The government’s Get Britain Working white paper rightly focuses on tackling economic inactivity, particularly among young people. It reflects years of work to identify the causes of and solutions to youth unemployment, but will it be enough?
With NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) levels nearly reaching the one million mark and youth confidence plummeting, as highlighted in our Youth Voice Census, the proposed Youth Guarantee (offering a job, training or apprenticeship within six months) is a crucial intervention.
Youth Employment UK has been at the forefront of advocating for comprehensive youth employment support for 12 years. Our research, particularly our work with the Youth Employment Group, has directly contributed to shaping national policy discussions on youth unemployment. Seeing this commitment reflected in the paper is a testament to the collective efforts of those dedicated to improving the prospects of young people.
Being NEET is more than just a statistic; it’s a complex problem with far-reaching consequences for both individuals and society. The reasons behind this rise are varied. They range from economic challenges, mental health struggles, and lack of access to quality education or job opportunities, to regional disparities.
Therefore, it is positive to see the white paper acknowledge the magnitude of different causes of youth unemployment and prioritise preventative measures early on in a young person’s life. These include offering work experience and careers advice, tackling persistent absence, improving access to mental health services and trialling the development of transition plans.
We know spending any time NEET when you’re young has a detrimental impact on young people’s future employment prospects. Therefore, the Youth Guarantee is a fundamental step in ensuring young people begin their careers on the right footing.
Recognising this guarantee must translate into quality opportunities that lead to sustainable careers and genuine social mobility. To that end, it is encouraging that the white paper is taking a cross-departmental approach, particularly on joining up national and local efforts.
The eight trailblazers announced this week will test and pilot a collaborative, cross-sector effort that will bring together employers, education providers and young people to provide quality pathways for all. This is welcome.
It must translate into quality opportunities for all young people
However, while the white paper acknowledges the complexity of the problem and the breadth of necessary solutions, the current Youth Guarantee is narrow and could potentially exclude young people during key transition points aged 24 and under.
For young people excluded from the guarantee (which promises only to focus on 18- to 21-year-olds), the consequences are severe. Becoming or remaining NEET at any young age can impact mental health and future earning potential.
Meanwhile, the trailblazers are currently planned to be trialled in mayoral authorities that currently serve only 48 per cent of England’s population. This will exclude many areas with high youth unemployment and deprivation rates.
While we look forward to seeing the evidence from the trailblazers, we hope their expansion will happen sooner rather than later and be carefully considered to ensure inclusivity.
Youth Employment UK is driven by social value. For 12 years, we have led the way in bringing youth and employer voice and insight together and in connecting quality opportunities through our digital offer. We believe that investing in young people is not just an economic imperative, but a moral one.
As such, we see a successful Youth Guarantee not only as an important tool to reduce youth unemployment but also a vital contribution to a fairer and more prosperous society.
This week’s Get Britain Working white paper provides a strong foundation to meet those objectives. Now, it’s time to turn ambition into action. As it does so, we urge the government to continue to work closely with organisations like ours, education providers, employers, and – importantly – young people themselves.
For this guarantee to deliver a brighter future for the next generation, it must meet the complexity of the problem with inclusivity, and its local manifestations with nationwide endeavour.
A new government brings a flurry of white papers and policy announcements. The latest is the Get Britain Working white paper, aiming to increase employment. A key plank is a new Youth Guarantee, so all 18-21 year olds are offered help to find a job, training or apprenticeship.
There’s almost one million 16-24 year olds not in education, employment or training (NEET), a number which has risen since the pandemic. This is a disaster in waiting, as being out of work or education when young can do long-term damage to your pay and job prospects.
While everyone can agree we need to do better, some have criticised the government for being high on rhetoric but low on action.
It’s true that there isn’t much new money committed or any big, shiny new initiatives announced. But the last thing we need is yet another initiative, and what looks shiny at first glance often seems less so over time.
The problem we’ve had isn’t too few initiatives; it’s the lack of a plan.
The government’s idea is that metro mayors and other local leaders should get everyone round the table and agree a plan for how we’re going to contact every young person in an area and what we’re going to offer them.
That should include making sure young people are offered the best help for them, referring them to the agency best placed to help even if it’s not yourself.
That’s a good idea, though we need to make sure those plans have bite – that providers and stakeholders are required to stick to the plan and that we don’t have other government departments pulling rank and preventing true collaboration and different ways of working.
And of course there’s a risk we have too many plans: growth plans, get Britain working plans, skills improvement plans, etc – when what we need is a little less conversation, a little more action.
So I hope local leaders will focus on the action part of action plans. If we do that, we can help more young people with the resources we already have.
The Youth Guarantee gives us a hook to make our case
But a guarantee is no good if there aren’t enough good jobs, training places or apprenticeship opportunities.
The government’s aiming to encourage more employers to offer young people a chance, but that will require the economy to grow faster than the rubbish pace we’ve got used to since 2008 (another key government mission).
We’re also expecting more details on how they intend to reform the apprenticeship system to encourage more apprenticeships for young people starting their career. This is a sensible move given the disastrous fall in youth apprenticeships since 2017.
Will empowering mayors and reforming apprenticeship funding be enough? In truth, probably not.
I hope the government will look at raising funding for further education, how changes in benefit rules could help young people combine flexible learning with job search, and a Kickstart-style job subsidy scheme for those who find it toughest to find work.
Those are all decisions for next year’s spending review. While that doesn’t look promising (budget figures suggest less money for areas like skills and employment support, not more), the government’s commitment to the Youth Guarantee gives us a hook to make the case for what we need to make it a reality.
A final plea from me though. It’s great we have a Youth Guarantee, but can we please make it 16-24 year olds rather than 18-21 year olds? That would give us a chance to build a more joined-up transition from education to work.
Only 5 per cent of 16- and 17-year-olds are NEET, but that’s 5 per cent too many and has consequences for them for years to come. Let’s not forget them too.
The ultimate measure of success is whether NEET rates go down, and whether young people spend a shorter amount of time NEET. The ultimate prize is young people being prepared for their futures, employers better able to meet their needs and an economy that’s growing again.
And reaching that prize is the best argument for making the most of a further education system that is brilliantly placed to make the difference.
Hordes of teachers descended upon the Department for Education today to protest the government’s pay award snub to colleges.
More than 2,000 members of the National Education Union (NEU) working in sixth form colleges across the country walked out this afternoon in the first of three proposed days of striking.
Ministers and civil servants heard loud chants and speeches from a crowd of unionised teachers protesting outside the Department for Education’s headquarters calling for funding for the 5.5 per cent pay award to apply to the non-academised sixth form college sector.
Teachers gathered on the pavement opposite Sanctuary Buildings chanting, “What do we want? Fair pay. When do we want it? Now,” and loudly booed mentions of education secretary Bridget Phillipson and skills minister Jacqui Smith.
It marks the first national walk out by education staff since the general election.
The strike stems from the summer announcement that schools and academised sixth form colleges would receive £1.2 billion to fund a 5.5 per cent pay rise for 2024/25. But standalone sixth form colleges and further education colleges would be excluded from the deal.
Government officials are under pressure from sixth form college bosses to U-turn on the decision after the Sixth Form Colleges Association (SFCA) launched a judicial review against DfE’s “sickening” decision.
Smith maintains she made the FE pay case “strongly” to the Treasury before the Autumn budget and agreed that FE and school teacher pay should match.
NEU members are set to strike again on December 3 and 4 if DfE does not resolve the dispute.
Daniel Kebede, NEU general secretary, said the strike could have been “easily averted”.
“It’s shameful that you are going into Christmas with 0 per cent as your pay award at the moment,” he told strikers.
He added: “It is small beer we are asking for. £15 million. That’s not what we’re asking for, that’s what the SFCA is asking for.”
NEU post-16 representative Duncan Blackie outside DfE HQ
NEU post-16 representative Duncan Blackie told the crowd that the sixth form sector faces becoming “two-tiered” if DfE does not settle the dispute soon.
“Colleges that are represented here will be emptied in years to come, because the pay difference [with schools] is so, so enormous,” he said.
He urged the SFCA and the Association of Colleges to tell colleges to pay the award, funded or not.
“Don’t mess about. We want the government to tell you to pay the money, but if they don’t, then pay the money. You can resolve this dispute as well,” he said.
Teachers told FE Week that their employers have empathised with workers over the snub.
“They’re just as frustrated as we are,” said Graham Childs, head of BTEC law at Peter Symonds College.
“They know that the SFCA want to make a pay award, but without the promise of extra money, the only way to do that will mean to make shortages elsewhere. We don’t want to see our pay rise funded by redundancies of other staff.”
‘We expected better of a Labour government’
Kebede added that the strike was also about reversing the “deep, severe” recruitment crisis in sixth form college sector.
“This is about turning the tide on a direction of travel that seeks to erode and privatise education,” he told the crowd.
Earlier this month, NEU achieved a 97 per cent vote in favour of striking from 32 of the 39 colleges balloted.
Sixth form teachers told FE Week they assumed the DfE originally made an error by excluding them but given it has not rectified the oversight, it could “potentially” be a tactic to force sixth form colleges to academise.
“That’s something even the Tories didn’t try to do,” Ian Morton, accounting teacher at WQE and Regent College in Leicester. “We just expected better of a Labour government. No Labour government worthy of the name performs actions like this.”
“It must be by design and it’s just really sickening,” Childs added.
I'm outside the Department for Education offices in the heart of Westminster where non-academised sixth form teachers are striking after the government snubbed them from the schoolteacher 5.5% pay rise pic.twitter.com/A4dUNeRy4F
In classrooms and community centres across the UK, English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) courses are a lifeline to migrants and refugees whose potential is trapped behind a language barrier.
Those charged with unlocking that potential must deliver the curriculum intelligently and sensitively. Their classrooms have to be sanctuaries, and their methods as diverse as the backgrounds of learners in front of them.
ESOL teachers, such as Sam Pepper, don’t just teach the language; they actively support learners in establishing themselves in the UK despite underfunded services and a sometimes hostile atmosphere.
His success as an advanced learning practitioner at Camden Town’s WM College, including designing an ESOL IT course to give learners computer skills, earned him the ‘inspirational tutor of the year’ gong at the Mayor of London adult learning awards.
He tells Jessica Hill what a busy Monday looks like for him.
Sam Pepper reading his Russian language book
7am
I wake and have coffee with my wife who, like me, has a passion for languages.
She’s from Tajikistan, where they speak Tajik Farsi (Persian), and Russian because they were part of the Soviet Union. I’m trying to learn both, and Uzbek, her dad’s language.
I also speak French and I’m an Arabic translator, although translating jobs are scarce.
I’m very much a Londoner, and my grandfather was a tradesman in Camden. Many people travel overseas to make an impact on the world, but I’m proud to work in the place where my family are from.
9am
I cycle to Camden’s Gospel Oak Primary School as part of our community outreach work to teach an ESOL IT class with mums of pupils. These classes are for the hardest-to-reach learners who need English language and digital skills but may not have the family circumstances or self-confidence to come to our college. For them, the school is a familiar place.
Learners come from Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Syria, Egypt and Venezuela. Our aim is to build their confidence to support them with their ESOL journey.
At first, they were unsure about having a male teacher, so it took me time to build rapport. Because my wife is from a Muslim background, I have a good knowledge of that aspect of their culture, which helped me build trust. In my job you have to appreciate cultural sensitivities.
The course was hard to teach initially because of the two-factor authentication you need on phones to log in, then it’s tricky accessing Microsoft Teams and Office 365. Now we’ve got going I enjoy seeing their progress.
WM College
11.30am
I cycle on to WM College to teach a self-study workshop, which is a chance to teach learners about the computer and phone tools they can use to study at home.
At school, I was told to sit down, be quiet and work hard, but if I emulated that teaching style in adult education it wouldn’t work. I treat people as equals, empathising with their abilities and inabilities. If they can’t do a task, I ask what I can do to support them.
That’s doubly true with people who sometimes don’t know how to use a mouse.
Our ESOL learners, by and large, have had a difficult struggle to be where they are today. I learn about the human condition working with people from diverse backgrounds, and my patience has improved 100-fold since I started working here.
Our Afghan learners in pre-entry classes are often women who were unable to attend school as children. They’re not just learning English; they’re also learning how to organise their time, how to use a pen and paper and how to formulate letters.
Teaching literacy is totally different to the training I’ve received through my English teaching qualifications, which are all about language acquisition and communicative language teaching. I was out of my depth at first – you need a lot of patience to help people formulate letters when they don’t necessarily have the motor skills to write.
One Afghani learner, a mum of five in her 40s with no education background, has come to classes for two years. She’s super persistent. We’ve never had a conversation of more than three words but I like to think her inclusion is progress.
Our classrooms are quite unique human creations. We live in one of the most diverse cities on earth, but having all those people vulnerably share a space in a room is unusual and special. It’s an inclusive space.
Sam Pepper teaching a digital skills ESOL class
12pm
I have my weekly catch-up meeting with my line manager, Felix, who, like me, is interested in language generally and in social inclusion and community learning.
Like many ESOL teachers, I learned the craft because I wanted to travel the world. After graduating from the University of Essex with a degree in history and politics and teaching English for six months in India, I got my Celta (certificate in teaching English to speakers of other languages) in Prague before working for the British Council in Cairo for five years.
Cairo is a chaotic, lively place where people constantly communicate with each other, making it easier to pick up Arabic quickly.
I started teaching at WM College in 2021. Although the name stands for Working Men’s College, nowadays, 70 per cent of our learners are women, so there is a discussion about changing it.
12.30pm
I run an optional book club where learners read chapters of graded reader books. Then we meet and talk about the vocabulary themes. We’re currently reading Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Noughts and Crosses by Valerie Blackman last Black History Month didn’t go down well with some of my Ukrainian learners, who requested we read something happier!
The best way to teach language is to boost autonomous self-study, so the purpose behind the club is that learning also takes place when they’re at home.
Sam Pepper at WM College
1.15pm
I have seafood rice for lunch, which I made with my wife yesterday. Learners always say hello when they see me at lunchtime, but I avoid detailed conversations because I don’t want to break boundaries.
Over lunch I see unlikely friendships forming between people from very different cultures. In one class, a learner from Venezuela gets along really well with a Syrian lady. Although both have very limited English, they support each other a lot.
Sometimes learners who speak the same language prefer to sit together in class, but I try to pair stronger and weaker learners to support each other.
Learners sometimes stop me and ask for recommendations for British restaurants. I’ve told them that British restaurants are everywhere because our cuisine is international – although I also tell them about the nearby pie and mash shop which only takes cash.
2.30pm
I have an online class with level-1 learners, who join me from home.
All our learners are given a form at the beginning of the term, asking them about their education background, first language, interests and employment plans. That helps me work out what learners are into, and what they want to focus on.
The more I can stimulate class communication, the more their learning cements. So, I’ll show learners pictures from my own life, for example of my brother, who works in a music shop with his cat. My other brother is 12, which challenges their views of what a nuclear family should be.
Real life works better than a canned EFL textbook, which is often not well-pitched to learners’ lives.
Sam Pepper teaching a class
3.30pm
I spend time preparing classes for tomorrow. I look at my scheme of work – the bigger picture of what I’m teaching, with a weekly theme – and think about what we did last lesson, what we need to recap and who struggled.
I also try to develop individualised material to motivate my learners.
I recently taught a lesson on Donald Trump. We didn’t talk about the US election result but looked at his biography. Learners really want to express their opinions, and there are some honest and sometimes amusing comments from people which it’s important to hear.
Last week I prepared a reading task on environmental issues, drawn from press articles. I used AI to adjust the language level to grade it to our learners. The articles were about Amazon rainforest deforestation, high levels of a dangerous particle in Honduras, and climate activists in Munich banned from protesting. They read the articles in groups, then fed back and presented to each other.
I use AI more and more. It saves me about two hours a week in preparation time. It’s good for summarising information, but if you ask it to pick out 10 language items in a text, it will give you 14. So you really need to check it.
We try to bring in as much cultural learning to lessons as possible – what the government calls ‘British values’. Many ESOL teachers are critical of that label because these are shared values for everyone. But some cultural knowledge is important. I recently planned a lesson on Bonfire Night. Learners who didn’t know about it might have been shocked by the noises coming from outside their window, so providing that knowledge was helpful.
I taught about Armistice Day as a factual lesson and as a chance for my learners to reflect on their own histories and how war has affected everyone’s lives, while also being sensitive to avoid triggering people.
Sam Pepper preparing for a lesson on Bonfire Night
4pm
I was asked to write a job reference for one of my learners who has applied for a volunteer shop assistant role at Mind. I suggested he write on the application form about why mental health is important to him. He’s a really optimistic guy who is one of several refugee learners who has slept rough on the streets.
We take safeguarding seriously at the college, so these things are escalated, and we try to provide as much guidance as possible.
We try to empower learners to use English to help themselves, but in difficult safeguarding situations where they don’t have the fluency, I step in to interpret.
5pm
After work, I’llgo for a swim in the local lido or do some yoga.
After eating some chicken soup for dinner, I’ll sometimes watch The Big Bang Theory on TV with my wife – she likes it, but it’s not really my cup of tea.
Then I’llread a book in Arabic or Russian to relax before sleep. Tomorrow I have an evening seminar at SOAS university, so I’m thinking about how to prepare for that.
It’s a busy life, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Sam Pepper in the library at WM College
If you have a suggestion for a future day in the life of article, email jessica.hill@educationscape.com
There was a miniscule rise in apprenticeship starts last year, including in the number of young people for the third consecutive year.
However, as level 2 apprenticeships declined further, starts on higher-level programmes continued to grow.
And Multiverse delivered the second-highest number of starts last year, jumping two spaces in the top 10 provider league table.
Here’s your roundup of full-year 2023/24 apprenticeships data.
Level 2s are half what they were
Overall apprenticeship starts were up a paltry 0.7 per cent compared to the previous year, representing an increase of 2,440 and bringing the total for 2023/24 to 339,580.
Although that seems small, it’s only the second time in five years that apprenticeship starts have increased.
Following the trend of previous years, declining intermediate-level starts were offset by the rising popularity of higher-level apprenticeships.
Six years ago, nearly two in five apprenticeship starts were at intermediate level. Now it is one in five. Higher-level apprenticeships made up 36 per cent of starts last year, up from 19 per cent six years ago.
The number of young people aged under 19 has crept up slightly for the third year in a row. There were 78,930 young starters last year, which was 23.2 per cent of the overall total, up 0.1 percentage points from 2022/23. While it’s not bad news, the proportion of young people starting apprenticeships has still not recovered from pre-pandemic levels.
Nearly 20,000 more young people started apprenticeships in 2018 than in 2023. Labour said it plans to reverse this decline by diverting spending from level 7 apprenticeships and introducing new foundation apprenticeships.
On the level
Stats for last year show small rises in apprenticeship starts at every level above level 3.
At level 7, 23,860 people started an apprenticeship last year, up from 21,760 the previous year. As a proportion, level 7 apprenticeships coincidentally made up 7 per cent of overall starts, up 0.5 percentage points.
But there was a near-2 percentage point drop in level 2 apprenticeships. The decline here over time is substantial. Over 20,600 fewer level two apprenticeship starts were made last year than two years ago.
Early years educator, a level 3 standard, was the most popular apprenticeship for the second year in a row overall with 15,300 starts.
Two level 7 apprenticeships, accountancy and senior leader, maintained their places in the top 10.
In fact, there were 1,000 more apprentice senior leaders in 2023/24 than the previous year. And new apprentice solicitors nearly doubled, from 780 starts in 2022/23 to 1,350 in 2023/24.
Ministers insist that if employers value these level 7 programmes, they will self-fund them when levy funding is removed.
For under 19s, the level 3 business administrator was again the most popular apprenticeship with 4,800 starts (down from 4,990 the year before). Early years educator, hairdressing professional and installation and maintenance electrician were the next most popular for young people.
Two-thirds independent
Independent training providers increased their market share of apprenticeship starts last year, now delivering over two-thirds (66.7 per cent).
Further education colleges saw their share drop slightly from 17.4 percent to 17.2 percent. Back in 2018/19, a quarter of apprenticeships were started by FE colleges.
Apprenticeship starts in the “other” category, which includes higher education institutions and local authorities, also dropped slightly; by one percentage point.
The proportion of starts in schools, sixth-form colleges and specialist colleges remained stable at 0.1 per cent, 0.1 per cent and 0.7 per cent, respectively.
There was also a consistent proportion of apprenticeships that were funded by the levy, 68 per cent, suggesting small and medium-sized businesses are still struggling to boost their numbers.
Into the Multiverse
Lifetime Training remained untouchable at the top spot in our analysis of overall starts by training provider. Even though they started 660 fewer apprentices than in 2022/23, the training giant still clocked up 16,330 last year.
Our analysis of training providers with the most apprentice starts last year shows Multiverse jumped from fourth to second, increasing their annual intake from 5,770 to 7,910.
Multiverse displaced the British Army, which dropped to third, and BPP Professional Education, which dropped to fourth.
Corndel climbed to fifth with 6,780 starts, 1,540 more than the year before.
The only new entry to the top 10 was Marr Corporation, placing tenth with 4,130 starts.
A college in Cumbria has been hit with an ‘inadequate’ Ofsted judgment after inspectors found a raft of leadership and governance failures.
Furness College was criticised by the watchdog for overseeing a “decline over time” in attendance, retention and achievement.
Inspectors found “overwhelmed” apprentices, insufficient control over the quality of provision, and “ineffective” governors who failed to hold leaders to account.
A new chair of governors was appointed this month following the inspection which took place in October.
Principal Nicola Cove and new chair Gary Lovatt said in a joint statement they were “very disappointed” with Ofsted’s findings, adding that they recognised multiple issues identified by the watchdog and put in place plans to address them at the start of this academic year.
It was “unfortunate that the inspection took place so early in the year”, the leaders said, as the college was “not able to evidence the positive signs we’re now starting to see”.
Furness College, which took on Barrow-in-Furness Sixth Form College in 2016 through a merger, teaches almost 2,000 students.
Ofsted’s report shows eight out of the nine areas judged were deemed ‘requires improvement’. Leadership and management was the only category dealt an ‘inadequate’ judgment, which dragged the college’s overall effectiveness down to the lowest possible grade.
Inspectors praised “effective” safeguarding, highlighted the college’s “welcoming and friendly learning environments”, and noted that teachers help learners and apprentices who stay on their course to develop confidence and resilience.
But “too few” learners and apprentices routinely attend their course or training, Ofsted’s report said.
The college also makes a “limited contribution” to meeting skills needs, with inspectors criticising leaders for not implementing the “measures needed” to respond to “worklessness or meaningful education opportunities for young people”.
Ofsted said leaders “do not have sufficient oversight of the strengths and weaknesses of their provision”.
The targets and actions leaders set to remedy weaknesses are “not specific enough to bring about sustained and rapid improvement”.
There is a “decline over time in attendance, retention and achievement across all provision types and all age groups” and leaders are “too positive in evaluating the quality of their provision”.
For apprentices, Ofsted found that trainees complete much of their training in their own time. Apprentices feel “overwhelmed” with the amount of work and “do not complete in planned timeframes”.
Inspectors also criticised the quality of teaching for not being of a “consistently high quality”, and leaders fail to ensure that learners “have a secure understanding of fundamental British values”.
Governors were slammed for not holding leaders “well enough to account”. The board had become “too reliant on what leaders tell them rather than scrutinising the information that they have available to make the improvements that are needed”.
Principal Nicola Cove joined the college as a deputy in 2018 and became the top leader in 2023.
Furness’ previous chair, Jan Fielding, joined the board in 2016 and became chair in 2020.
Cove and Lovatt said: “We are focussed on looking forward and want to reassure all our students, parents, employers and stakeholders that our senior leadership team, staff and board of governors are wholly committed to delivering improvements.
“Furness College looks forward to working with the FE Commissioner’s office and Ofsted over the coming months. The support they provide will help us achieve this.”
The last general FE college to be judged ‘inadequate’ was Croydon College in 2023, which was upgraded to ‘good’ this month.
Ofsted ditched overall effectiveness grades for schools in September 2024 and plans to remove them for FE providers in September 2025.
Entries to the November 2024 GCSE English and maths resit series shot up by 21 per cent compared to last year.
Provisional figures published by Ofqual this morning show that 152,610 students retook the subjects this month, up from 125,615 in November 2023.
The rise in entries follows increasing numbers of school-aged pupils who failed to achieve a grade 4 “pass” in the subjects during their GCSEs this summer – 175,898 for maths and 181,682 for English.
There were also more than 100,000 post-16 students in each subject who did not reach the pass mark and would have had to resit the exams again.
Introduced in 2014, the government’s resits policy forces students who have not achieved a grade 4 pass in English and/or maths GCSE by age 16 to continue to work towards achieving these qualifications as a condition of their places being funded.
GCSE subject breakdown
Today’s data shows GCSE English language entries increased by 28 per cent from 60,365 in November 2023, to 77,005 in November 2024.
GCSE mathematics entries rose by 16 per cent from 65,250 to 75,605 over the same period.
The figures mark yet another steep rise in November entries post-Covid. Entries in 2021 fell 13 per cent, then by a further 10 per cent in 2022 – the years when teacher-assessed grades replaced exams.
November resit entries then shot up by 23 per cent in 2023 and again by 21 per cent this month.
Ofqual entries data since 2020
Ofqual pointed out that as well as the change in grading approach, cohort sizes have increased.
Catherine Sezen, head of education policy at the Association of Colleges, said colleges are “increasingly finding” themselves under “immense pressure” to be able to accommodate extra students.
She told FE Week: “Colleges want to give students as many opportunities as possible to achieve a grade 4 in English and maths, but are facing many challenges.
“The recruitment and retention crisis, exacerbated by levels of pay, in these subjects mean that some colleges are having to rehire retired teachers, employ agency staff, and train non-specialist staff. There are also issues around space, both in terms of class sizes and for the actual exam days, teaching time and entry fees, all of which cause further strain on students and college budgets.”
Sezen added: “The GCSE resit policy is not sustainable as it currently operates, and the curriculum and assessment review offers a great opportunity to radically rethink English and maths across all phases of education, to ensure all students can gain the skills they need for life beyond college.”
Niamh Sweeney, the first elected deputy general secretary of the National Education Union, has resigned from the post part-way through her five year term, FE Week has learned.
Sweeney was elected in 2021 to the role, which was created as part of a restructure drawn up when the NEU was formed from a merger of the National Union of Teachers and Association of Teachers and Lecturers in 2017.
Her election was seen as an upset, after she beat two challengers from established factions on the left wing of the union.
A former sixth form college teacher and Labour councillor, Sweeney hailed from the ATL section of the NEU, having served on its executive since 2010 and as president between 2017 and 2018.
Sweeney’s term was not due to come to an end until 2026.
‘An absolute honour’
Approached by FE Week, Sweeney confirmed she had left the role on November 15.
She said it had been an “absolute honour to represent NEU members as the first elected deputy general secretary”.
“I wish the NEU every success in the future, particularly the members in sixth form colleges taking strike action today.”
Sweeney did not give a reason for her departure from the role.
An NEU spokesperson said: “Having played a substantial role in seeing through the successful amalgamation between the NUT and ATL, into the National Education Union, and the transition of leadership, Niamh is now taking the opportunity to pursue new challenges.
“We thank Niamh for all her years of service and wish her all the very best in the future.”
The union said a timetable for the election to fill the post “will be agreed by the NEU executive in January”.
For too long, further education has been the ‘Cinderella sector’ of education. This is not just in terms of funding for provision, but in terms of investment in high-quality research to inform its practice.
I began my career teaching maths in a secondary school in Leeds. I remember the 16-year-olds – disproportionately those from lower-income backgrounds – who just missed out on a grade C in their GCSE.
This setback caused their options to narrow significantly. Many ended up dropping out of education altogether. Despite having the same potential as their wealthier peers, this moment shifted their life outcomes.
Witnessing this has shaped my belief in the importance of meaningful lifelong learning opportunities; 16-19 education has the potential to transform outcomes for young people who have had the misfortune to fall behind at school.
With the proper support, the overwhelming majority still have the potential to achieve gateway English and maths qualifications, regardless of their background or what happened earlier in their education.
That’s why I set up Get Further, a charity that supports students from disadvantaged backgrounds to secure English and maths qualifications in further education through high-quality, small-group tuition.
Tutoring is one of the most effective interventions for improving attainment, and wealthier families often source a tutor for their children if they fall behind. But those from low-income backgrounds are typically priced out of accessing this tailored support.
Get Further began with a small pilot programme in late 2018. Since then, we have dramatically scaled our reach, working with 5,000 students at over 90 campuses across England. Between 2021-23, the pass rate for students who attended a term or more of our GCSE tuition was 92 per cent higher than the national average for maths and 73 per cent higher for English.
I am proud that Get Further is now forming a key part of the further education landscape. But we don’t just want to be a part of the landscape; we want to lead the way in raising standards in post-16 English and maths education.
We hope this will help make a compelling case to government
Recently, we launched our new five-year strategy with an uncompromising focus on quality and impact. Our strategic goal for 2029 is to drive up pass rates for students from disadvantaged backgrounds undertaking gateway English and maths qualifications in the further education sector, setting a new standard for excellence on a national scale.
Strengthening the evaluation of our programmes is central to achieving this. As a key milestone in our new strategy, I am thrilled to announce that in 2025-26, we will partner with the Education Endowment Foundation and the University of Warwick to evaluate the impact of our GCSE resit tuition programme via a randomised control trial (RCT).
This trial will offer valuable insights into our work, helping us strengthen our tuition programmes further, but it’s not just the potential for improving our programmes that makes this trial exciting. This is one of the first studies of its kind in the UK to be conducted with 16-19-year-olds.
While further education has a vital role to play in ensuring that young people achieve the gateway qualifications they need to unlock opportunities, the sector is impeded by underfunding and understaffing. Funding for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds falls off a cliff at age 16.
We hope this trial will provide the evidence needed to make a compelling case to government on the potential of young people in FE and the urgent need to address the chronic lack of funding and resources in the sector.
With additional investment, such as a 16-19 Student Premium, further education settings would be able to put in place interventions to better support their students and improve pass rates for courses like GCSE English and maths.
In turn, this would provide thousands more young people with the qualifications to access opportunities for further study, high-quality training and career progression.
Colleges across England can make this vision a reality. We want to partner with you to deliver our innovative programmes to your GCSE resit students and, together, build an evidence base that will pave the way for meaningful policy change across the further education sector.
