Tag: priority

  • Funding high-quality teacher preparation programs should be the highest priority for policymakers

    Funding high-quality teacher preparation programs should be the highest priority for policymakers

    by Sharif El-Mekki and Heather Kirkpatrick, The Hechinger Report
    November 25, 2025

    By dismantling the Department of Education, the Trump administration claims to be returning control of education to the states. 

    And while states and local school districts are doing their best to understand the new environments they are working in, they have an opportunity amidst the chaos to focus on what is most essential and prioritize how education dollars are spent.  

    That means recruiting and retaining more well-prepared teachers with their new budget autonomy. Myriad factors affect student learning, but research shows that the primary variable within a school’s control is the teacher. Other than parents, teachers are the adults who spend the most time with our children. Good teachers have been shown to singularly motivate students.  

    And that’s why, amidst the chaos of our current education politics, there is great opportunity. 

    Until recently, recruiting, preparing and retaining enough great teachers has not been a priority in policy or funding choices. That has been a mistake, because attracting additional teachers and preparing them to be truly excellent is arguably the single biggest lever policymakers can use to demonstrate their commitment to high-quality public schools. 

    Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter. 

    Great teachers, especially whole schools full of great teachers, do not just happen. We develop them through quality preparation and meaningful opportunities to practice the profession. When teachers are well-prepared, students thrive. Rigorous teacher preparation translates into stronger instruction, higher K-12 student achievement and a more resilient, equitable education system. 

    Teachers, like firefighters and police officers, are public servants. We rightly invest public dollars to train firefighters and police officers because their service is essential to the safety and well-being of our communities. Yet teachers — who shape our future through our kids — are too often asked to shoulder the costs of their own preparation. 

    Funding high-quality teacher preparation should be as nonnegotiable as funding other vital public service professions, especially because we face a teacher shortage — particularly in STEM fields, special education and rural and urban schools.  

    This is in no small part because many potential teaching candidates cannot afford the necessary education and credentialing. 

    Our current workforce systems were not built for today’s teaching candidates. They were not designed to support students who are financially vulnerable, part-time or first-generation, or those with caregiving responsibilities.  

    Yet the majority of tomorrow’s education workforce will likely come from these groups, all of whom have faced systemic barriers in accumulating the generational wealth needed to pursue degrees in higher education. 

    Some states have responded to this need by developing strong teacher development pathways. For example, California has committed hundreds of millions to growing the teacher pipeline through targeted residency programs and preparation initiatives, and its policies have enabled it to recruit and support more future teachers, including greater numbers of educators from historically underrepresented communities. 

    Pennsylvania has created more pathways into the education field with expedited credentialing and apprenticeships for high school students, and is investing millions of dollars in stipends for student teachers. 

    It has had success bringing more Black candidates into the teaching profession, which will likely improve student outcomes: Black boys from low-income families who have a Black teacher in third through fifth grades are 18 percent more interested in pursuing college and 29 percent less likely to drop out of high school, research shows. Pennsylvania also passed a senate bill﷟HYPERLINK “https://www.senatorhughes.com/big-win-in-harrisburg-creating-the-teacher-diversity-pipeline/” that paved the way for students who complete high school courses on education and teaching to be eligible for career and technical education credits. 

    At least half a dozen other states also provide various degrees of financial support for would-be teachers, including stipends, tuition assistance and fee waivers for credentialing.  

    One example is a one-year teacher residency program model, which recruits and prepares people in historically underserved communities to earn a mster’s degree and teaching credential.  

    Related: Federal policies risk worsening an already dire rural teacher shortage 

    Opening new pathways to teaching by providing financial support has two dramatic effects. First, when teachers stay in education, these earnings compound over time as alumni become mentor teachers and administrators, earning more each year.  

    Second, these new pathways can also improve student achievement, thanks to policies that support new teachers in rigorous teacher education programs. 

    For example, the Teaching Academy model, which operates in several states, including Pennsylvania, New York and Michigan, attracts, cultivates and supports high school students on the path to becoming educators, giving schools and districts an opportunity to build robust education programs that serve as strong foundations for meaningful and long-term careers in education, and providing aspiring educators a head start to becoming great teachers. Participants in the program are eligible for college scholarships, professional coaching and retention bonuses.  

    California, Pennsylvania and these other states have begun this work. We hope to encourage other state lawmakers to seize the opportunities arising from recent federal changes and use their power to invest in what matters most to student achievement —teachers and teacher preparation pathways. 

    Sharif El-Mekki is founder & CEO of the Center for Black Educator Development in Pennsylvania. Heather Kirkpatrick is president and CEO Alder Graduate School in California. 

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected]. 

    This story about teacher preparation programs was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter. 

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  • ED Pushes Workforce Readiness as a Priority

    ED Pushes Workforce Readiness as a Priority

    The U.S. Department of Education is doubling down on its emphasis on workforce development. Education Secretary Linda McMahon recently proposed adding career pathways and workforce readiness to her list of priorities for discretionary grant funding, possibly guiding how the department spends billions of dollars.

    “After four years of the Biden Administration pedaling [sic] divisive ideology and racial preferencing, the Trump Administration will prioritize discretionary grants to education programs that actually improve student outcomes by using evidence-based strategies for instruction and creating pathways to high-demand fields,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement late last month. “The department looks forward to empowering states to close achievement gaps and align education with the evolving needs of the workforce.”

    McMahon’s plan would channel federal funds toward efforts to align workforce-development programs with state economic priorities. The department proposed supporting projects dedicated to identifying and promoting strong industry-recognized credentials, building tools for students to compare costs and earnings of different educational pathways and growing work-based learning opportunities, like apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeships. It also encouraged support for skilled trades and the development of talent marketplaces, digital platforms run by states to connect job seekers and potential employers based on skills.

    “For decades, the dominant ‘college for all’ narrative has led to a narrow focus that often leaves students with degrees and debt but limited job prospects,” the grant priority proposal reads. “By expanding the range of options so that a broader array of education providers can access existing funding in a manner that aligns outcomes with the demands of today’s workforce, the government can foster both economic mobility for students and sustained competitiveness for the nation.”

    McMahon has named other grant priorities since becoming secretary as well, including mathematics education, evidence-based literacy education, education choice, patriotic education and returning education to the states. The Education Department takes its priorities into account and can give them extra weight when approving discretionary grant awards.

    The department’s workforce-readiness proposal mirrors other plans from the Trump administration to put workforce development center stage. An April executive order, for example, charged federal officials with better addressing the nation’s workforce needs, including by reaching, and surpassing, one million new active apprenticeships. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law in July, established workforce Pell, allowing Pell Grants, starting next year, to flow to low-income students in short-term programs.

    The Department of Labor also came out with a report outlining “America’s talent strategy” in August and is moving forward with a controversial interagency agreement with the Department of Education for a more “coordinated federal education and workforce system.” (The agreement would move administration of career and technical education programs to the DOL.)

    Education and workforce advocates say the new grant priority—open for public comment until Oct. 27—is a welcome win for causes they’ve long championed, but their celebration is tempered by some questions and concerns. Some argue ED’s workforce goals could be disrupted by other Trump administration policies. Others worry the department’s focus on nondegree pathways could lead to an underinvestment in traditional higher ed. And while some are cautiously optimistic about the proposed plan, they’re waiting to see how it works in practice.

    “When we look at this functionally, in theory, all of this looks like things that we like,” said Jennifer Stiddard, senior director of government affairs for Jobs for the Future, an organization focused on the intersection between education and the workforce. “Career-connected learning … creating better pathways for students, creating better opportunities to learn about careers—these are all things that are included in here. Where we always have pause is understanding how all of this is going to be applied.”

    Hopes and Worries

    The proposal has sparked hope for workforce development wonks, as some of their long-held goals are becoming national priorities.

    Erica Cuevas, director of education policy at Jobs for the Future, said she’s still reviewing the grant priority language, but she’s heartened to see the administration using its “bully pulpit and its discretionary grant authority to promote career-connected learning within the broader K–12 educational ecosystem,” beyond career and technical education programs, which reach a limited number of students.

    Katie Spiker, chief of federal affairs for the National Skills Coalition, a research and advocacy organization focused on workforce training, said it’s clear the Education Department is focused on aligning education offerings with workforce needs, fostering industry partnerships and expanding work-based learning opportunities. She also applauded the department for its focus on forging connections between high school programs, apprenticeships and other workforce development programs, which “really reflects how the work is done on the ground,” as a “holistic effort across education and workforce.”

    But she also worries that the Trump administration is simultaneously pushing policies that don’t serve these goals. For example, the president’s budget for fiscal year 2026 proposed zeroing out funding for adult education, which she views as critical for training adults in basic skills so they can fill workforce gaps.

    “The funding conversations and the massive shifts and reductions in investments that we’ve seen both from the House appropriations process and from the president’s budget request are really incongruent with these important priorities that they’re setting out in this document,” Spiker said.

    She also emphasized that the proposed grant priority doesn’t put any focus on “reaching and engaging with communities that have not traditionally had access” to certain high-demand jobs, including women, communities of color and workers with disabilities. She believes filling workforce shortages will require actively recruiting, and building up supports for, workers underrepresented in industries with workforce gaps.

    Businesses “are scrambling to try and build broader pipelines of folks, both because of job openings that they have today, as well as those that they are projecting for next year, five years from now and into the future,” Spiker said.

    In a similar vein, Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, said she found it “frustrating” that McMahon’s announcement of the grant priority described workforce readiness and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts as at odds.

    “We know that employers are insisting that their employees be able to speak across differences, work in diverse teams and engage in cross-cultural understanding,” based on surveys AAC&U conducts with employers, Pasquerella said.

    She supports aligning education programs with workforce needs and offering students more experiential learning opportunities. But she believes liberal arts education is also a part of training students for the workforce and fears such offerings could be sidelined in the department’s vision for supporting workforce readiness.

    “The risk is always that if we focus too narrowly on career preparation—without recognizing that career preparation must involve skills, competencies and dispositions central to a liberal education—that we will have a group of students who are narrowly technically trained without the capacity to grapple with the grand challenges that will confront us in the future,” she said. “We shouldn’t create a false dichotomy between career preparation and liberal education.”

    John Colborn, executive director of Apprenticeships for America, believes the proposed grant priority is over all a “positive development” for learners.

    “I think it brings some more balance to the educational enterprise, which has been overwhelmingly focused on getting everyone into college,” he said. “I think we’ve realized the limitations of that particular approach.”

    But while he favors exposing K–12 students to a broader range of career pathways, including apprenticeships, he also wants to make sure career-focused programs prepare students for both careers and college. He said one of the problems with vocational training in high schools in the past was that students too often were “constrained into a particular pathway.”

    “We don’t want to go down that road or repeat some of those mistakes,” he said.

    He noted that the partnership between the Education Department and the Department of Labor raises these types of concerns, because the DOL has less of an academic focus. But he believes stronger ties between the agencies is a net positive.

    The long-term effects of the proposal, and other workforce-development plans, “is really going to turn on whether or not that nuance can be represented in the grant making and priority setting for the department,” Colborn said.

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  • Higher education and the industrial strategy priority areas

    Higher education and the industrial strategy priority areas

    There have been industrial strategies before, but the extent to which they have shaped the provision of higher education is questionable.

    Past exercises of selecting scientific or technological priorities have undoubtedly had effects on the national research ecosystem, though constant chopping and changing of policy over the last decade and more has hindered this from reaching its fullest extent. But in terms of influencing what educational provision exists, and what qualifications are achieved – and where – it would not be unduly controversial to say that industrial strategy and the longer-term graduate pipeline have never really meshed.

    Could this time be different? This government has certainly wanted to present its different policy agendas – on industrial strategy and skills, but also on migration, and devolution – as complementary and cohesive. And there are plenty of reasons to think that the industrial strategy will be Labour’s key reforming principle for higher education and its position within the wider tertiary sphere.

    How HE shows up

    Let’s begin with what has already emerged. Government guidance to the Office for Students has set out the fact that high cost subject funding in England (via the Strategic Priorities Grant, or SPG) will be refocused towards the industrial strategy from 2026–27 – a review is underway behind the scenes.

    And even in the current year, the (rather meagre) £84m in SPG capital funding available in England includes £72.75m in a bidding process, where one of the two criteria to assess bids will be the extent to which the project supports Skills England’s priorities, or local economic needs. Skills England’s priority areas are the eight industrial strategy “growth-driving sectors” (which we are now expected to refer to as the IS-8) plus health and social care as well as construction.

    Whether these two pots of money remain significant enough to really drive changes to HE provision – as opposed to rhetorical game-playing where the words “industrial” and “strategy” get appended to everything that institutions were already planning to do – remains an open question. The size of both recurrent and capital SPG in future years remains to be seen, but you wouldn’t bet on substantial increases.

    If this were the end of it, you might think the industrial strategy’s impact on higher education would remain restricted to research and innovation – with lip service to government priorities in how the (shrinking) state contribution to teaching gets doled out. But with today’s publication of the industrial strategy in full, various other agendas begin to come into focus.

    First up, the Lifelong Learning Entitlement. A more substantive announcement on the policy and legislative details is still pending, but there’s a rather significant detail in today’s strategy:

    From January 2027 we will launch the Lifelong Learning Entitlement which will enable individuals to learn, upskill and retrain across their working lives. The first modular courses for approval will support progression into the IS-8.

    It’s been on the cards for a while – since being re-written under Labour, the current LLE policy paper has anticipated that Skills England and the government’s skills priorities would form an important part of the LLE’s development – but here we get confirmation that the module approval process will be guided by the industrial strategy priority areas. The professional services sector plan also references a role for the LLE in helping learners take up courses relevant to that specific sector.

    And it’s a similar story for the LLE’s awkward doppelganger, the growth and skills levy, which will allow employers to spend levy contributions on short courses rather than apprenticeships.

    These levy reforms, which were a key pillar of Labour’s approach to skills while it was in opposition, have gone a bit quiet since, with changes at lower and foundation levels prioritised. The fact that the spending review gave the defunding of most level 7 apprenticeships as an example of DfE savings and efficiencies, rather than a way of freeing up cash for short courses, was a little ominous.

    But the industrial strategy policy paper makes a link with the IS-8 sectors, giving examples of short courses in digital, AI, and engineering. April 2026 is floated as the date for rollout, though there is more to be done in development:

    We will work with Skills England to determine the courses which will be prioritised in the first wave of rollout and subsequent waves, and how those sit alongside apprenticeships and other training routes. We will work with Skills England to introduce these short courses and consider how to prioritise investment across the programme.

    Universities with expertise in professional and executive education – and those who are rethinking apprenticeship provision in light of changes to level 7 – will be keeping a careful eye on how this comes together.

    Finally, the forthcoming post-16 education and skills strategy, including its plans for reforming the higher education sector, is described within one of the sector plans as setting out a framework “for how the skills system will support growth-driving sectors” – that is, the IS-8.

    So, while all the details may not have come into focus yet, there’s a strong case to be made for the industrial strategy playing a key role in all kinds of areas crucial to higher education: the LLE, levy-funded short courses, high-cost subject funding in HE – plus such capital funding as still exists – and potentially the post-16 strategy as whole. It’s therefore worth the sector looking in detail at what the government, and Skills England, have said so far about the eight specific industrial strategy areas, in terms of skills needs, priority industries, and place.

    New frontiers

    The industrial strategy green paper in the autumn identified eight high-level sectors:

    • Advanced manufacturing
    • Clean energy industries
    • Creative industries
    • Defence
    • Digital and technologies
    • Financial services
    • Life sciences
    • Professional and business services.

    These were the areas where the government saw the greatest potential for growth – the “picking of winners” that has characterised industrial strategies over the years. The eight that were chosen were less STEM-heavy than previous iterations of the strategy.

    Over the consultation period that followed, the government sought input on what subsectors should feature in the finalised plan, and in what places – “all economic activity occurs somewhere,” as the technical annex puts it. These subsectors have now been rebranded as “frontier industries” within each sector – “those parts of each sector that best met the Industrial Strategy’s goal of long-term, sustainable, regionally balanced, and resilient growth.”

    There’s much more in the annex on what respondents said, and how the frontier industries were identified – but at the end of the day, it’s more picking of winners, and plenty of areas will feel they have been unfairly overlooked. The results of the process can be seen on page 22 – for example, for the creative industries, the chosen “frontier” areas are advertising and marketing, film and TV, music, performing and visual arts, and video games.

    Data definition fans will also be keen to see that this has all been mapped to Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes, to the extent that it is possible to do so. The technical annex highlights further revisions and improvements to occupational classifications in the future.

    What’s the plan?

    For each of the IS-8, there is a sector plan going deeper into what’s being proposed. We get five of them today – the financial services one is due on 15 July, the defence sector plan (also badged as the defence industrial strategy) is forthcoming, as is the life sciences plan.

    Each of the published sector plans has a helpful map, usually towards the end, which tracks the specific frontier industries onto the city regions and clusters which the government has identified. For example, advanced manufacturing has ten areas selected – see page 55 on. So in the northeast England region, the focus is on automotive, batteries, and space, whereas in Wrexham and Flintshire, it’s concentrated on aerospace, automotive, advanced materials, and agri-tech. Each identified geographical area has its own specific strengths – or areas for potential growth – picked for it by the government.

    Six city regions are identified for professional and business services (page 55). For the creative industries (pages 61 to 62), Dundee is spotlighted for video games and design, while for Greater Manchester it’s film and TV, music, advertising, and market research. And so on.

    Each sector plan also has some more specifics on workforce and skills planning. These largely draw together things we already knew were in train – so for the creative industries for example, this encompasses everything from the ongoing curriculum and assessment review to a refreshed creative careers service.

    Earlier this month, Skills England published sector skills needs assessments for each of the IS-8, along with construction and health. The new skills quango was clear – perhaps concerningly so – that at the time of writing it wasn’t privy to what exactly the industrial strategy would stipulate in each area. But the data analysis and accounts of employer engagement for each sector give us an indication of what kind of interventions might be welcomed in each.

    For one thing, in many of the sectors it’s clear that there are higher-level skills needs. Clean energy industries, the quango found, will need more civil, mechanical, electrical, chemical, and environmental engineers – roles which require qualifications at level 6 and above – as well as managerial roles from levels 3 to 8. The creative industries stakeholder engagement saw a demand for more mid-career training, with the current training system “felt to overemphasise entry-level positions.” Life sciences is another “highly qualified sector.” For professional and business services, we get a direct rejection of DfE’s focus on foundation-level apprenticeships, which “do not align with the roles employers want to recruit or develop.”

    In more or less all of the Skills England assessments, employers are said to want more flexible and modular training – a reiteration of the oft-expressed desire for more freedom to spend the levy on shorter courses rather than apprenticeships. The needs of the current workforce, as opposed to the pipeline, are prominent.

    The upshot

    It’s clear that higher education provision is vital to the success of many if not most of the industrial strategy frontier industries – but the immediate interventions and funding announcements packaged up within the industrial strategy are largely focused at lower levels. It’s well rehearsed by this point that the higher education sector’s ongoing financial turmoil is risking the loss of expertise and capacity in subject areas which the government surely wants to prioritise.

    The strategy makes specific calls about what industries should be supported and in which places – but it doesn’t appear that this mapping has extended to thinking about what provision is available currently in each, and what is at risk. This might be a job for the sector in making its case.

    We can see indications in the policy document, and in the background work that Skills England has been conducting, that the government will press ahead with its plans for short courses for upskilling and reskilling, whether through the levy or the LLE. Unpicking that tangle – the question of which courses are funded by which means, and why, and how to make employer or learner demand actually crystallise – is another area for universities and colleges to be coming up with concrete proposals for. Having specific industries linked to specific places should be an enormously helpful starting point.

    The specificity on offer in the finalised plan ought to be a clear indication that, for higher education institutions, demonstrating a link to the industrial strategy in one’s provision will not just be a case of talking up the volume of one’s life sciences provision, for example, and its international renown. There’s a need for – and now scope to provide – much more granular detail.

    The ambitions of the strategy, were they to be realised, include a recipe for a more differentiated sector, with concrete choices made around engagement with key local industries and contribution to their associated workforce pipelines. A read-across can be made to UKRI chief executive Ottoline Leyser’s comments last week about the future shape of the research landscape, with the need for “consolidation” and playing to one’s local strengths – you could make the same argument for educational provision.

    There’s a question about how much such change in the landscape of provision would be either desirable or practical, given the sector’s closely guarded autonomy, the fact that graduates are mobile and may change plans, the transferability of many if not most higher level skills, and the extremely short lifespan that previous industrial strategies have had. Another issue is how those institutions which do not find themselves in, near, or otherwise connected to the anointed clusters and growth regions should respond.

    But it remains a crucial agenda for higher education, even if a large-scale reorganisation of provision is problematic to pull off at a time of great financial strain. Some tweaks to how the Strategic Priorities Grant works in England are unlikely to make much headway by themselves, and it remains to be seen to what extent the devolved nations are up for steering their university sectors to better align with Westminster’s chosen priorities. For higher education, the question remains whether the government actually has the levers in place to incentivise this shift to happen – to say nothing of the political appetite to invest time and resources – or whether the subject choices of UK 17 year olds and international postgrads will continue to be the main determinant of the sector’s size and shape.

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