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Skills England staff morale among worst in civil service

Staff morale at Skills England was among the worst in the civil service after the agency was moved to a new department, its first annual accounts reveal.

Fewer than half of staff were proud of, felt attached to or would recommend the agency as a great place to work. Skills England’s score of 46 per cent on the 2025 civil service people survey engagement index was 19 percentage points lower than the last one recorded by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE), the body it replaced.

Only one of the 105 civil service organisations in the published survey results had a lower rating.

IfATE scored 65.3 per cent in the 2024 survey. The Department for Education, which sponsored Skills England for the whole of the reporting period covered in the accounts, scored 65.5 per cent in the 2025 survey. The civil service median was 64.9 per cent.

Staff completed the survey between September 23 and October 21. Prime minister Keir Starmer had laid a written ministerial statement on September 16 confirming that Skills England, along with responsibility for apprenticeships, adult skills, training and careers, would move from the DfE to the Department for Work and Pensions with immediate effect.

The index is the Cabinet Office’s headline measure of how staff feel about their employer. It’s based on five survey questions covering: whether staff are proud to tell people who they work for, would recommend the organisation as a great place to work, feel a strong personal attachment to it, find it inspires them to do their best, and find it motivates them to help meet its objectives. Every civil service organisation is measured the same way.

Skills England took on IfATE’s staff and functions when it was created on June 2, 2025, along with the DfE’s analysis, insight and regions teams.

The agency did not take part in the people survey in its own right, so its score does not appear in the published benchmark results. Of the 105 organisations listed for 2025, only the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory scored lower, on 42.8 per cent.

Fifty-nine per cent of Skills England staff completed the survey, against 82 per cent at IfATE in 2024 and 80 per cent at the DfE in 2025.

Skills England’s own risk register linked the pressure on staff to the machinery of government change. Workforce gaps, evolving structures and uncertainty “were heightened during the transition to the DWP and the introduction of new operational processes”, the accounts said, risking “staff uncertainty, affecting morale and retention”.

Neither chair Phil Smith’s foreword nor that of joint chief executives Sarah Maclean and Tessa Griffiths mentioned the move to the DWP. Smith did write that Skills England “aspires to be the grease in the wheel that gets the skills system turning, achieving growth and spreading opportunity”.

The agency rated its risk register as “improving” by the end of the year, saying recruitment processes had stabilised and transition activity had become “more predictable”.

IfATE had been more upbeat about its own result. Reporting its fifth and final People Survey in its 2024-25 accounts, it noted its 2024 score was unchanged on 2023 and a point above the civil service benchmark. “Given the significant amount of change IfATE has experienced this year, our results paint a positive picture of the resilience and determination of IfATE and its people,” it said.

At that time, IfATE was being abolished. The government announced Skills England in July 2024, IfATE’s staff filled in the survey that autumn, and the abolition bill received royal assent in May 2025.

A Skills England spokesperson said: “Our staff survey results are very important to us and improving employee engagement will continue to be a priority for us in the coming year.

“Since the survey was conducted, staff have formally moved across to the Department for Work and Pensions. We are already seeing the positive impact this has had on our ability to do what we are most passionate about – changing lives through apprenticeships and other skills products that deliver more for young people and employers.”

Other findings

Skills England’s net operating expenditure was £30.4 million for the ten-month period, which works out at around £36.5 million annualised. IfATE spent £28.7 million in its final full year to March 2025.

The figures are not directly comparable, however. Skills England’s total included £7.8 million of local skills improvement plan (LSIP) grants to employer representative bodies, which IfATE did not manage. IfATE’s final expenditure tally included £1.4 million of T Level contract delivery costs, which Skills England does not do. Without those, Skills England and IfATE had similar total expenditure figures at £27.1 million annualised and £27.3 million respectively.

Elsewhere in the accounts, we learned Skills England employed an average of 257 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff, fewer than IfATE’s 285 in its final year, with 233 permanent staff on the books at year-end. Staff costs worked out at roughly £82,400 per FTE annualised, almost identical to IfATE’s £82,361.

The accounts also showed recruitment stalled after the September announcement. Budget forecasting was knocked off course by “slower-than-expected recruitment to the approved staffing complement, following the machinery of government announcement”, and expenditure came in “lower than expected”.

Skills England paid five exit packages worth £239,000 in the ten-month period, three of them worth between £50,001 and £100,000. None were compulsory redundancies. IfATE paid a further 30 packages worth £1,815,000 in its final full year under a voluntary exit scheme.

Co-investment cost hike ‘will turn firms off apprenticeships’

A fivefold increase in apprenticeship co-investment costs will force employers to cut recruitment, including for young jobseekers, unless ministers rethink the policy, business leaders have warned.

From August 1, levy-paying employers that exhaust their growth and skills levy funds will see their contribution towards apprenticeship training and assessment jump from 5 per cent to 25 per cent, with the government’s contribution falling from 95 per cent to 75 per cent.

For an employer with an apprentice on a level 3 installation and maintenance electrician apprenticeship, which carries a £23,000 funding band, co-investment will rise from £1,150 to £5,750 over the course of the apprenticeship – a 400 per cent increase

The change comes as ministers seek to free up funding in England’s apprenticeship budget, which has been fully spent in recent years.

They also want to pivot the system back towards younger people after apprenticeship starts among under-25s fell by 40 per cent over the past decade, and bring down the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) which has topped one million.

But employers across industries including engineering, construction, dental, childcare and professional services told FE Week the policy move risks having the opposite effect by reducing apprenticeship opportunities, including for young NEET people.

Around 36,900 employers paid the apprenticeship levy in 2024-25. A recent parliamentary answer to Conservative MP Richard Holden showed that of those, 9.2 per cent spent more than 100 per cent of their levy funds, meaning roughly 3,400 employers would have been pushed into the new 25 per cent co-investment rate.

A further 12.5 per cent – around 4,600 employers – spent most of their levy allocation and could soon face the higher charge.

Steve Tellwright, people and quality director at Capula, said the company spends more than £400,000 a year on apprenticeships despite paying a growth and skills levy of about £100,000.

“If you’re trying to do what the government want you to do, which is take on apprentices, then all of a sudden you’re going to do one of two things – either reduce the number of apprentices or take a load more cost.”

The business recruits around 20 mainly higher-level apprentices each year in the construction and engineering space. Under the new rules, Tellwright estimates co-investment costs could rise by around £120,000 to £150,000 annually.

“We’d probably swallow it this year, but next year we’d probably say, right, we can’t now take on 20, we’ll take on 15 or 14 or 13. That cannot be in the government’s interest.

“The bureaucracy around the apprenticeship system is huge, and then when employers do get involved, they’re penalised.

“Government says it wants more apprenticeships, and then all of a sudden, they put so many barriers up. It’s just turning employers off.”

Marginal levy payers hit hardest

A business becomes a levy-paying employer if its salary bill is greater than £3 million. This has not changed since 2017.

For the 2024-25 financial year around 36,900 employers paid the levy, compared to just 22,000 when it was introduced. Association of Employment and Learning Providers deputy CEO Simon Ashworth said this was a result of fiscal drag and wage inflation, which has significantly extended the ‘tail’ of the levy.

He explained it has created a large group of marginal levy payers who “by their very nature are the same small and medium-sized enterprises that the government supposedly wants to enlist to help employ and train more young people”.

Ashworth added: “These are employers doing the right thing. They are engaged, investing in skills, and often recruiting young people into the labour market. Yet under the current reforms, they risk becoming the biggest losers.”

Skills minister Jacqui Smith acknowledged concerns this month, saying: “We understand, from our engagement with employers and other stakeholders, that employers with smaller levy balances may be more affected by this change and we will carefully monitor the impact as we implement it.”

However, employers warn that the government is heading for another “I told you so” moment.

Lily Brothwood, business operations manager at engineering firm Intelect, said the company has around 40 apprentices from level 2 up to degree-level at any one time, and maxes out its levy every year.

The co-investment announcement initially prompted the company to reduce planned electrical apprentice recruitment to four places because of uncertainty over costs. But the firm added three additional places after receiving more than 600 applications and deciding the quality of candidates, and past positive experience of the apprenticeship model, justified the investment, as well as the industry’s dire need for skilled professionals.

“It has added a level of reservation for sure,” Brothwood said, and explained that the increased co-investment along with other employment costs, including rising minimum wage and equipment expenses, have made extra investment in apprenticeships “more of a deterrent”.

The gift that might not keep on giving

Intelect currently relies on levy transfers from another large employer to offset additional co-investment costs but fears that support could disappear as more businesses retain their own levy funds.

Alongside the co-investment hike, from August the government will remove a 10 per cent uplift for levy payers and halve the time levy payers have to use their levy funds from 24 to 12 months.

Experts have warned all three of these factors are likely to result in levy payers being even more cautious about gifting levy funds.

Brothwood said: “Our next concern is whether our transfer partner will choose to continue supporting us. There is always that uncertainty that at any point they may remove that support, given the high numbers we put through our programme.

“The reforms have caused a lot of uncertainty for businesses who currently invest in apprentices, and even more so it has turned into a deterrent for those who don’t employ apprentices.”

Her anxieties are echoed elsewhere.

Testing, inspection and compliance specialist SOCOTEC has increased its apprenticeship programme from just one apprentice five years ago to 194 today across 36 standards.

It currently overspends its levy by around £5,000 a month under the existing 5 per cent co-investment model. HR director Lisa Massey questions whether the cost increase of between £25,000 and £30,000 every month after August is affordable.

“At the moment, if somebody steps forward and says, ‘I’d like to do an apprenticeship’, the answer is yes,” she said.

“I don’t worry about that today, but I am going to worry about that in the future.”

SOCOTEC has successfully secured levy transfer funding to help offset the co-investment in the past. But Massey is aware that levy gifting is “becoming more rare these days” due to policy changes, which has potential to be “hugely” damaging.

She fears managers will become more cautious about recruiting inexperienced candidates.

“It’s driving employers to be more risk averse… they may then go for someone with more experience rather than give the young person with no experience a chance.”

Childcare businesses are also reassessing their apprenticeship plans.

Grandir UK, which employs around 340 apprentices across the early years sector, estimates the higher co-investment rate would have added between £80,000 and £100,000 to last year’s costs.

Professional qualifications lead Cathy Agozzino said apprentices remain essential to tackling chronic recruitment shortages across the early years sector.

“We don’t want it to interrupt our recruitment of apprentices because the sector as a whole is suffering in terms of recruitment. We’re in a recruitment crisis, so the only way we’re going to move forward is to grow our own workforce.”

Grandir plans to rely more heavily on levy transfers, although Agozzino fears it will face growing competition for dwindling transfer funds.

“We’ll all be vying for those levy transfer funds,” she said.

“If it becomes very competitive, then the government will start to hear employers’ voices. We had a good, robust apprenticeship system where we were employing young apprentices to help tackle NEETs, and now you’ve almost punished us for that.”

Kat Learner, head of learning and development at The Old Station Nursery, which employs around 2,000 staff, said apprenticeships underpin the group’s workforce strategy, with most staff training through level 2 and 3 early years programmes.

While the group does not want to reduce apprenticeship recruitment, the higher co-investment rate means it is exploring alternative ways to upskill staff and maximise levy transfers. “It came out of the blue,” Learner said. “We don’t know what the competition is going to be like. I think it’s definitely going to be far higher than we’ve been used to.”

Patrick Milnes, head of people and work policy at the British Chambers of Commerce, warned that higher co-investment will undermine the government’s skills ambitions.

“For many levy-paying employers, particularly those operating on tight margins, increasing co-investment once levy funds are exhausted is a significant additional outlay,” he said.

“When this is piled on top of other rising costs, there is a real risk that some employers will reduce the number of apprentices they recruit or scale back investment in workforce training.

“Apprenticeships remain an important way to address skills shortages, so it is vital that changes to funding arrangements do not discourage employer participation.”

Zero issues with fivefold increase for some

But not all employers are discouraged by the fivefold bump to co-investment.

Dental firm mydentist employs around 1,000 apprentices each year, primarily on the level 3 dental nurse programme, 400 of whom are funded through co-investment.

Jayne Owen, head of learning and development, said mydentist is “fully committed to maintaining our apprenticeship recruitment plans” as the apprenticeship route “provides the best all-round knowledge, skills, and practical experience available to learners in the dental industry”.

A government spokesperson said: “We are determined to address the long-term decline in young people starting apprenticeships, giving businesses the trained workforce they need now and in the future.

“Our £2.5 billion youth employment package will support almost one million young people and help deliver up to 500,000 opportunities to earn and learn.

“In addition to this we have introduced a £2,000 incentive for each new employee aged 16-24 taken on by a small business, while national insurance contributions are waived for most employees under 21 and apprentices under 25.”

Watchdogs on the lookout for AI experts

Ofqual is searching for an “exceptional” senior leader to head its artificial intelligence (AI) plans and protect the integrity of assessment.

The qualifications regulator is on the lookout for a director of assessment integrity and innovation to provide “increased leadership capacity” on technology.

In the advert for the £81,000 a year job, Ofqual said: “While technology can deliver meaningful benefits for learners, the standards and public confidence underpinning England’s world-leading qualifications must be protected.

“Balancing these priorities is central to the role.”

The appointee would be responsible for “protecting assessment integrity and test security” from technological risks, including malpractice.

They would also shape Ofqual’s regulatory approach to AI and other new technology, making sure any innovation was “safe and beneficial”.

Ian Bauckham, the chief regulator, told the Festival of Education this month that written coursework would face “far, far more scrutiny” once reformed qualifications were rolled out to ensure that AI-generated output did not replace learners’ own coursework.

But he acknowledged that AI could “improve efficiency and both cut costs and increase accuracy” in marking.

Ofsted has also launched a recruitment round for a lead AI security specialist.

‘Thought leader’ on AI

It said the new director must be an “exceptional senior leader” who would help the regulator “navigate this changing landscape and shape how regulation responds”.

It involved anticipating and addressing threats to validity, security and trust across qualifications, and setting up effective ways of preventing and detecting malpractice enabled by AI.

The director would also be a “authoritative voice and thought leader” to influence government, regulators and the sector and “shape national thinking” on AI and assessment integrity.

Successful candidates should understand the potential and use of technology in assessment, and have experience leading “through ambiguity and making high-stakes decisions with incomplete evidence”.

The £70,000-a-year Ofsted AI lead would act as a “subject-matter expert on AI security”, making sure the systems used were “secure, resilient, and compliant”.

They would also provide expert cyber security guidance across projects, working with different teams to identify risk and to make sure that AI use was compliant with policy and standards.

Ofsted said it was committed to making sure its AI use “complies with legal obligations, mitigates risk to the organisation, providers, the public and employees” and fits civil service guidance.

Ofsted bins £3.9m IT project paused to fund pay rises

Ofsted has written off the entire £3.9 million it spent on software meant to replace its scheduling and case management system, after an external review found the stalled project was not worth reviving.

The watchdog recorded a £3.1 million impairment of a software asset in its 2025-26 annual report and accounts, published this week. It followed an earlier £800,000 impairment of the same asset in 2024-25, which Ofsted confirmed covered work that would have needed redoing.

Ofsted told FE Week the two write-offs account for the full £3.9 million spent on the project before it was paused.

The inspectorate paused the work in 2023-24, when it reallocated funding to support civil servant pay in the organisation after the Conservative government announced unfunded public sector pay rises.

Ofsted confirmed the system was being built to replace the software it uses to schedule, case manage and support workflow across all its inspection and regulatory work.

Its latest accounts for the financial year ending March 31, 2026, said an independent review had confirmed that restarting the work would not represent value for money, because of “technology changes and evolved business requirements”.

“We resumed work on the replacement system last year, starting with an external review to decide whether we would be best re-start the paused work or begin again with a different approach,” an Ofsted spokesperson said.

“That review recommended we should go down a different route, leading to us needing to write this work off.”

Ofsted’s accounts state that “elements of the work completed will inform future digital solutions”, though the watchdog did not specify what elements have been kept. A further £125,000 impairment was identified after the year end, which Ofsted judged immaterial and did not adjust for.

Ofsted is required to report write-offs of more than £300,000. Its latest accounts also reported a £400,000 “fruitless payment” for three months of rent and running costs on a vacant London office, incurred after Ofsted relocated as part of the Government Property Agency’s programme to reduce Civil Service office space.

Total losses reported by the inspectorate rose to £3.67 million across 68 cases in 2025-26, up from £54,000 across 50 cases the year before.

The scrapped project is unrelated to Ofsted’s electronic evidence-gathering (EEG) system, the software inspectors use to record notes during inspections.

Ofsted reiterated that it was considering replacing the EEG system, after long-running technical issues of lost data and freezing glitches when inspectors attempt to type their notes into the application.

A spokesperson added: “We’re currently undertaking a programme of digital modernisation aimed at ensuring long-term and sustainable digital inspection tools, including evidence gathering tools. We don’t have any further update at this stage.”

Ofsted’s digital and IT costs have climbed steadily since the pause. The organisation spent £6.4 million in 2023-24, rising to £7.2 million in 2024-25 and £9.6 million in 2025-26 — an increase of nearly a third in a year.

To fix apprenticeships we must back employers, not just fund them

The government’s new ‘deal for young people’ and renewed focus on youth apprenticeships is a welcome step towards reversing the long-term decline in under-25 apprenticeship starts.

But if this ambition is to succeed, we must recognise a fundamental truth: the problem is not a lack of interest from young people.

Every month, Lifetime receives more than 5,000 applications from young adults looking for apprenticeship opportunities, yet vacancies fall well short of demand.

That tells us something important. Young people are motivated, ambitious and eager to learn. The challenge is creating enough opportunities for them to take that next step.

Apprenticeships remain one of the most effective ways for employers to build a skilled and loyal workforce, develop talent aligned to business needs and create a pipeline for long-term growth.

Yet for many employers, particularly in hospitality, retail, care and early years, recruiting a young apprentice can still feel like a significant commitment. Many are taking on someone entering the workforce for the first time, requiring additional time, support and investment.

Increased funding has an important role to play, especially during the early stages of employment. But funding alone will not unlock employer demand.

Employers consistently tell us they need practical support: clear guidance, simple processes and confidence that they have the right structures in place to help a young person succeed. When that confidence exists, they are far more likely to invest.

This is where policy needs to go further. We should focus on genuinely de-risking the decision to recruit, whether through targeted incentives such as salary offsets or practical support that helps employers manage the realities of bringing new talent into the workplace.

The government’s recent apprenticeship announcements reinforce both the opportunity and the challenge.

The review of funding bands has the potential to better reflect the true cost of delivering high-quality apprenticeships. However, without additional funding entering the system, difficult trade-offs remain and there is a risk that some areas of provision will be squeezed.

The renewed focus on younger learners is welcome and overdue. Rebuilding entry-level pathways is essential for social mobility, productivity and economic growth.

However, entry-level does not always mean young. In sectors such as adult social care and early years, many new entrants are over 25. A strong apprenticeship system must support young people starting their careers, older career changers, existing employees looking to upskill and those returning to work. Solving one challenge should not create another.

Alongside employer demand, there is another equally important priority: preparing young people for the workplace.

Employers consistently tell us that communication, teamwork and other employability skills matter just as much as technical knowledge. Stronger collaboration between schools, employers and training providers can make a real difference.

Better work experience, mentoring and opportunities to develop workplace confidence can help young people understand employer expectations before they apply for an apprenticeship.

Too often, employers engage too late or have limited relationships with schools and local communities. Our recent research found that only 37 per cent of parents had received any information from employers about apprenticeships. Earlier engagement would raise awareness of apprenticeship pathways, shape expectations and strengthen future talent pipelines.

The government’s ambition to create 50,000 additional youth apprenticeship starts by 2030 is achievable. But it will require more than additional funding. It means giving employers the confidence to recruit, helping young people become work-ready and maintaining a balanced apprenticeship system that supports young entrants, career changers and workforce development alike.

The talent is already there. Now we need a system that gives more young people the opportunity to fulfil their potential while helping employers build the workforce they need.

The career ladder is missing its first rung

Alan Milburn’s recently published Young People and Work Review has drawn significant headlines, but one of Milburn’s most striking observations – that “the first rungs on the old career ladder have weakened” – deserved greater focus.

This is not simply about whether young people have the right qualifications, or access to careers advice and employment support. It is about whether the labour market still provides enough opportunities for young people to get started, gain experience and build careers. The deterioration of established pathways from education into entry-level roles and stable career-track employment may be one of the most important structural drivers of declining social mobility and young people’s growing disillusionment with the economic and political system.

While many young people are affected by these changes, those from disadvantaged backgrounds are likely to face the greatest challenges because they are often most reliant on accessible entry-level opportunities to gain a foothold in the labour market. As these opportunities decline, it may become harder for them to transition into independent adulthood.

Before the mid-noughties, we became used to the labour market offering large numbers of jobs that acted as stepping stones into sustainable careers for young people. These roles did not always pay well, but they provided accessible entry points for young people to gain experience, develop workplace skills and build a platform from which to progress.

However, opportunities to access low-skilled, accessible jobs have long been waning and recent labour market changes suggest this trend has accelerated. NFER research, The Skills Imperative 2035, showed that AI, automation, and wider demographic, environmental and economic changes are reshaping the labour market, with employment growth concentrated in higher-skilled, higher-paid occupations, while most lower- and middle-skilled occupations decline. Actual employment changes in recent years suggest the pace of change has been faster than previously projected, by as much as three times for some groups.

Many of the jobs that historically provided young people with a foothold in the labour market – such as administrative and routine customer service roles – are shrinking. These roles were important not necessarily as destinations, but as first steps; jobs where young people built skills and experience, helping them later progress into more stable career-track jobs.

At the same time, the requirements of the remaining entry-level jobs are rising. Employers increasingly seek experience and a combination of technical and transferable skills, creating a challenge for young people who need employment in order to gain the very experience employers are asking for. This risks creating a cycle where young people face higher barriers to accessing opportunities that were previously more accessible.

Consequently, young workers now start further down the career ladder than they used to and progress more slowly after that point . Even graduates are experiencing a ‘triple whammy’ of challenges due to a general labour market slowdown, a sharper decline in graduate-level job openings, and reduced demand for lower-skilled ‘stepping stones’ roles. NFER research shows that the sharp slowdown in hiring in the tech sector, for example, has hit entry level roles disproportionately.

The result is that the labour market is shifting from one that facilitates efficient education-to-employment transitions to one with fewer entry points into occupations offering good career and salary progression, especially outside London; rising experience requirements for roles that historically provided that experience; and a growing risk of becoming trapped in forms of underemployment.

As is often the case when opportunity structures weaken, disadvantaged young people are likely to bear the brunt particularly those with fewer qualifications and family connections or financial support that can help others navigate a more competitive labour market.

Milburn’s interim report rightly acknowledges occupational changes in the structure of the labour market and the erosion of early career entry points. But these changes should be treated as more than just background context. They are central to understanding why so many young people are struggling to establish themselves in the labour market.

Policy focus is on improving the education, welfare, health, and careers systems around young people, without adequately acknowledging that the structure of opportunity has changed and is likely to change further still. This risks helping young people compete for existing opportunities, rather than addressing the shrinking structure of opportunities themselves.

The erosion of entry-level opportunities is not just a temporary disruption but the consequence of deeper structural changes that are reshaping the demand for labour. Milburn’s final report needs to start from this premise. Young people don’t just need help to climb the rungs of the career ladder; we also need to rebuild the ladder itself.

Our new vocational model could shape future ESOL

Up until a few years ago, we had a problem that we knew wasn’t unique to us at The City of Liverpool College: many learners of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) were getting stuck when they reached entry level 3 ESOL and then dropping out. Normally, this is the point at which students progress onto vocational programmes. However, these courses do not always provide the right language support or learning environment that ESOL learners need.

So, about two years ago we introduced a new suite of ‘ESOL into’ courses designed to break the cycle. They combine ESOL and vocational pathways for our learners who have reached Level 1 ESOL, where they then have the option to join a specific vocational pathway. Following the success of the first year, we now have eight vocational pathways for students to choose from, ranging from Plastering to Art and Design.

Working with the local authority

We first started to offer vocational taster sessions to ESOL students in 2023. That same year we successfully applied for and received Test and Learn funding from the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority as part of the local devolved adult education budget (Adult Skills Fund), helping to make our concept become a reality.

We would encourage others to consider supporting specific learner groups and/or applying for the funding, which if available, enables organisations to design and support innovative pilot projects that help to engage learners, meet employer needs, address skill shortages. They are specifically aimed to facilitate innovative practise where there’s a safe space and flexibility for experimentation.

For us, the programme has enabled us to improve ESOL learners’ participation in vocational education significantly. But it’s far from a separate project – it’s now part of our curriculum plan and embedded across many different subjects.

Unlocking progression opportunities

It’s been brilliant to see the students progressing on to the next level within the vocational courses. Two thirds of our current ‘ESOL into plastering’ students are continuing to the level 2 plastering course, while six of our ESOL into teaching assistant graduates have already taken up positions in local schools. For others, it’s simply about building their confidence as they work and study in a new language.

Replicating the model

There are many providers and colleges who are already running a vocational ESOL model in some shape or form. But we do truly believe that this comprehensive framework could help shape future ESOL programmes across the country, and it shouldn’t be difficult for others to replicate the model.

The first step is to work with local authorities to secure funding and to sell this model as a way to benefit students and the local economy. This can take time: liaising with different strategic authorities and navigating complex funding structures are potential barriers that providers might face when implementing a similar programme.

The next step is getting buy-in from all staff involved. In our experience, we’ve had nothing but positivity from both the ESOL and vocational teaching teams when it comes to teaching the new courses. They’ve all been heavily involved in the curriculum design and have told us that the new model is exactly what they’ve needed over the last few years.

We have found that our “ESOL Into” model works particularly well where there are particular skillsets or terminology that the students need to master, for example, taking shorthand notes in health and social care, or describing pictures in art and design. In short, making sure that the students have the language to be able to follow a set of instructions clearly. This means that most of the pathways that we offer are vocational as opposed to academic subjects, with the exception of our ESOL in science course, which can act as an entry point into further academic study.

The next challenge for us, and others, is to ensure that there are clear progression routes for all our ESOL pathways. It is also important that learners who may have other work or family pressures are aware that these vocational courses are a bigger time commitment than a standalone ESOL course.

On reflection, the model has been a big hit with everyone in the college, students and staff included. We love it when ESOL students start to view themselves as vocational students – ultimately, it’s about building their confidence.

AI might accelerate processes, but it can’t sit with ambiguity

One of the most quietly dangerous phrases in modern workplaces is: “Can we just get a quick answer?”

It is dangerous because what people often actually mean is: “Can somebody make the discomfort of uncertainty disappear?”

Modern organisations are obsessed with speed – faster responses, faster systems, faster delivery, faster decisions. Everyone is “circling back”, “touching base” and escalating things marked urgent that absolutely were not urgent five minutes earlier. Meanwhile, half the workforce is running on caffeine, cortisol and Microsoft Teams notifications, so naturally we’ve collectively decided AI will fix this.

To be clear, AI is incredibly useful. I often use it myself. It can reduce administrative friction, process huge amounts of information quickly and automate repetitive tasks that human beings probably should not have been doing manually in the first place. But there is a significant difference between accelerating processes and exercising judgement, and organisations are increasingly starting to confuse the two.

AI performs brilliantly in structured environments: clear rules, defined outputs, historical patterns and predictable systems. The trouble is that human organisations are almost never like that. Most genuinely difficult workplace decisions happen inside ambiguity – not spreadsheet ambiguity, but human ambiguity.

That is the kind where nobody has the full picture yet, where the data technically says one thing but your operational instincts are screaming another, where a safeguarding concern first appears as “something feels slightly off”, or where culture problems emerge through strange tension in meetings long before they appear in engagement surveys. Risk rarely arrives neatly labelled. More often, it develops quietly through accumulated workarounds created by exhausted people trying to survive impossible workloads.

A lot of governance work – real governance work – is essentially professional pattern recognition under conditions of uncertainty. That is also why I am increasingly unconvinced by the notion that the future belongs entirely to the people who can produce answers fastest. Sometimes the most valuable person in the room is the one saying: “Hang on. I don’t think we fully understand what’s happening yet.”

Unfortunately, many workplaces still reward the opposite. Confidence is often treated as competence, while fast responses get mistaken for good judgement. Reflective people can be perceived as hesitant simply because they insist on sitting with complexity for longer than is socially comfortable. Corporate culture still has a strange tendency to reward performance signalling over actual thinking, and AI may accidentally make some of this worse rather than better.

Because AI tends to mirror the logic of the systems around it, if an organisation already prioritises speed over reflection, visibility over substance and certainty over nuance, then introducing AI into that environment may simply accelerate existing dysfunction more efficiently – which is not quite the futuristic utopia everyone put in the PowerPoint.

I also find this conversation intersects interestingly with neurodivergence. Many neurodivergent professionals, particularly those used to navigating unpredictable or cognitively demanding environments, often develop strong systems-thinking and pattern-recognition abilities. Sometimes, we identify operational tensions long before those tensions become formally visible to everybody else.

At the same time, many workplaces still assess professionalism through communication style rather than decision quality: who sounds polished, who speaks confidently in meetings, who performs calmness convincingly enough, who understands the unwritten social choreography of corporate environments. Those things are not always the same as good judgement.

And in increasingly AI-enabled workplaces, that distinction matters enormously because eventually somebody still has to sit in the room where the information is incomplete, the politics are unspoken, the risks are emerging, everybody is uncomfortable and there is no clean answer yet.

AI is excellent at generating outputs. It is still remarkably bad at sitting with uncertainty without hallucinating confidence. And frankly, quite a lot of humans are bad at that too.

I suspect ambiguity tolerance – the ability to remain thoughtful, reflective and operationally calm without forcing premature certainty – is quietly becoming one of the most valuable workplace skills of the next decade. The irony is that many organisations still do not recruit, reward or promote for it nearly as much as they should.

Burnham could create a new dawn for further education and lifelong learning

The vision that Andy Burnham has laid out of the future is refreshing, particularly his assertion that education is a key to growth, hope and opportunity.

Central to this vision I would like to see the revitalisation of further education. I have many reasons to believe in the life-changing importance of FE. Here are some of them.

Given Burnham’s emphasis on opportunity and hope, I would like to tell my own story. I failed my 11 plus and left school in 1965, aged fifteen. Ten years of dead-end jobs followed.

At the age of twenty-five I went to my local FE college to enquire about studying for some evening class O-Levels. They had just started a new full-time course for mature students and encouraged me to apply. After a year I had gained four O-levels; another year, three A-levels. My local authority gave me a grant for these two years.

I was then accepted to study social sciences at the University of Bath. FE, and then university, completely changed my life – it gave me hope and opportunity. Since those times in the 1970’s the opportunities for older people to follow such a path have diminished considerably.

After graduation I started as a part-time lecturer in FE teaching something called liberal studies to day and block release students, including plumbers, electricians, carpenters and joiners, motor vehicle engineers, and many others. These people were on proper, well-recognised and funded apprenticeships. I soon became a full-time lecturer and my local authority funded day release to study for a Certificate in Education

I taught in FE for 22 years. In 2002, after a tasty redundancy offer, I joined the FE teacher training team at my local university. I gained an MA in education studies and, before retirement became a senior teaching fellow in the university’s department for education, health and sciences. I have published several books on learning and teaching in further and higher education. All this might sound like bragging but I am proud of what I did and the way an FE college set me on the path.

I would very much like to see FE providing opportunities for people of all ages to study, train and retrain. This will become especially important when the idea of a job for life has gone, with technological shifts causing the economy to change more rapidly than ever before. In short, lifelong learning will become crucial. Former education secretary David Blunkett had a vision for this in his 1998 green paper The Learning Age.

In 1993, FE colleges were taken out of local authority control and forced to become independent entities. Reductions in lecturers’ pay, reduction in courses and general decline in the status of further education colleges followed. Perhaps Andy Burnham will consider giving local mayors more control of funding, curriculum and management.

I would also like to comment about his desire to put an end to the academic and vocational divide. This is a socially constructed divide reinforced by class prejudices; Professor Alison Wolfe said that vocational education was often regarded as ‘a great idea for other people’s children’.

Clearly skills are vital to personal and economic growth, but the phrase ‘learning and skills’ seems to imply that skills are for people who can’t manage learning. We should only talk about ‘education’ and ‘learning’. In the future people will need to learn, unlearn and re-learn throughout their lives.

My final wish for FE is a revitalisation of its role in building communities and bringing people together. I remember the times when non-vocational courses such as painting, woodworking and yoga were well attended, and relatively inexpensive. People learned, made friends and enjoyed themselves; they didn’t even have to undertake a qualification!

Let’s make further education central to life and learning again.