming an MP may have been fortuitous. By 2010, Green had racked up significant experience in two top social policy roles. Labour leader Keir Starmer has pointed to her role as former chief executive of Child Poverty Action (during the years when the Labour Party pulled almost one million children out of poverty) but less has been made of the job Green says was her “happiest”. As director of the National Council for One Parent Families, she got to support some of the most undervalued women in society. Clearly Green is highly irritated by people stereotyping vulnerable groups without checking their facts first. “Teenage single mums had been demonised… but this is the parent who stayed, not the parent who walked away. They are desperate to be role models for their kids.”
The role also gave her a unique insight into the struggles faced by many wanting to return to the workplace or education. Green was appointed to the then-National Employment Panel, which brought together industry leaders, FE providers and advocacy groups like hers to advise government ministers on labour market and skills policy. It led her to think hard about the advantages of devolution, which she says allows local policymakers “to link your social policies, your industrial and economic policies, and your skills and education policies together”. For instance, she calls the £300 million underspend of apprenticeship levy fund “absolutely ridiculous” and suggests again that greater devolution could allow for a more planned approach to training and skills strategy, “to build closer, purposively designed relationships between local employers and local colleges”.
The same advocacy drive Green had for single parents is also evident in her support for Roma, gypsy and traveller children (she chaired the all-party parliamentary group). She recalls being elected when Eric Pickles was secretary of state for communities. “He was announcing a cut in funding for traveller sites, and at the same time wanted to tighten up planning laws. And I thought that was stupid policy, and I don’t like stupid policy, so I got annoyed.” She started “asking questions” and has been trying to tackle prejudice against the community since.
Green at the Houses of Parliament
The most telling line here is “I don’t like stupid policy”. Green largely speaks with confidence about FE policies, which is likely to be, at least in part, because she’s well briefed. One of her closest advisers is Nick Wright, who was by Gordon Marsden’s side throughout his time as shadow FE minister.
It’s also why when I press Green for details of her policy plans on contentious issues, such as scrapping Ofsted, she takes a cautious and pragmatic tone, saying these will be “reviewed”. Labour needs someone who can present policy-tight answers to big visions lacking clear plans, such as its proposed “National Education Service”. But as a geek officially annoyed by stupid policy, she won’t be drawn before she’s done the research. “I’m in listening mode.” She does share, however, that a big interest of hers is “inclusion” and reducing inequitable outcomes for disadvantaged learners.
In a sense, Green is a shadow education secretary who is most naturally at home with being an advocate for the vulnerable. Her challenge now will be to combine that with detailed policy plans that have perhaps been lacking in recent years.
