Everyone in the skills sector is rooting for the government’s youth guarantee. Tackling the NEETs crisis isn’t just a moral goal; it’s an economic necessity.
But a rush to create opportunities for young people will fail if we don’t have the managers to support them. To make this work, we need to address three uncomfortable truths.
1. The line manager as the lynchpin
The success of the youth guarantee won’t happen in Whitehall. It will happen on the shop floor, in the office and on site. Line managers are the lynchpins.
To fail to manage new hires risks souring a young person’s relationship with work before it’s really begun. All too often a talented young person loses confidence and walks away because their first boss didn’t know how to manage them.
If we want young people to stay in the workforce we have to train those who lead them.
2. Scaling up the accidental manager
Critics often ask: If management apprenticeships are so great, why does the UK stilllag in productivity? The answer is scale.
We aren’t failing because management training doesn’t work; we’re failing because we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of this deficit.
3. Business needs must come first
We cannot squander this moment by ignoring what employers actually require. While it’s right that we focus on industrial strategy sector priorities and ‘critical sectors’ such as health and construction, it shouldn’t come at the expense of management capability elsewhere.
Closer to home, the latest Skills England assessment deemed management a critical occupation – accounting for 25 per cent of all roles in “critical demand”. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development echoes that view, linking the UK’s gap in managerial practices to lower productivity levels.
Independent research by Oxford Economics calculated that £120 million was added to GDP in 12 months (2023-24) by those completing management apprenticeships.
Beyond economic returns are the people undertaking these courses. Management apprentices gain the soft skills that are often the most challenging to master – team dynamics, handling difficult conversations and giving constructive feedback.
Learners overwhelmingly report that they feel more confident and competent, which allows them to take on additional responsibilities. Apprenticeships also drive social mobility, with around 60 per cent of learners coming from the UK’s most deprived areas, while 59 per cent of all apprentices are women.
The government cannot – and should not – be expected to fund it all. Business must step up and invest in its own people. However, the government sets the direction of travel.
This is why CMI has launched a new petition to the government. We are calling on ministers to heed the employers’ voice and ensure that as they streamline funding, they follow the evidence and protect the programmes that turn “accidental managers” into professional leaders.
Employers need a “both/and” approach. They want the agility of new short courses such as managing AI and short-term business priorities. But they also need the deep, behavioural transformation that a full apprenticeship provides.
Management provision simply cannot be sidelined. If we want to give young people the future they deserve, we have to give them managers who are trained to lead.
A deputy further education commissioner has been appointed to Ofsted’s board.
Frances Wadsworth is one of five recruits to the watchdog’s governance team announced today.
Other new members include Ark academy trust CEO Lucy Heller, child safeguarding expert Sir Alan Wood, former academy trust boss and Department for Education civil servant Hardip Begol, and journalist Jo Coburn.
It comes after former Ofsted chief inspector Christine Gilbert was appointed last year as chair of the watchdog’s board.
It followed criticism in her review of Ofsted’s response to the death of headteacher Ruth Perry that the board’s role “appears curiously limited, apparently leaving some of Ofsted’s most critical activities outside of its control, unless Her Majesty’s chief inspector (HMCI) chooses to let it have some control”.
“This degree of autonomy and entitlement for HMCI does not make for effective governance,” the review said.
Wadsworth is a former teacher, college principal, interim chair of Ofqual and a serving magistrate.
She was appointed as a deputy FE commissioner in May 2018 and is due to complete her extended term next month.
Wadsworth was made a CBE for services to education in the Queen’s 2022 birthday honours.
The DfE said Wood had declared he was a member of the Labour Party while none of the other four new Ofsted board members declared any political activity.
Heller, Wood, Wadsworth and Coburn will serve for three years from February 1. Begol will serve for three years from August 1. They will be paid an annual salary of £8,292 for 20 days per year.
They join Gilbert and serving members Martyn Oliver, Ofsted’s chief inspector, and Martin Spencer, Laura Wyld, Jon Yates, Felicity Gillespie, Joanne Moran and David Meyer.
Hairdressing lecturer at North East Surrey College of Technology (Nescot) Lisa Charles is basking in the glow of a double celebration. Just weeks after one of her learners, Reanna Chambers, was named the Association of Colleges adult student of the year, Charles, who leads Nescot’s hair and beauty department, was last month named the Pearson National Teaching Awards FE lecturer of the year.
Charles’s role these days is more about psychology than hair styling. She often has a long line of anxious young learners waiting outside her office door to talk, many of whom, like her, missed much of their schooling.
“We’ve all got an autobiography – but we have to rewrite our future,” she tells them.
Charles and her colleagues were left devastated last year by the suicide of a former student, and Charles wants to use the limelight of her award to raise awareness of mental health issues that many young people face, especially when they leave formal education and associated support networks.
Her own story began when, aged just 18 months, Charles was blinded in one eye by her father during a violent outburst. She and her mum went back and forth from the family home to different women’s refuges, until her mum remarried when she was 12. But her new husband was also abusive.
Charles credits her husband, whom she met when she was just 15, with saving her life by encouraging her to train as a hairdresser. Life at first was incredibly tough for the couple, who were only able to buy dinner if Charles made enough money in tips that day from washing hair.
A doctor gave them an oven after realising they were both suffering malnutrition. But after having her daughter at age 18, Charles trained to be an assessor, then a hairdressing teacher at Kingston College before starting at Nescot 15 years ago.
Here is what her typical day looks like…
5.30am
I get up and give my French bulldog, Rodney, a cuddle. Some things that students have told me the day before were buzzing around in my head through the night, so I didn’t sleep well.
Some learners who are more needy do gravitate towards me. Last year, a student who was very close with us all died by suicide after finishing her course. The whole team was devastated. I still think about her lots and how she shared that her time at college was so happy.
I’d love to use my award win to try to help young people who struggle when they finish college. Sometimes they lack the wider support and life skills they need, and there aren’t always jobs for them.
I worry that some young people aren’t resilient enough for this world. I feel very strongly that more needs to be done to support them.
7.00am
I check my phone to see if any staff are calling in sick that day, so I can arrange lesson cover. I’ll phone a learner to get them out of bed if that’s what I told them I’d do; it’s about being consistent. I don’t eat breakfast or lunch, as I don’t have time. And I drink too much Pepsi!
I’m responsible for 160 students on our hair and beauty courses, which is up 50 on last year. I put the increase down to us having the best team we’ve ever had.
But we haven’t been able to recruit enough teachers for all the new students, so I’m teaching more sessions myself. We’ve gone to market a few times, but it can be hard to recruit teachers and tempt people away from industry and salons.
Lisa Charles at her office desk
8.30am
I arrive at college and after a quick chat with colleagues, I check my emails. They’re often from parents explaining that their young person is too anxious to come in.
Some of the young people who were in our 14-16 provision last year have moved onto our mainstream courses and need more hand-holding. The first couple of months are always difficult, with the jump they have to make from doing functional skills to English and maths GCSEs. Then you see them strutting down the corridors like they’ve been here forever!
Often these days, learners come in with ADHD, ADD or dyslexia. At Nescot, I am proud that we are inclusive of all of our learners. In fact, I think we’re all a little different.
But we are realistic with learners as to the expectations of what the employer is looking for so we can prepare them for the industry. It shouldn’t be about categorising and pigeonholing. Everybody’s individual, we just need to get to know each learner and how to support them.
I like to have a couple of lessons with my new students before I read their profiles from their previous place of learning, because I might build a different rapport with them than their last teacher did. It’s interesting; if you let a student read what’s been written about them previously, quite often they think it doesn’t describe them at all.
Some young people lack the course entry requirements, but I believe they still deserve a chance.
I remember on enrolment day in 2016 meeting Maria, a member of the traveller community who had no qualifications but who really wanted to become a hairdresser.
I was aware that there could be some unfair stereotyping given to this community and that the learner had no formal schooling, so technically didn’t meet the entry requirements for the course. But when I called the informal school that Maria had attended, her teacher was so complimentary about her that, with my manager’s support, we were able to accept her on the course.
Maria turned out to be an absolute angel. Five years later, I put her sister Reanna on a level one hairdressing course and in her first year she also passed her GCSE maths and English, which was unheard of. She now specialises in bridal hair for the traveller community.
I couldn’t be prouder of her winning the AoC’s adult learner of the year award. She’s opened the door for others, too. A positive has also been that our learners no longer stick to groups or backgrounds of culture, race or familiarity – they mix as one group of learners.
Lisa Charles with Reanna Chambers, after she scooped the Association of Colleges adult student of the year award
9.00am
It’s like a doctor’s waiting room with all the people sitting outside my office door. We have a great wellbeing hub downstairs that I work with, but sometimes learners I have a rapport with will come to me first.
Sometimes I just need a minute on my own, because some of what’s happening with these young people can be very upsetting.
I can’t turn them away, and if they’re very upset I end up sitting with them for some time. I always keeptwo boxes of tissues on my table and have lots of leaflets about coping with stress.
‘Anxious’ is the word that they use all the time to describe how they’re feeling, but sometimes it’s a word that’s overused. I’ll say, ‘are you anxious? Or are you just a little bit worried? And is that maybe not a bad thing that you’re a little bit concerned about whether you’re going to pass?’
I’ll work from home tomorrow, so I can get my schemes of work done without being interrupted.
Lisa Charles with Nescot’s principal Julie Kapsalis
9.30am
I meet with my principal, Julie Kapsalis, about getting a pop-up salon opened up in our main reception area, offering free haircuts for the homeless. The space is mostly empty, and opening a salon up would help us to provide much-needed work experience opportunities for our learners.
Work experience is a course requirement, but some learners feel awkward about going into a workplace straight away with people they don’t know, especially those who missed a lot of schooling. Some salons expect these kids to suddenly know how to talk to strangers, and they don’t.
This salon would give more vulnerable students a stepping stone by helping them build their confidence. I’d run it in the evenings – it has to be separate from college learning hours.
Lisa Charles demonstrating a hair technique to her students
1.30pm
I spend the afternoon doing performance reviews with staff or observing their lessons.
It’s lovely to see the rapport that a lecturer has built up with their students. The little bit of success that a learner has made that day can’t necessarily be tick-boxed. For some students, it’s a massive achievement just for them to be there.
I’ve found that having a learning support assistant working exclusively with a particular student can be problematic, because often they won’t utilise them. Many students have a learning need of some sort, but that’s not always defined on paper.
So, if you’ve got a learning assistant going around supporting everybody rather than focusing on a particular student, then that student who is deemed to need the help may actually take it. But if they’re homing in on them constantly, they refuse it. Nobody wants to feel singled out.
3.00pm
I have a meeting with a parent. I get parents in here all the time. I’d rather have a friendly chat with them first about behaviour issues and work with them before starting formal procedures. It’s important to manage parent/carer expectations as well as students’.
Sometimes there can be sensitivities around intimate treatments like Brazilian waxing. When a male learner, Craig, started with us on a beauty course, the mum of another learner wanted me to ask him to leave, and talked about going to the newspapers because she didn’t agree with having a boy in the group.
I said, ‘I’m really sorry you feel like that, but all students deserve an education’ and we are sensitive to all differences whilst being inclusive. After talking to the parent in person, they did not challenge any further. Craig is an absolutely beautiful therapist, and has now progressed onto our hairdressing course.
Lisa Charles being told on the BBC’s The One Show that she had won the Pearson FE Lecturer of the Year award
4.30pm
After classes, it’s my CPD time. I’m doing a colour degree with L’Oreal, and I’m working with them to get a new colouring qualification off the ground in colleges. I’ve been part of a steering group with six other colleges helping L’Oreal to tailor the course to our curriculums. We’ll be the first colleges globally to pilot this qualification, which is fantastic.
At Nescot, we have just started offering hairdressing apprenticeships, which is bucking the national trend. Apprentice numbers in hairdressing and beauty have dropped heavily, from 16,000 to 6,000 between 2016 and 2023.
A lot of salons don’t want the aggravation of paying an apprenticeship wage, and some young people think they can teach themselves how to do the job using social media. I think L’Oreal recognises that they need to work with colleges to maintain standards in the profession.
Lisa Charles with her National Teaching Award for FE Lecturer of the Year
6.00pm
I do some hairdressing for friends myself after work, because I think it’s important to keep my hand in the trade and it’s a way to socialise.
Being a hairdresser isn’t just about cutting hair; it’s about empathy. In our industry, we’ll often be among the first people that someone with a serious medical condition talks to about it.
I remember as a young hairdresser, one lady wanting wacky colours put in her hair. She’d just been told she had terminal cancer, and walked straight into our salon. When you go home at night, you think about those things.
You can’t always learn the soft skills that students need for those conversations in a college environment, so, once a month, I take our students to the Royal Marsden Hospital in Sutton to provide haircuts and beauty treatments for children with cancer and their families.
When I first suggested going, a lot of the students were very apprehensive. But now they all want to go! Some get a real rapport with the patients, and find the experience very humbling.
7.00pm
I’ll normally put my laptop on when I get home, but I hoovered up and put Fleetwood Mac on instead! Otherwise, I’d be checking Google Classrooms to see photographs and films of the work our learners have done.
It was blow-dries today. I’m also interested to see what they’ve done in other people’s lessons. One clip was a student dancing. It’s lovely to see them enjoying themselves. We post the best pictures and videos on Instagram, which also helps us with our student recruitment.
Lisa Charles at the Pearson National Teaching Awards
10.00pm
I start to read – it’s normally what I call ‘no-think reading’ on my Kindle, and within 10 minutes I’m asleep.
When I was doing my teacher training, I remember experiencing snobbery from some other teachers who saw hairdressing lecturing as ‘not really teaching.’ I occasionally still experience prejudice in the form of lower expectations some people have of our learners.
A number of years ago, I heard a staff member in a meeting saying, ‘that’s a good group because they’ve got really good GCSEs, and this other group will be the naughty group’. I said, ‘if that’s how you feel about the students, we should be rethinking what our job is’.
I hope I can dispel those myths – it’s what the college does so well. My team works 24-7. This isn’t a nine-to-five role. But I feel very fortunate that I absolutely love my job.
Three college leaders have been selected for the higher education regulator’s “critical friend” expert group that aims to alert it to any emerging risks in the sector.
The Office for Students’ (OfS) new provider panel features 11 senior leaders from higher and further education institutions to offer advice and constructive challenge on current and future OfS regulation.
Former Leicester College principal Verity Hancock will serve as chair in tandem with her OfS board membership.
Debra Gray, principal and chief executive of Hull College, and Denise Brown, group CEO of South Essex Colleges Group, join the 11-strong panel.
Josh Allerson, managing director of degree apprenticeships provider Corndel College London – part of apprenticeship giant Corndel Limited, is also a panel member alongside five university vice-chancellors and two chief executives of arts higher education schools.
Members will act as a “critical friend” to the OfS and help shape the future of higher education regulation as part of the watchdog’s endeavours to work “collaboratively” with universities and colleges.
The OfS said the panel will help understand the views of the diverse institutions it regulates, as well as alerting it to emerging risks across the higher education sector.
Recruitment for the panel was launched in September and received over 80 applications from sector leaders, according to the OfS October board minutes.
Hancock was first appointed to the Office for Students’ board in 2019 on a five year-term. She stepped down as principal and CEO of Leicester College last summer after 12 years at the helm due to health reasons.
Hancock said the new panel will facilitate a “two-way” dialogue between the regulator and education providers.
Last year, the regulator published its aims for 2025-26, which included engaging routinely and collaboratively with universities and colleges to build trusted and productive relationships.
It also forms part of the OfS’s change to its governance structure to “to better oversee the OfS’s work as we mature as a regulator”.
She said: “Last year, the OfS told universities, colleges, and other higher education providers that we wanted to work more collaboratively with them in the pursuit of our priorities. The provider panel is an example of that commitment in action, and I’m excited to take up my role as its chair.
“As a longstanding board member and former college principal, I know how important it is for the OfS to have a two-way dialogue with the institutions we regulate. Every panel member will have their own perspective of the risks and opportunities facing the sector, and I’m looking forward to working with them over the coming year.”
Chair of the OfS, Edward Peck, said the panel was the next “important step” in strengthening its relationship with the sector in recent years.
“The members we have announced today are a true reflection the rich diversity of the English higher education sector,” he said.
“Their views will help us to develop future policies and understand how our regulation impacts institutions of all types and sizes.
“Our goal is to foster a thriving higher education ecosystem that is equipped to continue creating opportunity for all students and driving growth across the country. We look forward to working closely with the provider panel in the coming months as we strive to deliver exemplary regulation in the interests of students.”
The 11 new members of the OfS provider panel:
Panel member
Job title
Verity Hancock (Chair)
OfS board member and former principal and CEO of Leicester College
Professor Karen O’Brien
Vice-Chancellor and warden of Durham University
Professor Mark Power
Vice-Chancellor and chief executive of Liverpool John Moores University
Professor David Mba
Vice-Chancellor of Birmingham City University
Professor Larry Kramer
President and vice-chancellor of the London School of Economics
Professor Nick Jennings
Vice-Chancellor and president of Loughborough University
Josh Allerson
Managing director, Corndel College London
Debra Gray
Principal and chief executive of Hull College
Denise Brown
Group chief executive officer of South Essex Colleges Group
Clare Connor
Chief executive of London Contemporary Dance School (LCDS)
Dr. Matt Lilley
President of Hult International Business School
Josette Bushell-Mingo
Principal and CEO of The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
Staff in half the colleges that voted to strike this week have called off their industrial action after agreeing to pay deals or to allow time for further talks.
Teacher members of the University and College Union in 33 colleges voted to strike in November and were set to walk out today, tomorrow and Friday.
But since then a number have settled their disputes with pay deals of up to 7 per cent, while a further ten colleges suspended the action at the last minute so union representatives can further negotiate with college bosses.
Members of the UCU from 16 colleges across England will continue to protest low pay offers and poor working conditions (see list below).
Strikes due at The Sheffield College, Abingdon & Witney College, Lancaster and Morecambe College, Stanmore College, Barnet & Southgate College, the City of Bristol College, New College Swindon, Wirral Met, Kirklees College, and Hugh Baird College have been abandoned in recent days.
UCU opened a nationwide ballot in October after the “disappointing” 4 per cent pay rise recommendation from the Association of Colleges for this year.
The union’s New Deal for FE campaign, alongside sister unions NEU, GMB, UNISON and Unite, is demanding pay parity with schoolteachers, national workload agreements and a binding national bargaining framework.
Union members at 33 of the 54 balloted colleges passed the legally required 50 per cent turnout threshold and backed strike action.
A total of 68 colleges were in dispute with bosses before the ballot. Twenty-one colleges failed to meet the turnout threshold, and 20 colleges have since settled their disputes.
Teachers take to the streets
UCU members at Sheffield College and Kirklees College voted to pause action for two of the three strike action days and will be consulted on whether to put down tools on Friday.*
Leaders at Sheffield have put in contingency plans to “minimise” potential disruption should teachers agree to walk out on Friday as well.
“We welcome the cancellation of strikes for two days this week,” said Paul Simpson, executive director for people at The Sheffield College.
“We are continuing discussions with UCU and committed to resolving this dispute, which affects a number of further education colleges nationally.”
Meanwhile, Daniel Braithwaite, principal & CEO of Lancaster and Morecambe College (LMC), said he has offered teachers a salary rise of 4 per cent due to a “sustained” increase in student numbers and “efficient” financial management.
He said: “We are now focusing on further development of our curriculum to support the continued growth of our 16-18 cohort and expanding our level 3 technical pathways provision.”
UCU members at LMC also accepted pay measures such as a £30,366 starting salary, an additional spine point at the top of the pay scale, and an agreement on workload protections, including a reduction in annual teaching hours, additional safety protections and prioritised time for planning and marking.
Lecturers at Abingdon and Witney College have suspended their strike action to consider a new 4 per cent offer by management.
UCU general secretary Jo Grady at picket line. Photo credit: Rehan Jamil
Representatives will also negotiate an offer to remove the current average annual teaching hours agreement and replace it with a maximum number of annual teaching hours, an action plan on workload concerns, and close the college for two weeks over Christmas so staff will not need to take annual leave.
Staff at City of Bristol College have also voted to suspend this week’s planned strike to allow for further talks on pay scales with bosses.
UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: “It is down to the determination and solidarity of our members which shows what can be achieved when workers unionise and stand together.
“To avoid disruption on campus this week, leaders at colleges where we are still in dispute need to make meaningful offers and show they value their staff.”
Capital City College sixth form teachers march on
National Education Union members at a sixth form college in Angel, part of Capital City College, are also striking today for three days as part of a long-running but separate dispute.
Union representatives claim the current offer will leave “experienced” sixth form teachers at the highest end of the college’s pay scales £1,614 per year behind other sixth form teachers on the same contracts.
The ongoing dispute has led to 16 days of industrial action due to CCC’s “intolerable” plans to freeze sixth-form teacher salaries for two to three years to bring them in line with FE lecturers.
NEU members, who coordinated this week’s strike with UCU to “march separately but strike together”, will also join a national strike rally this Friday in central London.
UCU counterparts at the college group are also striking this week. Members rejected a pay offer of 4 per cent, a 4.5 per cent rise for those on a salary of £25,000 or less, and a one-off payment of £200-250 for those earning £34,000 or less.
The current list of colleges on strike between January 14, 15, 16 (correct at the time of publication):
Bournemouth and Poole College of FE
Capital City College
Chesterfield College
City College Norwich
City of Liverpool College
City of Portsmouth College
City of Wolverhampton College
Isle of Wight College
Loughborough College Group
Morley College
SK College Group
South & City College Birmingham
South Bank Colleges
Truro & Penwith College
Windsor Forest Colleges Group
Working Men’s College
*[Thursday January 15, 5:45pm] Staff at Kirklees College and The Sheffield College pulled out of the third strike day after accepting pay deals of 4.5 per cent and up to 5 per cent respectively.
Kirklees College staff negotiated a deal that will also add an extra 0.5 per cent for lecturers on scale point 3, further negotiations to its workload agreement by April 2026 and potential time off in lieu for open days, parents’ evenings and recruitment events.
Lecturers at Sheffield College will see a 5 per cent pay rise and all other college staff will receive a 4 per cent bump as well as further work on a workload agreement.
The prevention of NEETs (not in education, employment or training) is a critical national priority and a key feature of the recent skills white paper.
Having a shared responsibility to support our most disadvantaged learners has always been central to our mission.
However, the scale of the challenge is significant. Nationally, nearly one million 16 to 24-year olds are NEET. But in Surrey, there are signs of improvement which we believe is due to better and more timely destination tracking.
In October, 12.5 per cent of our young people were NEET or ‘not known’, compared to 15.7 per cent in the South East and 13 per cent in England.
Our data shows RONI (risk of NEET indicators) scoring applied to all year 11 settings and the electively home educated, so we have a clear oversight of emerging risk. This ensures the best possible chance of a successful post-16 transition.
Surrey’s post-16 phase council brings together senior leaders from Surrey County Council and FE providers for proactive intervention, with distinct areas to our collaborative work. They include:
Understanding root causes
Work is carried out in primary and secondary schools to identify risk early, so intervention strategies can be deployed. This includes mentoring support and using the RONI score.
Surrey County Council defines ‘high-risk cohorts’as those presenting with severe absence (less than 70 per cent attendance) in schools.
Socioeconomic vulnerability is also used to indicate risk. Nearly 60 per cent of those deemed at risk of becoming NEET receive free school meals. Over 40 per cent have a child in need (CiN) or child protection plan, and 28 per cent have parents with mental health concerns.
The here and now in FE
For those young people who are already over 16, our focus is on maximising learner engagement through comprehensive support, which involves:
• Understanding individual circumstances.
• Collaborating with partners and support services to provide wraparound support.
• Offering creative and flexible approaches to learning, such as bespoke timetables, mentoring and coaching, thus creating a sense of belonging for every learner. Ultimately, this should maximise learner engagement.
These distinct areas need to intersect to be wholly effective. At the Post-16 Phase Council, we are collectively committing to the early exchange of data. FE colleges need early, actionable data from schools to analyse pupils who risk becoming NEET to ensure a seamless transition and immediate support.
What makes the SurreyFE approach to NEETs different is our strong partnerships with stakeholders – our council, the High Sheriff of Surrey, sixth-form colleges, charities and others – in this NEET prevention work.
Gaining momentum
SurreyFE is in the early stages of launching a careers and NEETs engagement programme that will initially focus on the occupational pathways of construction and health and social care. It will target pupils in years 10 to 12 and young adults at risk of disengagement by providing taster events, employer-led career days and mentoring and progression pathways.
We have high aspirations for our learners. By enhancing our engagement tools and focusing on clear progression routes, we are confident our SurreyFE collaboration will have a big part to play in NEET prevention in the county.
Our collective ambition remains resolute: to ensure no young person is left behind.But the NEETs challenge is complex and requires system-wide innovation.
We are committed to achieving a step-change in prevention across the region. We now issue a clear call to action to our partners across the sector: please share your most impactful and innovative approaches, strategies, or interventions that have demonstrably reduced NEET numbers.
By pooling our collective expertise and proven practices we can significantly accelerate our impact and realise our high aspirations for every learner.
There’s a line in the classic eighties vampire movie The Lost Boys that came to me as new learners entered their FE classrooms in September: “You’ll never grow old, and you’ll never die. But you must feed…”
For many young people studying English and maths, FE can feel exactly like this – an endless cycle of resits, repeated exams, and familiar teaching approaches that never quite meet them where they are.
Learners are expected to keep going, to keep feeding the system with effort and compliance, yet are rarely given the time or conditions needed to rebuild what was missing long before they arrived.
They are not failing because they lack ability; they are lost inside a system that has never fully taken responsibility for their journey.
I came to my college last year new not just to the institution but to the FE sector – new to the acronyms, systems, and the particular language of FE that can feel like a world of its own. I’m still learning how funding rules shape curriculum decisions, how resit requirements drive timetables and how accountability measures ripple through daily practice.
I was struck by the contrast between the college’s forward-thinking approach to vocational education and its more traditional approach to English and maths.
In workshops, studios and training spaces, teaching is applied, responsive and clearly aligned to real-world outcomes. Learners are trusted to learn by doing, to problem-solve, to make mistakes and improve.
By contrast, English and maths delivery often remains exam-driven, content-heavy and disconnected from how learners succeed elsewhere.
I have worked in education for over 20 years, from early years to key stage 5. One truth has remained constant: when pathways are unclear, outcomes are prioritised over understanding and SEND systems fail to intervene early, learners do not fall behind by accident. They are pushed there by design.
National datasets and Ofqual-reported outcomes consistently show that only around two-thirds of GCSE entries achieve a grade 4 or above. Post-16 resit success rates – particularly in maths – remain significantly lower. FE colleges therefore receive large numbers of learners with grades 1 to 3 or U, many of whom have struggled with reading, number confidence or exam anxiety for years.
FE is effectively asked to compress long-term foundational gaps into a single academic year, while being held accountable for outcomes it did not create.
Alongside this academic fragility, learner complexity continues to rise.
Increasing numbers of post-16 learners present with identified or emerging special educational needs, often without complete documentation.
Exam access arrangements are frequently inconsistent, with learners reporting support approved at one stage and removed at another.
When they enter FE, the process begins again – gathering evidence, reassessing, reapplying – while learners continue to sit assessments without the support they require.
One of the clearest tensions in FE is between vocational success and academic exhaustion. Many learners thrive in applied settings, gaining confidence as their skills visibly improve. Attendance and engagement reflect this.
Yet those same learners often disengage rapidly in English and maths lessons when teaching relies heavily on worksheets, abstract tasks and exam-style questions.
Teaching conditions cannot be separated from this experience. Across the country, many English and maths teams are doing thoughtful, creative and highly effective work in extremely challenging circumstances. At the same time, practitioners are managing mixed-level groups, SEND, emotional histories and high-stakes exams with limited subject-specific professional development.
Where pedagogy does not evolve to reflect post-16 learners, motivation fades quickly.
Inspection commentary, sector research and practitioner evidence increasingly point to the limitations of a resit-driven model.
Government proposals for new ‘stepping stone’ English and maths qualifications acknowledge the need for greater learner confidence and alternative pathways, but their impact will depend on whether they genuinely prioritise skills development over repeated assessment.
A skills-focused approach, prioritising literacy, numeracy, communication and problem-solving in meaningful contexts, offers a more realistic way forward.
Our learners are not disengaged by choice. They are navigating a system that values outcomes over understanding. They are not the Lost Boys. The system is lost, and it is our responsibility to get it back on track.
Diversity initiatives are happening across the FE sector, reflecting the need – as highlighted in this article by JTL’s Clair Bradley – to address gender imbalances, particularly in the trades.
But my doctoral research into why young women choose engineering and trades routes shows that raising the visibility of male-dominated careers to girls and young women should not be the destination, but the starting point.
Showing girls a pink hard hat or a welding torch won’t shift entrenched participation patterns unless we also build plausible and viable spaces for them to belong, succeed, and be recognised on their own terms.
In interviews I conducted with young women at a large FE college, one consistent insight emerged: careers become thinkable and doable through layered social experiences at home, school and college, not through one-off interventions.
In my thesis I frame choice-making through three lenses: visible, plausible, and viable. Visibility is about bringing options into view; plausibility is about aligning those options with a young woman’s sense of self, values and identity; viability is about connecting skills, pathways and capital (social, cultural and institutional) so progress is attainable and recognised.
When FE providers fixate on visibility alone, they inadvertently treat girls as observers in a world designed for someone else. Our project in FE then is to invite participation, legitimise presence, and empower young women in male-dominated contexts.
This means reframing how we talk about trades and engineering qualifications.
Several participants I interviewed articulated their motivations in unexpected ways. Brickwork was a “creative craft” and plumbing was a “caring, socially useful vocation”. These are not soft glosses on tough jobs; they are legitimate dimensions of labour that many young women found compelling.
They offer broader narratives that reflect the full reality of the work: creativity, community impact, problem-solving, and systems thinking alongside technical skill. Doing this gives girls more ways to imagine themselves in a role without having to deny femininity or adopt a “tomboy” identity to justify being there.
Tokenistic gestures like a ‘Women in Trades/Engineering’ day can backfire. They risk communicating that women are an exception, or worse, a diversity goal to be met. What works instead is small, sustained practice:
Marketing that names values, not just tools. Highlight creativity, care, social contribution and problem-solving alongside technical competence.
Open events that widen the scope. Stop targeting only “girls who are good at maths” and start engaging those who enjoy design, making, fixing and finding creative solutions.
Train all FE staff in gender-aware practice, challenging gender-blind approaches and everyday sexism.
Group female learners where possible and create peer/mentor support networks.
Audit workshop and classroom cultures, ensuring fair task allocation, inclusive language and clear reporting routes for issues.
Most critically, FE must shift from gender-blind to gender-aware practice. In my research, some trades and engineering tutors took pride in claiming “all learners are the same.” In reality, this can lead to young women encountering lower expectations, and everyday sexism disguised as banter.
Gender-neutral rhetoric can mask gendered cultures. Gender-aware inductions, staff training and mentoring are practical tools to tackle the hidden curriculum, which includes language in workshops, allocation of tasks, assumptions about physical strength and who gets stretched versus who gets sidelined.
Pairing women where possible, facilitating cross-programme tutorials and establishing peer and alumni networks are inexpensive, high-impact steps that address belonging.
We should also not underestimate parents’ roles, as many girls’ choices were anchored in home practices such as exposure to tools. Colleges should deliberately involve parents in open events and guidance, as co-constructors of plausibility. If home life remains firmly bounded by traditional gender expectations, then non-traditional pathways rarely feel plausible.
None of this avoids the harder issue: misogyny and sexism exist in classrooms and workshops. FE leaders can and should equip tutors and support teams with tools and expectations. Challenge sexist banter, set equal tasks, use inclusive language, recognise gendered microaggressions and maintain safe learning spaces.
If we want diversity across male-dominated qualifications and careers, we must move beyond visibility and build spaces that make women’s presence plausible and their progress viable.
Diversity won’t arrive through banners; it will be built in the workshop, in the timetable and in the language we use.
Inclusion has always been central to the mission of further education, but the renewed Ofsted inspection framework places it firmly at the heart.
This is not about preparing for inspection; it’s about creating welcoming environments where every learner can thrive and achieve regardless of the barriers they face.
The framework acknowledges that disadvantage is complex and multilayered. It is not enough to recognise that some learners experience hardship; we must understand the breadth and depth of those challenges.
Among the most significant areas are learners who experience socio-economic disadvantage, those with special educational needs and disabilities, individuals known to youth justice services, and those involved with social care.
Each of these groups faces particular obstacles that can affect attendance, engagement and achievement.
Added to this are learners who have not yet achieved a level 2 qualification in English and or maths, which is a barrier that typically limits progression and confidence.
These challenges do not exist in isolation. A learner may be disadvantaged economically and also have SEND needs, or may be navigating the complexities of social care while struggling with mental health.
These realities for learners may be due to an entrenched trauma that will be an invisible barrier.
For providers, this means moving beyond surface-level solutions to systemic approaches that address these overlapping barriers. Inclusion cannot be treated as an add-on; it must be woven into curriculum design, learner support and organisational culture.
The renewed framework asks a fundamental question: how do providers ensure that these learners are not only present, but successful? This requires a shift in mindset.
Inclusion is not about compliance; it is about curiosity, connection and commitment.
Providers must ask themselves: how do we know our learners feel included? What evidence do we have that barriers are being dismantled? Do these learners feel that they belong, do they thrive and achieve? Where can we go further?
Embedding inclusion begins with understanding the lived experiences of learners.
Economic disadvantage may mean a lack of access to technology or transport. SEND needs require tailored teaching and support strategies. Learners known to youth justice or social care often need stability and trust before they can engage fully. Those without level 2 English and maths may need confidence building alongside academic support.
These realities demand coordinated responses across teaching, support services and leadership.
Leadership plays a critical role in setting the tone. Inclusion must be visible in strategic plans, resource allocation and performance measures.
It is not enough to champion inclusion rhetorically; it must be prioritised operationally.
Staff development is equally vital. Tutors and support teams need the skills to identify barriers early and respond effectively, whether through adaptive teaching, wellbeing interventions or collaborative planning.
The National Association for Managers of Student Services (NAMSS) tutorial conference and student engagement conference, both happening in this month, will support providers to break down these barriers through the taught tutorial and also wider enrichment.
While the Ofsted framework provides an external driver, the real motivation should be moral and educational. Inclusion is about equity, belonging and opportunity.
When learners feel that they are seen, that they belong, are supported and valued, outcomes improve.
The renewed framework challenges us to think about inclusion as a culture, not a checklist. For providers this is an opportunity to lead with integrity and innovation.
Inclusion is not static; it evolves with the external environment, with society, technology and our learners whether they are young people, adults or apprentices.
The question for every provider is: are we ready to evolve? The renewed framework sets the stage, but the narrative is ours to write. Let us ensure that it is one of equity, belonging, connection and empathy.
