Rural colleges are the missing piece of the industrial strategy

There is a particular kind of silence in rural education policy.

It is the silence between a young person wanting to study and the bus that never arrives. Between an employer with vacancies and the skilled worker who cannot afford to live nearby. Between a college ready to deliver a strategically important course and the industry specialist who can earn far more by staying on the tools.

Too often, debates about skills focus on shortages, pipelines and productivity. Those issues matter, but they overlook a more fundamental question: does our skills system properly understand place?

A rural college is not simply a smaller urban college with better scenery. It operates in a different economy, with different constraints and a different civic role.

At Kendal College, learners routinely travel long distances because the right course is unavailable closer to home. Employers want to expand but struggle to recruit locally. Apprenticeships must fit around dispersed workplaces, seasonal demand and small businesses. Transport, housing and access are not peripheral issues; they determine whether education is possible at all.

The challenge is equally acute when recruiting staff.

To deliver high-quality technical education, colleges need professionals with current industry expertise. Yet those are exactly the people rural employers are also trying to recruit. Construction, engineering, hospitality, health, digital and clean energy all face the same dilemma.

In rural areas, smaller labour markets, high housing costs and long commutes make that competition even tougher. A curriculum may be strategically important, but if it depends on one specialist who is difficult to replace, opportunities for learners quickly become fragile.

Cumbria’s local skills improvement plan illustrates the scale of the challenge. Cumbria Tourism found 73 per cent of visitor economy businesses struggled to recruit staff, while 66 per cent reported skills shortages, particularly among chefs, front-of-house staff and managers.

This is not simply a hospitality problem. It is a place-based skills challenge affecting employers, learners and colleges alike.

The recent Milburn review reinforces why early intervention matters. Around 65 per cent of young people who are NEET for less than a year return to education or work. For those out of education or employment for longer than a year, that falls to just 25 per cent.

In rural areas, seemingly small barriers such as unreliable transport, unaffordable travel or the lack of an appropriate local course can become the first step towards long-term disengagement.

The review also found 44 per cent of NEET young people reported a work-limiting health condition, while a similar proportion were not claiming out-of-work benefits. Many remain largely invisible to the systems designed to support them.

Colleges are often the first to spot those warning signs. We see attendance slipping because transport has failed. We see apprentices whose employers want to support them but cannot release staff. We see adults unable to retrain because traditional timetables simply do not fit their lives.

We also see what happens when the right support exists. Learners build confidence, discover careers they had never considered and progress into apprenticeships, higher education and skilled employment.

Skills England has highlighted another important challenge. Young people develop valuable skills through caring responsibilities, volunteering and part-time work, yet these are often overlooked by employers focused solely on qualifications and previous experience.

At the same time, artificial intelligence and automation are changing the labour market. Technical skills will remain essential, but employers increasingly value judgement, resilience, communication and problem-solving alongside them.

This is where further education excels. Good vocational education develops not only technical competence but professional behaviours, teamwork and responsibility. Those qualities will become more valuable as technology reshapes work.

To deliver that across rural communities, colleges need greater flexibility. Industry specialists should be able to move more easily between employment and teaching through secondments, guest teaching and dual-professional roles. Employer partnerships must become genuine delivery partnerships rather than simply advisory relationships.

Most importantly, we should stop treating FE workforce recruitment as merely an HR issue. It is an industrial strategy issue. Employers need skilled workers, and colleges need skilled professionals to train them. Those challenges cannot be separated.

We also need to acknowledge that rural delivery costs more. It costs more to sustain specialist provision across large geographical areas, to recruit industry experts and to build partnerships with dispersed employers.

The alternative costs far more: unfilled vacancies, weaker local economies and talented young people quietly drifting away from education and work.

If government is serious about productivity and growth, rural delivery cannot remain an afterthought.

Rural colleges are not simply providers of qualifications. They connect learners to opportunity, employers to skills and communities to economic growth. Their success extends far beyond the classroom.

Ultimately, opportunity is shaped as much by geography as by qualifications. Unless national policy recognises that reality, too many talented young people will continue to find that the biggest barrier to their future is not their ability, but where they happen to live.