Tag: tertiary

  • Podcast: Budget, R&D, Scotland’s tertiary bill

    Podcast: Budget, R&D, Scotland’s tertiary bill

    This week on the podcast we examine how Budget 2025 reshapes the university funding model – from the international levy and modest new maintenance grants, to confirmed tuition fee uplifts and changes to pension tax arrangements that will affect institutional costs.

    We discuss what the package tells us about the government’s approach to public finances, the politics of international recruitment, and the sustainability of cross-subsidy in a tight fiscal environment for higher education.

    Plus we discuss research and innovation announcements and get across debate in Holyrood on the Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill.

    With Ken Sloan, Vice-Chancellor and CEO at Harper Adams University, Debbie McVitty, Editor at Wonkhe, David Kernohan, Deputy Editor at Wonkhe and presented by Jim Dickinson, Associate Editor at Wonkhe.

    On the site:

    Budget 2025 for universities and students

    Universities now need to be much clearer about the total cost of a course

    Student finance changes in the budget – Director’s cut

    Reclassification ghosts and jam tomorrow at stage 2 of Scotland’s tertiary bill

    A government running out of road still sets the economic weather for higher education

    A change in approach means research may never be the same again

    You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, Spotify, Acast, Amazon Music, Deezer, RadioPublic, Podchaser, Castbox, Player FM, Stitcher, TuneIn, Luminary or via your favourite app with the RSS feed.

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  • Five challenges faced by the Welsh tertiary sector

    Five challenges faced by the Welsh tertiary sector

    Wales’ tertiary education and research sector is something we should all be proud of.

    This is why I want to ensure it not only remains sustainable but continues to build on the achievements of the past five years.

    These achievements include our progressive higher education funding policy, which has ensured financial barriers do not hold back talent and ambition. Welsh full-time undergraduates studying away from home outside London are entitled to £12,345 in maintenance support, with up to £8,100 in grants for those from the lowest income household.

    Our financial package for part-time study has opened higher education to thousands more students since 2018.

    Welsh universities led the UK for the proportion of their research whose impact is considered internationally excellent or world-leading in REF 2021.

    The pandemic had a tremendous impact on every aspect of education, but the tide has started to turn. Further education has seen a revival in participation in recent years, helped by increased funding for colleges and the continuation of the Education Maintenance Grant and Welsh Government Learning Grant. Last year there was an 8.5 per cent increase in school leavers progressing to college and it is promising that early data suggests a similar increase this year.

    A time of challenges

    But I am mindful that there are significant challenges facing tertiary education, not just in Wales, but across the UK.

    Yesterday in the Senedd I set out what I believe are now the five most pressing challenges for higher and further education in Wales in the coming years, and how I will use the remainder of the Senedd term to work with the sector to address them.

    Increasing participation must continue to be a priority. Wales has a smaller proportion of young people attaining level 3 (A Levels and equivalent) than other UK nations. Our higher education entry rate at age 18 is also the lowest in the UK at 30 per cent, and although a larger proportion of students appear to enter HE in Wales in their twenties, we want more to see university as part of their future at 18.

    The Welsh Government has a long-standing goal of 75 per cent of working age people being qualified to level 3 or higher by 2050. To achieve this, we need to expand access to a full range of vocational, technical, and academic pathways from age 16, which is why we are already reforming both 14-16 and post-16 qualifications.

    And our tertiary education sector must be ready for a significant decline in the numbers of young people. The number of 16-year-olds in Wales is expected to fall by 17 per cent between 2027 and 2037. As a result, demand for university places across the UK could fall by almost 20 per cent in the 2030s.

    Lifelong learning is already well ingrained in Welsh higher education. In 2022-23, 36 per cent of Welsh students studied part-time, compared with 23 per cent of English students, and 44 per cent of Welsh students were aged 25 and above compared with 36 per cent of English students. And during this Senedd term we have been able to increase the numbers of part-time learners in further education for the first time in a decade.

    This is a platform to build from, but we will need to go further to enable adults to upskill around work and family commitments, at all levels, by providing more flexible, part-time and lifelong learning opportunities.

    Unintended consequences

    Another challenge relates to the unintended consequences of growing competition between providers. The competition in student recruitment is fundamental to the financial challenges now facing our universities and it will only intensify from 2030.

    The removal of student number caps has permitted some UK universities to grow their domestic enrolments – often by lowering entry requirements – at the expense of the rest of the sector, including many of our excellent universities here in Wales. A future where higher-tariff providers continue to expand their enrolments at the rate of the past few years cannot be sustainable for the wider UK sector.

    So I agree with the UK Government’s white paper that the future for tertiary education lies not in greater competition, but in increased collaboration. We have already worked with the Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA) to clarify the position on collaboration between universities. Medr is working to map subject provision so we can better understand which subjects may be at risk in the future from growing competition and changes in student preferences. Now we must look at how we enable closer collaboration in practice, and create the right incentives in funding and regulation for institutions to act more collaboratively.

    I believe working in partnership will also be key to addressing the financial challenges facing not only institutions, but also students.

    Our financial support for tertiary education and students is significant, totalling over £1.2bn this year alone. Despite taking the difficult decision to increase tuition fees in the past two years and again next year, education must remain affordable. This is why we provide generous student support and a more progressive repayment policy in Wales. We will therefore consider cost-of-living pressures for students and learners in the ongoing evaluation of the Diamond reforms. But the challenges facing the public finances are likely to last, and we need to consider how every penny spent to support institutions and students is delivering the greatest value possible.

    Delivery

    Finally, a thriving tertiary education sector must deliver for our economy. There are already excellent examples of this – such as the role of Cardiff University to support the compound semiconductor manufacturing hub, or the work of the North Wales Tertiary Alliance to power the new reactors at Wylfa with a skilled workforce. But we will need to change our approaches to vocational skills and research and innovation, both to respond to UK Government reforms, and to ensure that our economy has the skills and ideas to boost productivity and reduce inequality.

    We have begun some of the work needed to meet these five challenges but must go further. In the coming weeks, we will publish an evidence paper, alongside a call for submissions from stakeholders, which will set out the challenges in much greater depth, and call on the sector to comment and advise on what more we need to understand about them.

    I have also invited representatives from across the Welsh sector to join a new Ministerial Advisory Group, to consider these challenges in depth and in the spirit of social partnership.

    Together, this work will provide a comprehensive evidence base upon which to deliver further reform, and help us to secure a thriving future for our tertiary education sector in Wales in these challenging times.

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  • New heights in tertiary partnerships

    New heights in tertiary partnerships

    If we are serious about tackling the challenges posed by the Post-16 Education and Skills white paper, we need to rethink the relationship between our universities, colleges, and local economies.

    This is particularly important for institutions located outside the country’s major cities and conurbations – where the devolution agenda is somewhat more complicated.

    Beyond the city

    We all know that local economies depend on responsive, joined-up skills systems. Together colleges and universities bring proximity to communities and employers, backed up by research, innovation, and regional influence. And this is why meaningful collaboration between them really does matter, whether it is responding to the skills agenda; local devolution; the Lifelong Learning Entitlement; the need for more flexible and inclusive pathways into HE; local innovation ecosystems; and economic regeneration and regional productivity.

    There needs to be sector commitment that a better coordinated and more coherent system is required, particularly if we are to deliver on the government’s renewed national ambition for two-thirds of young people to have a higher-level qualification (Level 4 and above) by the age of 25.

    The UK government’s Post-16 Education and Skills white paper sets out a transformative vision for how universities and colleges should collaborate to build a more integrated and responsive skills system. FE will be encouraged to offer Level 4 and Level 5 courses targeting our regional priority sectors and needs, as identified with our Strategic Authorities through their Growth and Skills Plans. This has implications for universities, who will need to ensure there are pathways from these new courses into the curriculum, and for Local Skills Improvement Plan (LSIP) partners, with whom links will need to be strengthened. In short, we need to work regionally, and locally, to better align our offering with local employer demand and government Industrial Strategy priorities.

    In practical terms this means more employer-responsive co-designed curricula and new flexible pathways to help ensure smoother transitions between FE and HE, perhaps with joint qualifications and credit transfer systems. We must now be co-architects of a skills ecosystem that is agile, inclusive, and economically aligned.

    The case of Exeter

    The University of Exeter and Exeter College have cultivated a strong collaborative relationship over the past 25 years, deepening our partnership through a formal Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) established nine years ago and now in its second iteration. A fundamental driver for the relationship was the realisation that Exeter is an unusual geography in that it is the only UK city in which post-16 education is served solely by one Russell group university and one outstanding tertiary college. This has enabled us to take an experimental approach.

    At the heart of a successful collaboration sits ambition, the need, or even responsibility to drive social mobility and to make a difference to a place. Not just because of a policy, but because when HE and FE collaborate – it creates real synergy and a powerful force for change. The key to success, like most things in life – is people, but not just people, the right people at the right level in both the college and university believing collaboration is important. Dare we say it is also important, as an organisation, to know yourself, and to be clear about the purpose of each organisation – so that competition is minimised or eliminated. If your first thought is to monetise the partnership, it is likely to fail.

    Driving innovation

    Progress in FE-HE collaboration has often either come from more recent innovations such as degree apprenticeships, or through a need to work in new ways to deliver within regional funding streams. As a starting point, universities need to map and understand their local FE landscape to identify potential complementarities in skills provision, learner demographics, and employer relationships.

    This enduring alliance is anchored by high-level commitment and strategic alignment, for example, with senior university leaders actively participating on the college board. Such integration ensures shared vision and governance, shared accountability, and the blurring of traditional boundaries and silos.

    Our partnership here in Exeter extends across multiple initiatives, including joint sponsorship of the Ted Wragg Multi Academy Trust and the Exeter Mathematics School, as well as membership of regional initiatives such as the South West Institute of Technology, reflecting a shared commitment to educational innovation and regional development.

    A key feature of this collaboration is the development of thematic “escalators” – these are best understood as pathways that connect college and university expertise in areas such as digital, sport, and green technologies. They have led to the establishment of pathways from FE to HE and consistent curricula. New escalator activity is now happening in both civil engineering and health. These benefit students by providing levels of certainty and logical routes for progression and boost the local economy by attracting young people from the Devon community, who are more likely to gain employment in our local businesses after they graduate.

    The health escalator is particularly timely, aligning with current government priorities and offering new opportunities for joint programming and research. The sport escalator stands out as a model of success, enabling college HE students (validated by the University of Exeter) to progress athletically by playing for university teams, in partnership with local clubs. These escalators exemplify how the institutions are creating seamless transitions and shared platforms that benefit students, staff, and the wider community.

    Locally owned

    Our escalators began life as labour market tools developed collaboratively by the university, Exeter College, and Exeter City Council, following representation from local employers who had been unable to source the right skills locally for what were good, well-paid positions. This last point is important because this is not just about satisfying employer needs (which is challenging enough), but supporting social mobility, wealth creation, and retention of talent.

    Skills escalators enable FE and HE partners to target existing resources effectively and to identify and fill gaps in provision. Our initial data analytics skills escalator resulted in new FE courses at the college, new postgraduate degrees at the university, and several new degree apprenticeships. So successful was this exercise that we have recently repeated it with two new escalators focused on green skills and social care.

    Such skills escalators play to university strengths, especially their research and knowledge exchange. They also play to genuine FE strengths around employer-responsiveness and rapid curriculum change. You can read more about our skills escalators in the new Universities UK and Association of Colleges report – delivering a post-16 skills system.

    Getting civic

    Given their presence in the Post 16 Skills White paper, it is also worth referencing the role of our civic university agreements (CUAs). These have been around nationally for several years and have even had their own national impact accelerator. But to be truly impactful they need commitment and underlying operational capacity. In Exeter, our CUA brings together the University, Exeter College, the City Council and Royal Devon University Hospital (NHS), with skills, again, as a top priority – helping provide strategic oversight and governance to practical on the ground activity.

    We believe that CUAs, supported by FE-HE memoranda of understanding, can provide the strategic framework for tertiary education to succeed, with escalators helping us to deliver tangible change. But ultimately, an effective tertiary landscape will demonstrate responsiveness, progression, and continuity, and in doing so success will need to be measured through different types of metrics and the rewarding of collaborative labour-market driven provision, and not just individual institutional performance.

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  • Tertiary Collaborations in Practice: what partnerships between colleges and universities actually do and where to go next

    Tertiary Collaborations in Practice: what partnerships between colleges and universities actually do and where to go next

    UK universities are under mounting financial pressure. Join HEPI and King’s College London Policy Institute on 11 November 2025 at 1pm for a webinar on how universities balance relatively stable but underfunded income streams against higher-margin but volatile sources. Register now. We look forward to seeing you there.

    This blog was kindly authored by Josh Patel (@joshpatel.bsky.social), Senior Researcher at the Edge Foundation.

    The Prime Minister’s new target is for two-thirds of young people to participate in higher-level learning by age 25. This encompasses not only undergraduate degrees but also higher technical education and apprenticeships, all delivered under a single funding model for all Level 4-6 courses. Some have described this as England’s turn to tertiary, six years after the Augar Review called for a more ‘joined-up system’.

    Since at least the 1990s, English post-secondary education has been characterised by market-based regulatory apparatus and fragmentation. Further education is associated with technical and vocational education, and training and entry to the labour market; higher education with professions, leadership, and research. Oversight of both is dispersed across multiple agencies and further disconnected from adult and lifelong learning. Critics have argued that, consequently, market logics have sustained wasteful competition and produced a homogenised system that privileges higher education over further education, to the detriment of equity and national skills needs.

    If Augar exposed the limits of market-driven differentiation between further education and higher education, tertiary approaches in the devolved nations illustrate how greater collaboration and integrated oversight offer a potential corrective. Wales and Scotland have advanced considerably in a ‘tertiary’ direction and developed governance modes that exercise holistic stewardship over funding and quality regimes. They are justified on grounds of efficiency, concertedness, and the capacity to advance the common good. In Wales, Medr uses its statutory powers under the Well-being of Future Generations Act to guide institutions in meeting duties on equality, sustainability, and civic mission. In Scotland, the Scottish Funding Council leads the Outcome Agreement process, through which colleges and universities set out activities in return for funding. Even in England, partnerships at a regional level, such as those in the North East or through Institutes of Technology, aim to facilitate partnerships to align lifelong learning with local economic needs. In 2021, the last time a representative survey of the scale of collaboration took place, 80% of colleges and 50% of universities in the UK had formal programme links (and it is likely that collaboration has grown since then).

    Despite this prevalence and enthusiasm, research on how the benefits arising from tertiary collaboration manifest at the level of institutions and students is limited. In a short exploratory study with the Edge Foundation, I examined one facet of tertiary systems in Scotland and England: the creation of formal student transition ‘pathways’ between colleges and universities. The aim was not a comprehensive survey, but to sample something of the nature of collaboration in existing systems, to gather evidence to think with and about the concept of tertiary and the place of collaboration and competition.

    Collaboration as an adaptive strategy

    Existing collaborations are, perhaps surprisingly, not foremost concerned with any given common good. Instead, collaboration often emerges as an adaptive strategy within conditions of resource scarcity. Local ‘natural alliances’ in shared specialisms, mutual values, and commitments to widening participation were important in establishing trust necessary to sustain joint work. Yet, as the study found, institutional precarity is the principal driver.

    One Scottish interviewee put it plainly:

    ‘If I’m sitting there and I’ve got 500 applications, like 10 applications for any place, I’ve got good, strong applications. I’m not going to be going, right, how am I going to look at different ways to bring in students?’

    Well-resourced institutions do not collaborate out of necessity: those under pressure do. Partnerships often take the form of a ‘grow your own’ recruitment pipeline, guaranteeing transitions between partner institutions. Universities could ask ‘some tough questions’ of colleges if progression was lower than anticipated. In some cases, institutions agree to partition markets to avoid directly competing for the same students.

    Collaboration could also be used as an instrument of competition. In Scotland, articulation agreements (under which universities recognise vocational qualifications such as HNDs and HNCs and admit students with advanced standing) are commonplace. Colleges in this research reported ‘some bad behaviour’ where partner universities would use these agreements to siphon off students from colleges to secure enrolment numbers. This was contrary to the wishes of colleges, which argued that many such students might benefit from the more intimate and supportive college environment for an additional year, better preparing them to enter the more independent learning environment of university.

    What collaboration offers students

    Where collaboration was stable, tangible benefits followed for learners. Partnerships combine colleges’ attentive pedagogies and flexible resources with university accreditation and facilities. This enables smaller class sizes, greater pastoral attention, and sometimes improved retention and progression, particularly in educational cold spots. Colleges bring local specialisms and staff expertise, often linked to industry, which enrich university courses through co-design and joint delivery.

    This lends cautious support to the claims of tertiary advocates: that collaboration can widen access and enhance provision. Yet formal, longitudinal evidence of graduate outcomes remains rare. The value of such partnerships, their distinctiveness, public benefit, and contribution to regional prosperity need to be more readily championed.

    From expedient to strategic collaboration

    As an instrument, collaboration is worth understanding. The capacity to facilitate collaboration as a strategic good is an important policy lever where market mechanisms are unable to respond immediately or efficiently to the imperatives of national need and public finance. The study suggests four priorities for policymakers:

    Clarify national priorities and reform incentives

    Collaboration has greater utility than an institutional survival tool. With the bringing together of funding for further education and higher education, there is an opportunity to create stability. Together with the clear articulation of long-term educational goals, strategic cooperation in pursuit of these ends could be sustained.

    Strengthen regional governance

    Where regional stewardship exists, through articulation hubs or in Scotland’s Outcome Agreements, collaboration is more systematic. England’s existing fragmented oversight and policy churn undermine this. Regional coherence enables institutions to collectively make strategic planning decisions.

    Value colleges’ distinct niche

    Colleges’ localism, technical capacity, and pedagogical expertise are distinctive assets. Policy should promote these specialisms and encourage co-design and co-delivery rather than hierarchical franchising. Partnerships should foreground each institution’s unique contribution, not replicate the same provision in different guises.

    Improve data sharing and evaluation

    The absence of mechanisms to track students’ journeys and long-term outcomes, including ‘distance travelled’ evaluations, makes claims about distinctiveness and public benefit harder to substantiate.

    Tertiary turns in resource scarcity

    Policy discourse has tended to over-dichotomise competition and collaboration. The question is: to what extent each strategy is most helpful for achieving agreed social ends. Where partnership is an appropriate mechanism, it requires a policy architecture with clarity of purpose and stability. To what ends collaboration is put to must be settled through democratic means – a more complicated question altogether.

    The full report can be read here.

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  • Only radical thinking will deliver the integrated tertiary system the country needs

    Only radical thinking will deliver the integrated tertiary system the country needs

    The post-16 white paper was an opportunity to radically enable an education and skills ecosystem that is built around the industrial strategy, and that has real resonance with place.

    The idea that skills exist in an entirely different space to education is just wrongheaded. The opportunity comes, however, when we can see a real connection, both in principle and in practice, between further and higher education: a tertiary system that can serve students, employers and society.

    Significant foundations are already in place with the Lifelong Learning Entitlement providing sharp focus within the higher education sector and apprenticeships, now well established, and well regarded across both HE and FE. Yet we still have the clear problem that schools, FE, teaching in HE, research and knowledge transfer are fragmented across the DfE and other associated sector bodies.

    Sum of the parts

    The policy framework needs to be supported by a major and radical rethink of how the parts fit together so we can truly unlock the combined transformational power of education and innovation to raise aspirations, opportunity, attainment, and ultimately, living standards. This could require a tertiary commission of the likes of Diamond and Hazelkorn in the Welsh system in the mid-2010’s.

    Such a commission could produce bold thinking on the scale of the academies movement in schools over the last 25 years. The encouragement to bring groups of schools together has resulted in challenge, but also significant opportunity. We have seen the creation of some excellent FE college groups following an area-based review around a decade ago. The first major coming together of HE institutions is in train with Greenwich and Kent. We have seen limited pilot FE/HE mergers. Now feels like the right time for blue sky thinking that enables the best of all of those activities in a structured and purposeful way that is primarily focused on the benefits to learning and national productivity rather than simply financial necessity.

    Creating opportunities for HE, FE and schools to come together not only in partnerships, but in structural ways will enable the innovation that will create tangible change in local and regional communities. All parts of the education ecosystem face ever-increasing financial challenge. If an FE college and a university wished to offer shared services, then there would need to be competitive tender for the purposes of best value. This sounds sensible except the cost of running such a process is high. If those institutions are part of the same group, then it can be done so much more efficiently.

    FE colleges are embedded in their place and even more connected to local communities. The ability to reach into more disadvantaged communities and to take the HE classroom from the traditional university setting, is a distinct benefit. The growth in private, for-profit HE provision is often because it has a great ability to reach into specific communities. The power of FE/HE collaboration into those same communities would bring both choice and exciting possibility.

    While in theory FE and HE can merge through a section 28 application to the Secretary of State, the reality is that any activity to this point has been marginal and driven by motivation other than enhanced skills provision. If the DfE were to enable, and indeed drive, such collaboration they could create both financial efficiencies and a much greater and more coordinated offer to employers and learners.

    The industrial strategy and the growth in devolved responsibility for skills create interesting new opportunities but we must find ways that avoid a new decade of confusion for employers and learners. The announcement of new vocational qualifications, Technical Excellence Colleges and the like are to be welcomed but must be more than headlines. Learners and employers alike need to be able to see pathways and support for their lifelong skills and learning needs.

    Path to integration

    The full integration of FE and HE could create powerful regional and place-based education and skills offers. Adding in schools and creating education trusts that straddle all levels means that employers could benefit from integrated offers, less bureaucracy and clear, accelerated pathways.

    So now is the moment to develop Integrated Skills and Education Trusts (ISET): entities that sit within broad groups and benefit from the efficiencies of scale but maintaining local provision. Taking the best of FE, understanding skills and local needs and the best of HE and actively enabling them to come together.

    Our experience at Coventry, working closely and collaboratively with several FE partners, is that the barriers thrown up within the DfE are in stark and clear contrast to the policy statements of ministers and, indeed, of the Prime Minister. The post-16 white paper will only lead to real change if the policy and the “plumbing” align. The call has to be to think with ambition and to encourage and enable action that serves learners, employers and communities with an education and skills offer that is fit for the next generation.

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  • Can regulation cope with a unified tertiary system in Wales?

    Can regulation cope with a unified tertiary system in Wales?

    Medr’s second consultation on its regulatory framework reminds us both of the comparatively small size of the Welsh tertiary sector, and the sheer ambition – and complexity – of bringing FE, HE, apprenticeships and ACL under one roof.

    Back in May, Medr (the official name for the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research in Wales) launched its first consultation on the new regulatory system required by the Tertiary Education and Research Wales Act 2022.

    At that stage the sector’s message was that it was too prescriptive, too burdensome, and insufficiently clear about what was mandatory versus advisory.

    Now, five months later, Medr has returned with a second consultation that it says addresses those concerns. The documents – running to well over 100 pages across the main consultation text and six annexes – set out pretty much the complete regulatory framework that will govern tertiary education in Wales from August 2026.

    It’s much more than a minor technical exercise – it’s the most ambitious attempt to create a unified regulatory system across further education, higher education, apprenticeships, adult community learning and maintained school sixth forms that the UK has yet seen.

    As well as that, it’s trying to be both a funder and a regulator; to be responsive to providers while putting students at the centre; and to avoid some of the mistakes that it has seen the Office for Students (OfS) make in England.

    Listening and responding

    If nothing else, it’s refreshing to see a sector body listening to consultation responses. Respondents wanted clearer signposts about what constitutes a compliance requirement versus advisory guidance, and worried about cumulative burden when several conditions and processes come together.

    They also asked for alignment with existing quality regimes from Estyn and the Quality Assurance Agency, and flagged concerns about whether certain oversight might risk universities’ status as non-profit institutions serving households (NPISH) – a technical thing, but one with significant implications for institutional autonomy.

    Medr’s response has been to restructure the conditions more clearly. Each now distinguishes between the condition itself (what must be met), compliance requirements that evidence the condition, and guidance (which providers must consider but may approach differently if they can justify that choice).

    It has also adopted a “make once, use many” approach to information, promising to rely on evidence already provided to Estyn, QAA or other bodies wherever it fits their purpose. And it has aligned annual planning and assurance points with sector cycles “wherever possible.”

    The question, of course, is whether this constitutes genuine simplification or merely better-organised complexity. Medr is establishing conditions of registration for higher education providers (replacing Fee and Access Plans), conditions of funding for FE colleges and others, and creating a unified quality framework and learner engagement code that applies across all tertiary education.

    The conditions themselves

    Some conditions apply universally. Others apply only to registered providers, or only to funded providers, or only to specific types of provision. As we’ve seen in England, the framework includes initial and ongoing conditions of registration for higher education providers (in both the “core” and “alternative” categories), plus conditions of funding that apply more broadly.

    Financial sustainability requires providers to have “strategies in place to ensure that they are financially sustainable” – which means remaining viable in the short term (one to two years), sustainable over the medium term (three to five years), and maintaining sufficient resources to honour commitments to learners. The supplementary detail includes a financial commitments threshold mechanism based on EBITDA ratios.

    Providers exceeding certain multiples will need to request review of governance by Medr before entering new financial commitments. That’s standard regulatory practice – OfS has equivalent arrangements in England – but it represents new formal oversight for Welsh institutions.

    Critically, Medr says its role is “to review and form an opinion on the robustness of governance over proposed new commitments, not to authorise or veto a decision that belongs to your governing body.” That’s some careful wording – but whether it will prove sufficient in practice (both in detail and in timeliness) when providers are required to seek approval before major financial decisions remains to be seen.

    Governance and management is where the sector seems to have secured some wins. The language around financial commitments has been softened from “approval” to “review.” The condition now focuses on outcomes – “integrity, transparency, strong internal control, effective assurance, and a culture that allows challenge and learning” – rather than prescribing structures.

    And for those worried about burden, registered higher education providers will no longer be required to provide governing body composition, annual returns of serious incidents, individual internal audit reports, or several other elements currently required under Fee and Access Plans. That is a reduction – but won’t make a lot of difference to anyone other than the person stiffed with gathering the sheaf of stuff to send in.

    Quality draws on the Quality Framework (Annex C) and requires providers to demonstrate their provision is of good quality and that they engage with continuous improvement. The minimum compliance requirements, evidenced through annual assurance returns, include compliance with the Learner Engagement Code, using learner survey outcomes in quality assurance, governing body oversight of quality strategies, regular self-evaluation, active engagement in external quality assessment (Estyn inspection and/or QAA review), continuous improvement planning, and a professional learning and development strategy.

    The framework promises that Medr will “use information from existing reviews and inspections, such as by Estyn and QAA” and “aim not to duplicate existing quality processes.” Notably, Medr has punted the consultation on performance indicators to 2027, so providers won’t know what quantitative measures they’ll be assessed against until the system is already live.

    Staff and learner welfare sets out requirements for effective arrangements to support and promote welfare, encompassing both “wellbeing” (emotional wellbeing and mental health) and “safety” (freedom from harassment, misconduct, violence including sexual violence, and hate crime). Providers will have to conduct an annual welfare self-evaluation and submit an annual welfare action plan to Medr. This represents new formal reporting – even if the underlying activity isn’t new.

    The Welsh language condition requires providers to take “all reasonable steps” to promote greater use of Welsh, increase demand for Welsh-medium provision, and (where appropriate) encourage research and innovation activities supporting the Welsh language. Providers must publish a Welsh Language Strategy setting out how they’ll achieve it, with measurable outcomes over a five-year rolling period with annual milestones. For providers subject to Welsh Language Standards under the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011, compliance with those standards provides baseline assurance. Others must work with the Welsh Language Commissioner through the Cynnig Cymraeg.

    Learner protection plans will be required when Medr gives notice – typically triggered by reportable events, course closures, campus closures, or significant changes to provision. The guidance (in the supplementary detail from page 86 onwards) is clear about what does and doesn’t require a plan. Portfolio review and planned teach-out? Generally fine, provided learners are supported. Closing a course mid-year with no teach-out option? Plan required. Whether this offers the sort of protection that students need – especially when changes are made to courses to reduce costs – will doubtless come up in the consultation.

    And then there’s the Learner Engagement Code, set out in Annex D. This is where student representative bodies may feel especially disappointed. The Code is principles-based rather than rights-based, setting out nine principles (embedded, valued, understood, inclusive, bilingual, individual and collective, impactful, resourced, evaluated) – but creates no specific entitlements or rights for students or students’ unions.

    The principles themselves are worthy enough – learners should have opportunities to engage in decision-making, they should be listened to, routes for engagement should be clear, opportunities should reflect diverse needs, learners can engage through Welsh, collective voice should be supported, engagement should lead to visible impact, it should be resourced, and it should be evaluated. But it does all feel a bit vague.

    Providers will have to submit annual assurance that they comply with the Code, accompanied by evidence such as “analysis of feedback from learners on their experience of engagement” and “examples of decisions made as a result of learner feedback.” But the bar for compliance appears relatively low. As long as providers can show they’re doing something in each area, they’re likely to be deemed compliant. For SUs hoping for statutory backing for their role and resources, this will feel like a missed opportunity.

    Equality of opportunity is more substantial. The condition requires providers to deliver measurable outcomes across participation, retention, academic success, progression, and (where appropriate) participation in postgraduate study and research. The supplementary detail (from page 105) sets out that providers must conduct ongoing self-evaluation to identify barriers to equality of opportunity, then develop measurable outcomes over a five-year rolling period with annual milestones.

    Interestingly, there’s a transition period – in 2026-27, HE providers with Fee and Access Plans need only provide a statement confirming continued commitments. Full compliance – including submission of measurable outcomes – isn’t required until 2027-28, with the first progress reports due in 2028-29. That’s a sensible approach given the sector’s starting points vary considerably, but it does mean the condition won’t bite with full force for three years.

    Monitoring and intervention

    At the core of the monitoring approach is an Annual Assurance Return – where the provider’s governing body self-declares compliance across all applicable conditions, supported by evidence. This is supplemented by learner surveys, Estyn/QAA reviews, public information monitoring, complaints monitoring, reportable events, data monitoring, independent assurance, engagement activities and self-evaluation.

    The reportable events process distinguishes between serious incidents (to be reported within 10 working days) and notifiable events (reported monthly or at specified intervals). There’s 17 categories of serious incidents, from loss of degree awarding powers to safeguarding failures to financial irregularities over £50,000 or two per cent of turnover (whichever is lower). A table lists notifiable events including senior staff appointments and departures, changes to validation arrangements, and delays to financial returns. It’s a consolidation of existing requirements rather than wholesale innovation, but it’s now formalised across the tertiary sector rather than just HE.

    Medr’s Statement of Intervention Powers (Annex A) sets out escalation from low-level intervention (advice and assistance, reviews) through mid-level intervention (specific registration conditions, enhanced monitoring) to serious “directive” intervention (formal directions) and ultimately de-registration. The document includes helpful flowcharts showing the process for each intervention type, complete with timescales and decision review mechanisms. Providers can also apply for a review by an independent Decision Reviewer appointed by Welsh Ministers – a safeguard that universities dream of in England.

    Also refreshingly, Medr commits to operating “to practical turnaround times” when reviewing financial commitments, with the process “progressing in tandem with your own processes.” A six-week timeline is suggested for complex financing options – although whether this proves workable in practice will depend on Medr’s capacity and responsiveness.

    Quality

    The Quality Framework (Annex C) deserves separate attention because it’s genuinely attempting something ambitious – a coherent approach to quality across FE, HE, apprenticeships, ACL and sixth forms that recognises existing inspection/review arrangements rather than duplicating them.

    The framework has seven “pillars” – learner engagement, learner voice, engagement of the governing body, self-evaluation, externality, continuous improvement and professional learning and development. Each pillar sets out what Medr will do and what providers must demonstrate. Providers will be judged compliant if they achieve “satisfactory external quality assessment outcomes,” have “acceptable performance data,” and are not considered by Medr to demonstrate “a risk to the quality of education.”

    The promise is that:

    …Medr will work with providers and with bodies carrying out external quality assessment to ensure that such assessment is robust, evidence-based, proportionate and timely; adds value for providers and has impact in driving improvement.

    In other words, Estyn inspections and QAA reviews should suffice, with Medr using those outcomes rather than conducting its own assessments. But there’s a caveat:

    “Medr has asked Estyn and QAA to consider opportunities for greater alignment between current external quality assessment methodologies, and in particular whether there could be simplification for providers who are subject to multiple assessments.

    So is the coordination real or aspirational? The answer appears to be somewhere in between. The framework acknowledges that by 2027, Medr expects to have reviewed data collection arrangements and consulted on performance indicators and use of benchmarking and thresholds. Until that consultation happens, it’s not entirely clear what “acceptable performance data” means beyond existing Estyn/QAA judgements. And the promise of “greater alignment” between inspection methodologies is a promise, not a done deal.

    A tight timeline

    The key dates bear noting because they’re tight:

    • April 2026: Applications to the register open
    • August 2026: Register launches; most conditions come into effect
    • August 2027: Remaining conditions (Equality of Opportunity and Fee Limits for registered providers) come into full effect; apprenticeship providers fully subject to conditions of funding

    After all these years, we seem to be looking at some exit acceleration. It gives providers approximately six months from the consultation closing (17 December 2025) to the application process opening. Final versions of the conditions and guidance presumably need to be published early 2026 to allow preparation time. And all of this is happening against the backdrop of Senedd elections in 2026 – where polls suggest that some strategic guidance could be dropped on the new body fairly sharpish.

    And some elements remain unresolved or punted forward. The performance indicators consultation promised for 2027 means providers won’t know the quantitative measures against which they’ll be assessed until the system is live. Medr says it will “consult on its approach to defining ‘good’ learner outcomes” as part of a “coherent, over-arching approach” – but that’s after registration and implementation have begun.

    Validation arrangements are addressed (providers must ensure arrangements are effective in enabling them to satisfy themselves about quality), but the consultation asks explicitly whether the condition “could be usefully extended into broader advice or guidance for tertiary partnerships, including sub-contractual arrangements.” That suggests Medr has been reading some of England’s horror stories and recognises the area needs further work.

    And underlying everything is the question of capacity – both Medr’s capacity to operate this system effectively from day one, and providers’ capacity to meet the requirements while managing their existing obligations. The promise of reduced burden through alignment and reuse of evidence is welcome.

    But a unified regulatory system covering everything from research-intensive universities to community-based adult learning requires Medr to develop expertise and processes across an extraordinary range of provision types. Whether the organisation will be ready by August 2026 is an open question.

    For providers, the choice is whether to engage substantively with this consultation knowing that the broad architecture is set by legislation, or to focus energy on preparing for implementation. For Welsh ministers, the challenge is whether this genuinely lighter-touch, more coherent approach than England’s increasingly discredited OfS regime can be delivered without compromising quality or institutional autonomy.

    And for students – especially those whose representative structures were hoping for statutory backing – there’s a question about whether principles-based engagement without rights amounts to meaningful participation or regulatory box-ticking.

    In England, some observers will watch with interest to see whether Wales has found a way to regulate tertiary education proportionately and coherently. Others will see in these documents a reminder that unified systems, however well-intentioned, require enormous complexity to accommodate the genuine diversity of the sector. The consultation responses, due by 17 December, will expose which interpretation the Welsh sector favours.

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  • Bridging Further and Higher Education: Building a Truly Tertiary Education System

    Bridging Further and Higher Education: Building a Truly Tertiary Education System

    • Professor David Phoenix OBE is Vice-Chancellor of London South Bank University and Chief Executive of LSBU Group.
    • Dr Katerina Kolyva is Chief Executive Officer of The Education and Training Foundation.

    Post-16 education in England is at a pivotal moment, with increasing efforts to create a more integrated and collaborative system. While elements of competition remain, the reintegration of the sector into the Department for Education presents new opportunities for colleges and universities to enhance their contributions to local communities. Both further and higher education providers play distinct yet complementary roles in supporting diverse learners, but significant challenges remain in achieving a fully joined-up system. The establishment of Skills England, along with the skills and industrial strategies, signals a growing recognition of these complexities, highlighting the need for a cross-government approach. Achieving greater alignment across the post-16 landscape could provide an opportunity to shape a system that empowers learners, strengthens local economies, and supports national prosperity.

    In February, the Education and Training Foundation and London South Bank University therefore brought together a range of relevant stakeholders to discuss existing models of best practice and the workforce characteristics needed to help develop an effective tertiary education system.

    University and college mergers, franchise agreements, Institutes of Technology and Group models are all examples of imaginative approaches to post-16 collaboration. Workforce characteristics found within these models include a leadership team with a clear vision, strong awareness of institutional values, and resilience against the prevailing winds of policy. Having the correct personnel with a positive and creative mindset can foster strategic risk-taking and allow for continuous learning with the avoidance of blame, though people and culture initiatives alone cannot be relied upon to deliver a coherent system.

    Our marketised higher education system and a focus on further-higher education transitions around level 4 could risk missing the bigger picture. We need government to develop a national framework within which local skills and innovation strategies can be developed. Such strategies would seek to consider issues related to the skills pipeline (including key areas such as adult education and gateway qualifications) but would also look at job creation by leveraging universities to drive innovation with business. Such a system-based approach needs to also consider what post-16 provision in the schools sector looks like and how this interfaces with further education, as well as the interface between further and higher education. This is essential if we are to provide alternative study pathways that meet the needs of the majority whilst also preventing duplication and redundancy at all levels.

    Published in December 2024, the government’s Devolution White Paper could be a first step towards establishing a framework for regional collaboration and addressing these missing elements. Strategic Authorities could take an important role in working alongside further and higher education providers and employers to identify skills shortages and promote clear pathways from education and training into employment through a combination of specialist institutions. The government, through a coordinated approach across departments, could use various regulatory and financial levers to encourage genuine collaboration between providers where there is a mismatch between skill demands and provision, while also simplifying the complex regulatory landscape.

    A greater level of specialisation and the recognition of the importance of different institutional missions has the potential to support a greater diversity of missions and a shift to a more collaborative framework. When combined with designing a corresponding careers, information, advice and guidance service, this will allow institutions to build more pathways for learners, meaning a more inclusive system. Those who are educationally disenfranchised would have more options to re-enter education and work, breaking down a key barrier to opportunity and, in the long term, boosting economic growth.

    Regulation, market forces, and financial constraints can both foster and hinder collaboration. If government can find the correct balance, post-16 education will better serve learners and employers, boosting equality of opportunity and economic growth. Government commitments to boost devolution, publish an industrial strategy and reduce intra-governmental bureaucracy tacitly acknowledge the problem, but an overarching framework for addressing this is lacking. Once the IFATE Bill, which will formally establish Skills England, achieves Royal Assent, government must establish a mechanism to ensure cross-departmental coordination, bringing together Skills England, regional authorities, education providers, and employers to drive structural change.

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  • Any possible tertiary future for England’s post-18 system must lean into college-based HE

    Any possible tertiary future for England’s post-18 system must lean into college-based HE

    The Lifelong Education Institute’s latest report – “Taking Higher Education Further” – shines a spotlight on the contribution of FE colleges to England’s higher education sector.

    In partnership with the Mixed Economy Group of colleges – a group representing the 43 colleges with a strategic interest in HE – we have explored the rationale for college-based higher education, analysed some of the barriers holding it back from expansion, and suggested ways in which policymakers could support its growth.

    The report could hardly come out at a more interesting time for FE/HE relationships. After a decade or more of relative stasis following the introduction of the £9,000 undergraduate student fee cap in England, the tectonic plates of post-18 education are shifting rapidly towards an as-yet-unknown end state. There are three key drivers behind this potential re-setting of the status quo between the college and university sectors.

    First is the dramatic shift in the financial situation of universities and colleges, with many higher education institutions now facing the sort of cost-cutting that further education colleges have endured for years and needing to come up with new, more efficient business models to sustain themselves financially. Following the consolidation of many smaller colleges into large groups, there are now several colleges with larger annual turnovers than smaller universities, and the balance of power between FE and HE is moving steadily away from the traditional template of senior/junior partnership.

    Second is the move towards universities having place-based strategies, with civic university agreements proliferating in all parts of the country. This has partly been driven by the rise in influential devolved authorities across England, and partly by the increase in take up of degree pathways in a range of public sector professions, such as nursing, policing, and social work, which are vital to local communities and tend to recruit from local populations.

    Rising cost of living pressures have also played their part, with commuting students becoming an increasingly important segment of the HE student market. The introduction of degree apprenticeships has also pulled many universities into much more active engagement with local employers and much more of a focus on local skills development. Colleges, which have always had fairly tight catchment areas, now find themselves working their patches alongside local universities, and in some cases, through the network of 21 Institutes of Technology, offering higher technical qualifications and high level short courses directly in partnership with HE institutions.

    Third, and most importantly, the arrival of a new government is rapidly moving the political paradigm away from competition towards collaboration. Education ministers have taken every opportunity since the general election to drive home the message that partnership, cooperation and coordination have now replaced markets, competition and institutional individualism as “the default way of working across all providers,” in the recent words of skills minister Jacqui Smith. We are promised a white paper this summer setting out a comprehensive strategy for post-16 education and skills, and at the same time a “radical” package of HE reforms which will also emphasise the role of HE in collaborating around local and national skills priorities.

    Is the future for England tertiary?

    HE/FE collaboration has tended to be relatively transactional and fluid in England, and there is no standard blueprint for forging partnerships. A small number of colleges can now claim to be tertiary institutions, having been granted degree awarding powers, although with the Office for Students having currently suspended the application process until August, it’s now far from certain how quickly this number will grow in future. There are four universities which by virtue of having absorbed a failing FE college have become tertiary – Derby, London South Bank, Greater Manchester (formerly Bolton University) and the University of West London. But this is the result of specific local circumstances, not national policy.

    Arguably, these institutions are a microcosm of exactly what the government is trying to achieve at a national level. Tertiary institutions are able to develop coherent progression pathways from basic to undergraduate level for students of all aptitudes, embracing both academic and technical education routes without competition between them. David Phoenix, vice chancellor of London South Bank University, has been an articulate advocate for this model, and his vision, as set out in his November 2023 report “Connecting the dots: the need for an effective skills system in England” has been highly influential in Labour-leaning circles.

    It’s possible the government will introduce much greater incentives for universities and colleges to consider merger, and even be prepared to act as “matchmaker” for reluctant or hesitant brides and grooms. It would certainly make it much easier to develop integrated apprenticeships, higher technical qualifications and Lifelong Learning Entitlement offers if there were more tertiary providers.

    The Taking Higher Education Further report is generally supportive of greater tertiary integration, but with several important reservations. To begin with, although most FE colleges are appreciative of the relationships they have with universities – mostly still based on validation agreements – there are many who are critical of the cost and in some cases one-sided nature of the partnership, with some having experienced the disruption caused by an HE institution deciding unilaterally to withdraw from the agreement. Another concern has been the proliferation of foundation years at many universities, which was seen as unwelcome competition for Level 3 students and met with dismay by many in the FE sector. This has abated considerably since the introduction of a much reduced fee cap for foundation years.

    While some institutes of technology have strengthened FE/HE relationships, others have struggled to bridge the gap between the two sectors. One aspect of that gap – the difference in pay and conditions between FE and HE lecturers – has proved particularly troublesome. But those institutes of technology which have been successful have demonstrated that joint working between FE and HE can be highly effective. Overall, despite the caveats, the FE leaders consulted as part of the research for the report were generally positive about the idea of working more closely with HE.

    In a political climate where economically relevant skills and wider access to job-related skills are now central to the government agenda, college-based higher education has both issues at its heart. The HE students who study in FE colleges are overwhelmingly, adult, very local and from disadvantaged backgrounds. The courses they take are typically directly related to opportunities in the local labour market and focused on career progression. Whereas the student loan system has tended to incentivise HE institutions to prioritise three year degree courses, FE colleges offer a much more incremental approach, with multiple entry and exit points and a high proportion of part-time and modular options. This could be a significant advantage as colleges prepare for the implementation of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement in 2026–27.

    In summary, the report is a plea for government to give more support to the expansion of HE in FE, but is not in any way antagonistic towards the HE sector. The aim is to strengthen the relationship between colleges and universities, not to weaken it. As the foreword says, “Working together, colleges and universities can open up accessible opportunities and make a real difference to people’s lives.” In this, FE and HE share a common purpose.

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  • What the UK can learn from Scotland’s tertiary pathfinder experiments

    What the UK can learn from Scotland’s tertiary pathfinder experiments

    It is commonly believed that, if we only had accurate up-to-date data on what skills employers were looking for, we could solve most of Britain’s productivity and social mobility problems in one fell swoop.

    There’s a kind of big state approach to collecting and sharing that knowledge we could follow – all kinds of architectures and data collections we could dream up to ensure that every course offered in every educational establishment was laser-focused on a particular industry demand.

    To do this at the level of fidelity and timeliness needed would be either expensive, or impossible, or both. Remember, right now, we can’t even accurately tell you how many people are currently working in the UK. And even if we did have this up-to-the moment, detailed, reliable data on employer needs: would the sector be able to use it? And would learners see any benefit?

    Pathways and pathfinders

    On the other hand nine projects, funded at a total of just £500,000 by the Scottish Funding Council, offer a glimpse of a set of approaches that are making a real difference to education and employment. It’s the opposite of big and flashy – building on existing structures and using small amounts of money to facilitate data sharing and collaboration. And it might just be a glimpse of the future.

    The key components are what the Regional Tertiary Pathfinder programme calls Regional Delivery Boards – the pathfinder iteration saw two established, one covering Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire (north east Scotland), the other covering Dumfries and Galloway plus the Borders (south of Scotland).

    If you are in England, you might be thinking these are pretty much the same as the Employer Representative Bodies that develop Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs). And you’d be wrong. The LSIP approach simply brings together employers to state their needs and then invites providers (just FE colleges and private training providers, obviously) to meet them. Ewart Keep, in one of the vast numbers of reports published around the programme, describes the LSIP approach as:

    the employer is viewed as a customer (more or less demanding but detached from the actual process of skill production) within a marketized, one-way street, relationship with a range of suppliers

    In contrast, the Regional Delivery Boards encompass providers at all levels (from schools through to universities) and treat employers and industry bodies as partners in designing and delivering not only the provision directly linked to that particular momentary skills need, but in helping to shape a whole skills ecosystem.

    It is, after all, not really worth designing an undergraduate level energy transition course (for example) aimed at a locality if people in that area are not going to have the qualifications and experience required to benefit from it, and if there is no local aspiration to work in that field. Every individual project supported by the board will be taking into account employer demand as one factor, alongside a consideration of wider skills pathways, of learner demand, and of the wider endeavour of offering people good quality and stable employment.

    I’ve always been a fan of small projects that use low levels of funding in carefully targeted ways to make transformative changes and build capacity. I’ve spent large parts of my adult life setting them up. It does not take a lot of money, in the grand scheme of things, to bring about lasting change. Especially if you build on existing interests, existing partnerships, and even existing plans.

    Building on the past

    There’s various models of change and innovation available, but the one I’ve always known to work draws on Eric Von Hippel’s lead user theory which can be summarised as: smart people on the ground doing the work are already inventing ways of getting stuff done – find these people, listen to them, and make the changes they suggest to enable others to do the same. The strength of the Regional Tertiary Pathfinders model is that it explicitly builds on existing work, existing relationships, and even existing projects – offering legitimacy and political backing as much as money to supercharge the good work that is already happening.

    You sometimes come across agencies and individuals that want to start from scratch, designing the perfect system that will replace everything that has gone before. While this is undeniably fun, it ignores the fact that the same people and the same groups that have been working on similar projects before will be unimpressed with branding and a tidy new organogram being presented as a way to solve the problems they’ve been working on for years. You could call it “producer interest” – I much prefer the term “people who are actually going to do the work to solve the problem” interest.

    It doesn’t matter how good you are on PowerPoint, those new boxes are going to be populated by existing domain experts – it would probably save a lot of time if we started listening to them.

    What about the data?

    One of the impressive facets of both the Regional Delivery Boards and the projects they support is what I might term a pragmatism about data. It actually turns out that data on employer needs is just one of the wells that need to be drawn on, of arguably equal importance is data on the needs of the kinds of students who may want to take the new course you are designing.

    It surprises many to learn just how many (technical, legal, procedural) barriers exist around sharing data across educational phases. Schools will have detailed data on their pupils, not just on attainment and personal characteristics, but on career intentions too. But it is rare to see such detailed information shared with colleges, and by the time you get to university or employment a pupil is flattened out to a list of grades and a very generic reference.

    Likewise, different parts of the system will be getting different kinds of information from employers and industry bodies. While an individual employer may be reasonably expected to understand their own immediate skills needs, to get a fuller or longer term picture you need more than one data point. The various employers, bodies, and providers involved all had light to shed – on a global, regional, and local level.

    In order to ensure that skills pipelines are unclogged working in the way they might be needed you need to bring all of these data sources together, and it is to the credit of the two boards that this has been able to happen.

    Designing and delivering courses

    Any provider worth bothering with will be drawing on all kinds of information in designing new courses and reviewing old ones. There’s a landscape of professional bodies, subject interest groups, QAA benchmarks, and comparators that can help academics and quality assurance staff decide what needs to be covered in a course. This intelligence is married with an institutional insight into its own purpose and mission, and the missions of other local providers.

    Employer engagement can and does happen at the design, delivery, and review phases of courses – each of these allows for direct input into the curriculum mediated by the kinds of wider understanding detailed above. What we are also starting to see is partnerships between providers across phases feeding these processes in a similar way – schools, local authorities, and FE colleges, are all components of the skills pipeline and have a key role both in directly preparing students for admission, and in raising awareness and aspiration more widely.

    This nicely illustrates a central strength of the regional tertiary pathfinder approach, an emphasis on the wider needs of the learner. Rather than seeing learners, Gradgrind-like, as vessels to be filled with the correct skills there is a recognition of “meta-skills” and graduate applicants: a genuine consideration of the careers and lives of learners rather than just thinking about the immediate employer or industry need. Again to quote Ewart Keep:

    There are a number of professions and occupations where we know that labour shortages in part (sometimes a growing proportion) spring not from a shortage of individuals qualified to undertake the work, but from the fact that those that are qualified and have entered the workforce are now choosing to leave the occupation because individuals are concluding that the pay and/or working conditions and stress levels are unacceptable

    Courses more closely aligned to employers needs are certainly useful in addressing skills needs – they are not a means of attracting young people to work in unlivable jobs.

    Beyond the programme, beyond Scotland

    The initiatives that the Regional Pathfinder Programme have fostered and nurtured are already becoming “business as usual”, though how the funding council can support and grow this activity remains an open question. The project coordinators that did so much to drive success were largely funded by the small SFC grants – whether such dedicated project delivery roles would exist without this small amount of funding is not clear. Likewise, the attention that SFC involvement (and, frankly, SFC oversight) drove at a senior level is difficult to sustain. As of yet we don’t know how or in what form the programme will continue – but given the small amount of funding involved and the scope to spread the lessons learned so far to other areas it would feel very short-sighted to abandon the approach.

    In other nations of the UK skills planning cleaves much closer to the employer-as-purchaser model that relies on the optimistic idea that employers are engaged in long-term skills planning that can be aggregated and delivered. The results from Scotland should inform England’s long-awaited reform of the LSIP process – and hopefully put a human face on what frequently feels like an impersonal and deterministic skills strategy that understands neither the people who have the skills, the institutions that develop them, and the the employers that react to a rapidly changing world.

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