Over 70 delegates will travel to the UK to agree a comprehensive capacity building programme that will help achieve the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
GEDU’s managing director for external relations and sustainability, Kevin McCole, is also the director of UNITAR’s London Centre, one of 33 Centres, spanning every continent.
The mission of these Centres is to deliver training and capacity building across the SDGs.
The PIE News sat down with Kevin McCole to understand the work of the UNITAR network, GEDU’s particular priorities, and what will be achieved in the coming days in London.
Kevin, this sounds like a critical week for you and your colleagues. Can you tell us what will happen and why it matters?
It is an important week. It’s exciting too. It’s not every day that a UK education business hosts a delegation led by an assistant UN secretary general and includes other senior UN officials, as well as business, academic and municipal leaders from around the world. It’s a truly global gathering.
UNITAR and its network come together once a year, and part of the programme in London will be internal – we’ll share best practice, identify areas for collaboration in 2026, consider how UN 2.0 and the Pact for the Future will shape the UN’s development agenda beyond 2030, agree ambitious targets and how to achieve them.
We’ve also got important external engagement too, including with representatives of the UK government, parliamentarians and businesses.
While we are discussing global challenges, it’s important to focus on the local too. So we will be hosting the delegation at the Global Banking School campus in Greenford where we will engage local politicians and council officials.
What role do universities play in the UNITAR network?
Of the 33 Centres across the world, most are led by universities. In London next week there will be senior figures from York University in Canada, Newcastle University in Australia, and more from all continents in between.
GEDU’s contribution to UNITAR is global too – it’s not limited to London. With 13 institutions across 15 countries – from Toronto and Tampa in the Americas, across Europe and the Middle East and India, to Brisbane in Asia-Pacific – we are able to bring a global perspective and have a global impact.
Universities can help achieve the SDGs in a range of ways. Through their curricula and extra-curricula activity. Let’s take just three examples from GEDU institutions.
MLA College recently launched 17 byte sized courses – one on every SDG – in partnership with UNITAR.
Shiller International University, with campuses in Heidelberg, Paris, Madrid and Tampa offer the Seeds of Peace Scholarship to support students from conflict-affected regions.
And ICN Business School, a triple accredited creative business school with campuses in Paris, Berlin and Nancy, is an active member of the United Nations Global Compact, the Principles for Responsible Management Education initiative, the Collectif pour l’Intégration de la Responsabilité Sociétale et du Développement Durable dans l’Enseignement Supérieur (CIRSES), and the Conférence des Grandes Écoles network on sustainable development
Of course, universities can’t succeed in isolation. That’s why UNITAR’s general approach, and the specific programme in London, involve national and local governments, parliamentarians, businesses, and civil society. We all need to work together.
We hear about sustainability a lot, but it’s more than just environmental, isn’t it?
Yes, from the UN and UNITAR perspective we look at all 17 of the sustainable development goals.
Many are environmental, for example climate action, life on land, life below water, and affordable and clean energy. But the SDGs also include peace, justice and strong institutions, reduced inequalities and eliminating poverty and hunger.
So we have a broad and important agenda in London next week.
It’s also important to say that the UNITAR programme is giving us at GEDU the opportunity to consider the contribution we can make collectively and as individual institutions.
For instance, how do we best deploy our time and expertise to work in partnership with governments, businesses and NGOs around the world?
We understand GEDU will be making an announcement as well?
That’s correct. We’re going to release our inaugural GEDU sustainability report at an event in the House of Commons.
The report will detail the work being done by all our institutions to address all of the SDGs, including in the SDG that they have adopted and lead on for GEDU. It will also outline our ambitions for 2026 and beyond.
I have to say, preparing this report has been a real eye opener for me – I hadn’t realised just how much our institutions are doing that aligns to the SDGs. And it’s been really encouraging to learn that they all have ambition to contribute even more.
About the author: Kevin McCole is GEDU managing director, external relations and sustainability. Kevin, who has a passion for education and international partnerships, joined GEDU Global Education in March 2025 and leads the group’s external relations, public relations and sustainability activities. Before joining GEDU Global Education, Kevin spent 16 years as managing director of the UK India Business Council, where he worked closely with governments and organisations in both countries on the UK-India FTA and, more broadly, to bring UK investors to India and strengthen the business, education and people-to-people links between India and the UK. Prior to this, Kevin spent 19 years in the UK’s diplomatic service, where he served in The Netherlands, Malta, Romania, India, and in various London postings. In India, Kevin spent three years at the British Deputy High Commission in Kolkata helping strengthen the UK’s partnership with East and North East India.
The “intergenerational retirement living community” about to sprout on an Australian university’s suburban campus will generate clinical training opportunities for students while it “strengthens the social fabric” of the city, its advocates claim.
The University of Canberra plans to convert unused land—currently occupied by gum trees, grassland, dilapidated fencing and the odd hungry kangaroo—into a mini village complete with 230 “independent living units,” a 180-bed care facility, a retail center and health services on tap.
The project is designed to ease housing shortages and help older Australians in “downsizing” while promoting intergenerational mingling.
It will also provide practical educational opportunities across multiple disciplines. “Our students here, from allied health through to the built environment … nursing and many other vocations, will be able to get on-the-job training whilst they are at the university,” said Vice Chancellor Bill Shorten.
“University education makes a lot more sense when … you’re practicing what you’re learning. Nothing beats that real-world experience.”
Under a deal signed with property developers Pariter and residential aged care provider Opal, the university will lease the 2.2-hectare site—nestled between UC’s hospital and health hub—for 100 years. The two companies will bankroll the project’s capital costs, estimated at about 150 million Australian dollars ($99.2 million).
The university will pocket “lease receipts and revenue share,” although it declined to say how much. The deal will facilitate collaborative employment and “co-designed” learning programs, along with joint research projects and student placements on campus and elsewhere.
The older residents will be encouraged to engage with each other and their younger neighbors, including the more than 2,000 students who live on campus. Pedestrian links will connect them to cafés, the library, medical services and nearby bushland.
Shorten said the construction still requires final approval, but he expects it to begin within about two years and finish within four. He insisted that the project, which had been the subject of long-standing negotiations with various partners, would have gone ahead irrespective of the university’s financial position.
“It just makes sense,” he told reporters. “This is an idea [whose] time has come. I think this is what modern universities should be doing. At the end of the day, trying to suppress a good idea is like trying to keep a ball below the surface of the water.”
UC is among a throng of Australian universities that are converting parts of their considerable landholdings into revenue-earning opportunities matched to their educational and community support missions. The University of Wollongong is seeking final development approval for an “intergenerational university community” that features health services, integrated research and education spaces, an early-learning center and accommodation for more than 400 older residents on its seaside campus.
La Trobe and Flinders Universities have also flagged the possible establishment of aged care facilities as part of multibillion-dollar developments of their campuses in suburban Melbourne and Adelaide.
Opal’s director of communications and sustainability, Rosanne Cartwright, said similar precincts were springing up in countries with aging demographics including Germany, Japan and the Netherlands. “The aging population is a global issue that needs to be solved locally,” Cartwright said.
“Australians across every generation are dealing with loneliness as a real issue,” she added. “Younger people need to look after older people and older people need to look after younger people.”
Commercial redevelopments on campus have sparked criticism that vice chancellors are diverging from their educational mission into property speculation—grievances that run strong if universities invest in capital projects while reducing staff to save costs.
The National Tertiary Education Union said it was comfortable with the UC project “so long as it contributes to rather than detracts from” teaching and research.
“From time to time there are some objections to using university land in that way, but it’s not really in short supply at the University of Canberra,” said the union’s divisional secretary, Lachlan Clohesy. “If there’s revenue … supplementing the university and therefore able to contribute to the core mission, that’s a good thing.”
As a PR professional, you can equip students on your campus with the skills and confidence to excel in interviews. Here are four reasons why you should invest the time and resources in media training your students.
It makes your life easier. When a reporter contacts you and asks for a student to weigh in on the news of the day or your institution’s latest initiative, you will have a pool of students to pick from at the ready rather than reaching out to deans or faculty to find a student and vet them that day.
While it will make your life easier in the long run, it does require you to put in the time up front. Meet students on their timelines. Most student group meetings are outside of class time, so it might mean you are attending a student government association meeting at 8 p.m. or doing a Zoom training with the College Democrats or Republicans on your lunch break.
It helps students and the community navigate crisis situations. With protests becoming regular occurrences on our campuses and in our communities, media training students will help them remain calm under pressure. When a reporter is looking for a comment, students won’t just say the first thing that pops into their mind. They will know how to get their key messages across to the audiences they are trying to reach.
It’s not just national and local media students need to respond to; student reporters are often the first to approach peers for quotes. All student newspapers are online, can be accessed by anyone and are an extension of your institution and its values. Engaging with student media isn’t just a learning opportunity—it shows how students will represent themselves, which in turn has a direct impact on the reputation of your institution.
Many students don’t know they can choose to not talk to the media or say no to interview requests. We’ve all seen the videos of reporters knocking on students’ doors and the students saying something unfavorable rather than just not opening the door in the first place, or of students having a microphone put in their face as they are walking to class to weigh in on a subject they don’t know about instead of saying, “I don’t know.” Media training can help students realize they have the option to respectfully decline interviews and interactions, which can help alleviate the pressure they might feel to respond in the moment.
Students build career-ready competencies. Whether it’s an internship or job interview, being able to succinctly articulate their points will help students for the rest of their lives. From public speaking to leadership roles to internships, media training gives students skills for their future.
We want our students to be able to weigh in on important issues, and media outlets are always looking for a student perspective. For example, my team was recently on campus for faculty and staff media and op-ed training when a professor asked if his students could sit in. Afterward, one student drafted an op-ed that she successfully placed. I’ve also provided op-ed writing training to seminar classes in which students learn the nuts and bolts of writing an op-ed and how to get published as an undergrad.
Name, image and likeness (NIL) has changed the game for student athletes. It takes students out of the arena and into the public eye where their reputation will be on the line. If you are at a larger school, some of your student athletes may have their own publicist, but if you are not at school where the NIL money is flowing, media training helps prepare student athletes for local commercials, being the face of the pizza shop down the street or even a postgame interview.
When a scandal occurs—a coach is fired, or student athletes are gambling or being hazed—you want students to know they can come to you for advice and guidance when reporters descend on campus.
Students are the most prominent ambassadors of your institution. Media training isn’t about making them a professional correspondent; it’s about making them feel prepared when they are in the spotlight. Whether they are engaging in a protest, talking with a peer reporter at the school newspaper or navigating a postgame interview, media training can serve them in the moment and long term. It’s worth your time to engage with your best spokespeople.
Cristal Steuer is associate vice president at TVP Communications, a national public relations and crisis communications agency solely focused on higher education.
This blog was kindly authored by Juliette Claro, Lecturer in Education St Mary’s University Twickenham.
Initial Teacher Education (ITE) providers across England are facing an escalating crisis: a growing inability to secure sufficient school placements for trainee teachers. With an average of 20 to 25% of unplaced trainee teachers, September 2025 has been challenging for universities and ITE providers. Despite policy ambitions to strengthen teacher supply, the reality on the ground is that many trainees’ hopes to start their first school placement in September were shattered due to a lack of school placements, especially in the secondary routes. This bottleneck threatens not only the future workforce but also the integrity of teacher training itself.
A system under strain
According to the Teacher Labour Market in England Annual Report 2025 by the National Foundation for Educational Research, recruitment into ITE remains persistently below target, with secondary subjects like Physics and Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) facing the most acute shortages. In 2024/25, Physics recruitment reached just 17% of its target, while MFL hovered at 33%. These figures reflect a long-standing trend, exacerbated by declining interest in teaching and competition from other professions.
But even when trainees are recruited, sometimes through international routes at considerable expense, placing them in schools has become increasingly difficult. The Department for Education’s Initial Teacher Education Thematic Monitoring Visits Overview Report (2025) highlights that many providers struggle to find schools with sufficient mentor capacity and subject expertise. The report reinforced the point that mentoring pre-service teachers in schools often relies on the goodwill of teachers, and when too many providers operate in one local area, competition becomes unsustainable. This is particularly problematic in shortage subjects, where schools may lack qualified specialists to support trainees effectively, for example, in Physics or Languages.
Mentoring is a cornerstone of effective teacher training. Yet research in 2024 from the National Institute of Teaching (reveals that mentors are often overstretched, under-recognised, and inadequately supported. Many people report sacrificing their own planning time or juggling mentoring duties alongside full teaching loads. As a result, there may be a rise in reluctance among teachers to take on mentoring roles, especially in high-pressure environments.
The government offers funding that aims to support mentor training and leadership, including grants for lead mentors, mentors and intensive training. However, these are often paid in arrears and come with complex conditions, making them less accessible to schools already grappling with budget constraints. Moreover, the funding does not always reflect the true cost of releasing staff from teaching duties to support trainees in schools.
Routes into teaching: a fragmented landscape?
The diversity of routes into teaching (School Direct, university-led PGCEs, Teach First, apprenticeships was designed to offer flexibility. But for ITE providers, it has created logistical headaches. Each route comes with its own placement requirements, mentor expectation, and funding mechanisms. Coordinating placements across this fragmented landscape is time-consuming and often leads to duplication or competition for limited school capacity.
As universities continue to battle through their own funding crises, competition for recruitment and placements clash with other local providers and alliances of School- Centred Initial Teacher Training (SCITT), resulting in a lot of demands but not enough offers for placements.
The 2024 ITE market reforms, which led to the de-accreditation of 68 providers, further destabilised the system. While many have partnered with accredited institutions to continue offering courses, the disruption has strained relationships between providers and with placement schools, resulting in reducing the overall number of placements available, where too many ITE providers end up saturating the same local areas for school placements.
The subject specialist shortages
The shortage of subject specialists is not just a recruitment issue: it is also a placement issue. In their 2025 report and recommendations for recruitment, retention and retraining the Institute of Physics (IoP) revealed that 58% of GCSE lessons in England are taught by non-Physics specialists.
When 25% of secondary schools do not have a Physics specialist teacher in-house and 63% of schools struggle to recruit specialist MFL teachers (British Council Language Trends 2025), it is no surprise that priorities for some school leaders is on the teaching of their students and not the mentoring trainee teachers. In many schools, Biology or Chemistry teachers cover Physics content, making it difficult to offer meaningful placements for Physics trainees. The same applies to Modern Foreign Languages, where schools often lack the breadth of language expertise needed to support trainees effectively. As non-core subjects may suffer from reduced curriculum time, finding enough teaching hours to allocate to a trainee teacher can become another challenge for some schools. Finally, as the recruitment crisis becomes more acute in more deprived areas, finding suitable mentors for trainee teachers in these areas become increasingly complex.
Without subject specialists, trainees may be placed in environments where they cannot observe or practise high-quality teaching in their discipline. This undermines the quality of training and risks having Early Career Teachers feeling ill-prepared for the classroom.
Teacher workload: the silent barrier
Teacher workload remains one of the most significant barriers to placement availability. The Working Lives of Teachers and Leaders Wave 3 Report (DfE, 2025) found that 90% of teachers considering leaving the profession cited high workload as a key factor. With rising demands around behaviour management, curriculum delivery and accountability, many teachers simply do not have the bandwidth to mentor trainees. Reduced school funding, less staff and more demands on schoolteachers has meant that it is not uncommon to have weekly meetings between teachers and trainees organised out of school hours, at 8am or at 5pm, after school meetings. This is particularly acute in schools serving disadvantaged communities, where staffing pressures are greatest and the need for high-quality teaching is most urgent. Ironically, these are often the schools where trainees could have the most impact, if only they could be placed there.
The perfect storm
As ITE providers navigate the currents and the storms of recruiting and placing trainee teachers into schools, the strain on school funding directly impacts the recruitment of future teachers. If ITE providers cannot provide school placements, teachers and schools cannot recruit. Is it, therefore, time to reconsider and revalue the mentors in schools who are the running engine of the training process whilst on school placement?
New for school mentors could include:
Streamlining mentor funding to recognise fully and value the time spent by mentors to fulfil their role in supporting with lesson planning, giving feedback to lessons, meeting the trainee weekly and supporting international trainee teachers adapting to new curricula where necessary.
Invest in subject specialist development, particularly in Physics and MFL.
Reduce teacher workload through policy reform and flexible working arrangements where mentors can co-share the responsibility with colleagues.
Clarify and coordinate training routes to ease the burden on providers and schools.
Elevate the status of mentoring through formal recognition, qualifications, and career pathways.
The future of teacher supply depends not just on recruitment, but on the ability to train teachers well. Without sufficient placements and adequate training, we risk building a pipeline that leaks before it flows. It is time for policymakers to recognise the strains on a suffocating system if recruitment targets are to be met.
by Bruno V. Manno, The Hechinger Report November 10, 2025
This fall, some 19 million undergraduates returned to U.S. campuses with a long-held expectation: Graduate, land an entry-level job, climb the career ladder. That formula is breaking down.
Once reliable gateway jobs for college graduates in industries like finance, consulting and journalism have tightened requirements. Many entry-level job postings that previously provided initial working experience for college graduates now require two to three years of prior experience, while AI, a recent analysis concluded, “snaps up good entry-level tasks,” especially routine work like drafting memos, preparing spreadsheets and summarizing research.
Without these proving grounds, new hires lose chances to build skills by doing. And the demand for work experience that potential workers don’t have creates an experience gap for new job seekers. Once stepping-stones, entry-level positions increasingly resemble mid-career jobs.
No doubt AI is and will continue to reshape work in general and entry-level jobs in particular in expected and unexpected ways. But we are not doomed to what some call an “AI job apocalypse” or a “white-collar bloodbath” that leads to mass unemployment. There are practical solutions to the experience gap problem when it comes to education and training programs. These include earn-and-learn models and other innovative public and private employer partnerships that build into their approaches opportunities for young people to gain valuable work experience.
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Before I describe these potential solutions, here is more information on how I see the problem.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported that in March 2025, the unemployment rate for college graduates ages 22 to 27 was 5.7 percent, compared to an overall unemployment rate of 4.0 percent. Other than the temporary pandemic-related spike in 2021, that was the highest unemployment rate for new grads since 2014. More recently, the Fed’s August 2025 unemployment rate for recent college graduates was 1 percentage point higher than its overall unemployment rate of 4.3 percent.
The experience gap phenomenon is not limited to the tech sector. In 2019, 61 percent of AI-related job postings were in the information technology and computer science sector, with 39 percent in non-tech sectors, labor analytics from Lightcast show. By 2024, the majority (51 percent versus 49 percent) of AI-related job postings were outside the tech sector.
The cumulative effect of all this is apparent. The hollowing out of entry-level work stalls mobility across the labor market, leaving many college graduates stranded before their careers can even begin. Moreover, these changes cut to the core of higher education’s promise.
If graduates can’t secure meaningful jobs, confidence in higher ed falters — one reason why it should come as no surprise that 56 percent of Americans think earning a four-year degree is not worth the cost, a March 2023 Wall Street Journal-NORC poll found, compared with 42 percent who think it is, a new low in a poll first administered in 2013. Skepticism was predominant among those ages 18 to 34, and college degree holders were among those most skeptical.
The collapse of entry-level jobs isn’t just a cyclical downturn. It’s a structural shift. Left unchecked, this dynamic will deepen inequality, slow social mobility and further undermine faith in higher education.
As I’ve said, solutions exist. Here are five that I believe in:
Apprenticeships and other earn-and-learn models: Earn-and-learn apprenticeships are a promising, direct solution to the experience gap. They combine paid work with structured training and provide years of experience to college students in those jobs. Sectors from tech to health care are experimenting with this model, examples of which include registered apprenticeships, youth apprenticeships, pre-apprenticeships and apprenticeship degrees that allow individuals to pursue a degree while they work in an apprenticeship.
Skills-based hiring and alternative credentials: Initiatives such as skills-first hiring by major employers like IBM, Google and Apple aim to evaluate candidates based on their competencies rather than their degrees. Microcredentials, industry certificates and portfolios can serve as verifiable signals of skills gained through alternative training routes.
Stronger college and employer partnerships: Colleges can (and should) embed work-based learning into curricula through co-op programs, project-based courses and partnerships with local industries. Northeastern University and Drexel have long pioneered this model. And others, such as Western Governors University and Southern New Hampshire University, are using online learning to advance this approach. Scaling this solution could help close the experience gap.
Policy innovations: Governments can play a role by giving incentives to companies to create early career opportunities. Workforce Pell, recently enacted in President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, expands financial aid to use for short-term training programs, opening new pathways for students who may not be pursuing traditional degrees. Tax credits for apprenticeship sponsors and funding for regional workforce hubs could further expand opportunities.
Reimagining internships: Expanding access to paid internships — especially for first-generation and low-income students — could democratize the attainment of experience. Philanthropies and local governments could underwrite stipends to ensure that opportunity isn’t reserved for the affluent who can afford unpaid internships or have social networks that connect them to these opportunities.
The challenge presented by this troubling experience gap is urgent. Today’s students deserve a college experience and a labor market in which education and effort still translate into opportunity.
Bruno V. Manno is a senior advisor at the Progressive Policy Institute, leading its What Works Lab, and is a former U.S. assistant secretary of education for policy.
This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-too-many-college-graduates-are-stranded-before-their-careers-can-even-begin-we-cant-let-that-happen/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
This blog was kindly authored by Richard Markham, Chief Executive Officer of the IB Schools and Colleges Association (IBSCA).
At International Baccalaureate (IB) schools and colleges, we have always been ambitious for our students. We know what they can achieve and support them to reach their goals. Through its broad curriculum – including Maths, English, a humanities, science, arts and language subject – the IB Diploma Programme (DP) provides stretch and challenge, developing a thirst for lifelong learning in our 16 to 19-year-olds. And, through extended essays, theory of knowledge and service in the community, it produces confident, well-rounded citizens who thrive in life and work. Year after year, we join our students and their families in celebrating their outstanding destinations at top universities and apprenticeships.
That is why it is deeply disappointing that the Government is axing the financial uplift for schools and colleges delivering the IB DP in the state sector, as soon as the next academic year.
Disappointing, but also surprising. By axing the large programme uplift – the top-up funding awarded to schools and colleges to reflect the additional teaching time required to deliver the IB DP – the Government risks tripping over its own hurdles. The post-16 white paper sets “objectives” for the 16-19 sector, with the first being that it “delivers world-leading provision that breaks down the barriers to opportunity”. The imminent final report of the Curriculum and Assessment Review will set out its recommendations to ensure that “every child” has “access to a broad range of subjects”.
On this front, it is vital that we keep the IB alive in the state sector. Far more extensive than A Levels, T Levels and now V Levels, the IB proves that creativity is not the preserve of the arts, nor logic the preserve of science. Both belong together in world-class education. It is a rigorous, aspirational study programme, offering all the advantages of a private school education, accessible to families who couldn’t dream of affording tuition. We should be expanding opportunities to an IB education, not shutting them down.
The second objective set for further education is that it supports the Government’s “ambition for two-thirds of young people to participate in higher-level learning” after they leave school. IB DP students in the UK are three times more likely to enrol in a top-20 higher education institution. Deep thinkers, broad skill sets – they excel at university-level study. DP students are 40% more likely to achieve a first-class or upper second-class honours degree. If the Government does not find a way through, the higher education sector will be poorer for it.
Moreover, UCAS data from the 2021/24 cycles gives us an indication of just how well the IB DP supports progression into courses that closely align with the UK’s Industrial Strategy priority sectors. The greatest proportion of DP students (4,900) accepted university offers in courses related to the life sciences sector, driven by medicine, dentistry and nursing. This was closely followed by professional and business services – with 3,365accepted offers for subjects like economics, law, management and politics – and upwards of 1,000 accepted offers in crucial science and engineering courses.
Evidently, this is a financial decision, not one taken in the best interests of our education and skills system. To dress it up in any other way does our educators a disservice. The large programme uplift given to IB DP schools is worth just £2.5 million a year. That is 0.0025 per cent of the Department for Education’s £100 billion annual budget. A drop in the ocean, and yet the programme delivers true value for money.
On Wednesday, MPs across the House united to fight for the future of the IB in Westminster Hall, calling for an urgent reversal of these cuts to provide certainty for school and college leaders, current and prospective IB students and their families, universities and employers. MPs questioned the very basis for the Department’s decision: “how can the Government can claim to want more students, particularly more girls, on STEM pathways while cutting funding for a qualification that demonstrably helps to achieve exactly that?”
Let us not forget, it was a Labour Government under Prime Minister Tony Blair that pledged an IB school in every local authority, but subsequent Prime Ministers have recognised the value and championed a baccalaureate-style education system. Support for the IB cuts across party lines and nation’s borders – reflecting the shared values of its global community of alumni, prospective students, parents, teachers, and policymakers who see its potential to raise ambition and foster international understanding. That cross-party appeal is no accident: many MPs, former IB teachers and alumni, know first-hand what the programme can do. They recognise its power to develop deeper thinkers, broader skill sets and more adaptable young people – qualities our economy and universities urgently need right now.
A Teach for America teacher works with a student. Teach for AmericaTeach For America has partnered with the Aspen Institute’s Policy Academy to expand leadership training for rural educators.
The collaboration adds a four-part policy impact series to TFA’s Rural School Leadership Academy, a yearlong fellowship now in its 13th year. The new curriculum aims to help rural educators influence education policy at the state and national levels while addressing challenges in their local schools.
Seventy fellows will participate in the policy training this year, learning to connect classroom issues to district and state-level decision-making. Past participants requested more tools to influence the systems affecting rural students, according to TFA.
“RSLA was created to walk alongside those leaders—helping them grow, connect, and see what’s possible,” said Casey DeFord, managing director of alumni career advancement and field integration at Teach For America. “Our partnership with the Aspen Institute will deepen RSLA’s impact by equipping fellows with the policy skills needed to drive lasting change.”
The Rural School Leadership Academy selects a cohort of educators annually to receive career development through virtual learning, in-person gatherings, school visits and personalized coaching. The program serves educators at various career stages, from aspiring leaders to experienced principals.
Betsy Cooper, director of the Aspen Policy Academy, said rural educators bring valuable expertise to policymaking.
“This partnership will enable educators to address unique challenges in their schools through policy entrepreneurship,” Cooper said.
Participants who complete the program will receive a co-branded certificate from both organizations.
Back in 1943 the UK government knew that more school teachers would be needed. The school leaving age was to be raised: this and other planned changes meant that 70,000 extra teachers would be needed over the coming years. The teacher training colleges then in place trained 7,000 a year, so there was a problem.
The solution? Emergency Training Colleges. A compressed curriculum was piloted at Goldsmiths College, and in five years about 50 such colleges produced about 35,000 teachers. But it was a short-term scheme, and many of the colleges were wound up after 1950 or 1951.
Nevertheless, there continued to be a need to grow base capacity to train teachers. The emergency colleges had dealt with the immediate shortfall, but with more children attending schools every year, there was still work to be done. Some of the emergency colleges became regular training colleges, and some local authorities established new colleges of their own. And this is where Totley Hall enters the stage.
Not shown on the card is Totley Hall, built in 1623 and in 1949 passed to Sheffield Council. This was to be the heart of a new training college – the Totley Hall Training College of Housecraft. Its mission: training domestic science teachers.
There’s a wonderful account of the college’s foundation and development, written by Anna Baldry, who was one of the first lecturers at the college. It’s well worth a read. Highlights include her nerves at interview; problems with electricity blackouts; HMI inspections; the admission of men; its opening by Violet Attlee; and some lovely photographs.
More prosaically, the college had by 1963 become the plain Totley Hall Training College, focusing on training primary teachers. In 1967 men were admitted; in 1969 the best students could continue to study for a fourth year to gain a Bachelor of Education (BEd) degree from the University of Sheffield, rather than the Certificate in Education. And in 1972 – there being simultaneous vacancies in the principalships – Totley Hall Training College and the nearby Thornbridge Hall Training College were merged, to form the Totley/Thornbridge College of Education.
In 1976 the College became part of Sheffield Polytechnic, which was renamed Sheffield City Polytechnic – and this in turn became Sheffield Hallam University in 1992, and I’ve written about it here.
The card was posted, but I can’t read the postmark, so don’t know when. The 3p stamp shows it was after decimalisation. If it was in 1971 or 1972 it was sent first class; if it was 1973 it was sent second class. Those are the only options for that stamp.
An engagement? A wedding? A pools win? A baby? What do we think?
North Carolina is one of several states that have passed legislation in recent years to align classroom reading instruction with the research on how children learn to read. But ensuring all students have access to research-backed instruction is a marathon, not a sprint, said education leaders and researchers from across the country on a webinar from the Hunt Institute last Wednesday.
Though implementation of the state’s reading legislation has been ongoing since 2021, more resources and comprehensive support are needed to ensure teaching practice and reading proficiency are improved, webinar panelists said.
“The goal should be to transition from the science of reading into the science of teaching reading,” said Paola Pilonieta, professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte who was part of a team that studied North Carolina’s implementation of its 2021 Excellent Public Schools Act.
That legislation mandates instruction to be aligned with “the science of reading,” the research that says learning to read involves “the acquisition of language (phonology, syntax, semantics, morphology, and pragmatics), and skills of phonemic awareness, accurate and efficient work identification (fluency), spelling, vocabulary, and comprehension.”
The legislature allocated more than $114 million to train pre-K to fifth grade teachers and other educators in the science of reading through a professional development tool called the Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS). More than 44,000 teachers had completed the training as of June 2024.
Third graders saw a two-point drop, from 49% to 47%, in reading proficiency from the 2023-24 to 2024-25 school year on literacy assessments. It was the first decline in this measure since LETRS training began. First graders’ results on formative assessments held steady at 70% proficiency and second graders saw a small increase, from 65% to 66%.
“LETRS was the first step in transforming teacher practice and improving student outcomes,” Pilonieta said. “To continue to make growth in reading, teachers need targeted ongoing support in the form of coaching, for example, to ensure effective implementation of evidence-based literacy instruction.”
Teachers’ feelings on the training
Pilonieta was part of a team at UNC-Charlotte and the Education Policy Initiative at Carolina (EPIC) at UNC-Chapel Hill that studied teachers’ perception of the LETRS training and districts’ implementation of that training. The team also studied teachers’ knowledge of research-backed literacy practices and how they implemented those practices in small-group settings after the training.
They asked about these experiences through a survey completed by 4,035 teachers across the state from spring 2023 to winter 2024, and 51 hour-long focus groups with 113 participants.
Requiring training on top of an already stressful job can be a heavy lift, Pilonieta said. LETRS training looked different across districts, the research team found. Some teachers received stipends to complete the training or were compensated with time off, and some were not. Some had opportunities to collaborate with fellow educators during the training; some did not.
“These differences in support influenced whether teachers felt supported during the training, overwhelmed, or ignored,” Pilonieta said.
Teachers did perceive the content of the LETRS training to be helpful in some ways and had concerns in others, according to survey respondents.
Teachers holding various roles found the content valuable in learning about how the brain works, phonics, and comprehension.
They cited issues, however, with the training’s applicability to varied roles, limited differentiation based on teachers’ background knowledge and experience, redundancy, and a general limited amount of time to engage with the training’s content.
Varied support from administrators, coaches
When asking teachers about how implementation worked at their schools, the researchers found that support from administrators and instructional coaches varied widely.
Teachers reported that classroom visits from administrators with a focus on science of reading occurred infrequently. The main support administrators provided, according to the research, was planning time.
“Many teachers felt that higher levels of support from coaches would be valuable to help them implement these reading practices,” Pilonieta said.
Teachers did report shifts in their teaching practice after the training and felt those tweaks had positive outcomes on students.
The team found other conditions impacted teachers’ implementation: schools’ use of curriculum that aligned to the concepts covered in the training, access to materials and resources, and having sufficient planning time.
Some improvement in knowledge and practice
Teachers performed well on assessments after completing the training, but had lower scores on a survey given later by the research team. Pilonieta said this suggests an issue with knowledge retention.
Teachers scored between 95% to 98% across in the LETRS post-training assessment. But in the research team’s survey, scores ranged from 48% to 78%.
Teachers with a reading license scored higher on all knowledge areas addressed in LETRS than teachers who did not.
When the team analyzed teachers’ recorded small-group reading lessons, 73% were considered high-quality. They found consistent use of explicit instruction, which is a key component of the science of reading, as well as evidence-backed strategies related to phonemic awareness and phonics. They found limited implementation of practices on vocabulary and comprehension.
Among the low-quality lessons, more than half were for students reading below grade level. Some “problematic practices” persisted in 17% of analyzed lessons.
What’s next?
The research team formed several recommendations on how to improve reading instruction and reading proficiency.
They said ongoing professional development through education preparation programs and teacher leaders can help teachers translate knowledge to instructional change. Funding is also needed for instructional coaches to help teachers make that jump.
Guides differentiated by grade levels would help different teachers with different needs when it comes to implementing evidence-backed strategies. And the state should incentivize teachers to pursue specialized credentials in reading instruction, the researchers said.
Moving forward, the legislation might need more clarity on mechanisms for sustaining the implementation of the science of reading. The research team suggests a structured evaluation framework that tracks implementation, student impact, and resource distribution to inform the state’s future literacy initiatives.
ELYRIA, Ohio —Nolan Norman had no idea what microelectronic manufacturing entailed when his adviser at Midview High suggested he take the school’s new class on it last year.
Yet once he started fusing metal to circuit boards, he says he was hooked. “When I was little, I thought that wizards made these things,” the 18-year-old joked of the electronics he’s now able to assemble. Despite long “hating” the idea of college, he was motivated to enroll in the microelectronic manufacturing bachelor’s degree program at nearby Lorain County Community College this fall. He’s spent the summer working in a job in the field that gives him both college credit and pays $18 an hour. Said Norman: “Now I’m seeing the path to get to be one of these wizards.”
Norman’s path wasn’t accidental: Two years ago, Lorain County Community College partnered with Midview High to create the course, one of several ways the college is trying to recruit and train more young people for jobs in manufacturing.
Nationally, more than 400,000 manufacturing jobs are going unfilled, many of them in advanced manufacturing, which requires the sort of high-tech skills and postsecondary credentials that Norman is working toward. President Donald Trump is leveraging tariffs in part, he has said, to grow manufacturing jobs in the United States, including those that involve machinery or robotics and training after high school.
Nolan Norman, 18, an incoming freshman at Lorain County Community College, observes a circuit board under a microscope on Aug. 6 in Elyria, Ohio. Credit: Dustin Franz for The Hechinger Report
Yet as it is, colleges have struggled to add and revise their training based on employer input and prepare students for tomorrow’s jobs, not just today’s. In the area surrounding Lorain County Community College, officials estimate that they’d have to teach four times the number of students to meet today’s unfilled manufacturing jobs.
Gogebic Community College, in rural Michigan, suspended its 22-year-old manufacturing technology program this spring because of low enrollment. “We could not get people into it,” registrar Karen Ball said, speaking in her personal capacity and not on behalf of the institution. “The needs in manufacturing are evolving so quickly, that to stay on top of it is too difficult.”
And then there is the history of manufacturing in communities like Norman’s, where so many factories moved to other countries in recent decades. The manufacturing workforce in the Great Lakes region shrunk by 35 percent between 2000 and 2010, a loss of 1.6 million jobs. But nationwide manufacturing has seen some recovery since then, rising from 11.5 million manufacturing jobs in 2010 to 12.9 million today, according to an analysis by the Economic Innovation Group.
“If your family experienced tumultuous layoffs in steel or automotives, they may see manufacturing as a risky pathway rather than a solid pathway,” said Marisa White, vice president for enrollment management and student services at Lorain County Community College. “Individuals are like, ‘I don’t want my kids to go into something like that.’”
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White and other Lorain officials, though, have been slowly making strides in adding more students in recent years — and in trying to keep up with the needs of companies.
Printed circuit boards before components are attached in a lab at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio. Credit: Dustin Franz for The Hechinger Report
In addition to partnering with Midview High, staff from the college set up tables at food banks and Boys and Girls Clubs where they answer questions about its manufacturing degree and certificate programs, and even partner with a nearby manufacturing nonprofit that uses holograms and a robot dog to get the attention of high school students. That is paying off, officials say. The college now produces 120 graduates each year in advanced manufacturing — a category that includes industrial engineering tech, mechanical engineering tech, welding, automation and microelectronics — compared to 43, a decade ago.
It has also cultivated a large network of local employers and a system to do market research before launching certificate programs. In some cases, it partners with companies that pay for employees to get training at Lorain college. In a classroom on a recent Wednesday, one of those electrician apprentices, Tyler Tector, 25, had rigged a series of plastic tubes to a small air pump. He hoped it would generate enough suction to keep its grip on his lab partner’s smartphone, which dangled precariously in the air (and already had a cracked screen from some previous misadventure).
The assignment was part of a class in practical applications of fluid power. Tector’s employer, Ford Motor Co., was sending him and a small group of other apprentice electricians to take this class once a week, so they could better work with the growing number of robots at the local engine plant.
Nick Wade, an electrical apprentice for Ford Motor Co., works on a circuitry exercise during professor Brian Iselin’s practical applications of fluid power course at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio. Credit: Dustin Franz for The Hechinger Report
“Robots are the best co-workers,” joked Tector, who added that he’s not worried about bots putting him out of a job because so many humans are needed to fix them. “They do exactly what you tell them to do. They don’t ask questions. They don’t yell and complain.” They are finicky though, he added. If anything in a robot’s area gets bumped out of place even a fraction of an inch, that could throw the machine off and require reprogramming.
So many employers told college officials they need technicians with basic knowledge across a range of trades that the college is starting a new associate degree program in the fall called Multicraft Industrial Maintenance that will include lessons like the one Tector is doing but in a condensed format.
“Because of the high-tech nature of things, employers don’t want students siloed into trades anymore,” said Brian Iselin, an assistant professor in manufacturing who is leading the effort.
Johnny Vanderford, who leads the college’s microelectronic manufacturing degree program, often spends part of his lunch break scouring LinkedIn for the latest job postings by local employers to see what skills they are looking for. His program’s model involves finding every student a paid internship, and students can take classes two days a week or in the evening to have the rest of the time free for paid work in the field.
Professor Brian Iselin teaches a course to employees of Ford’s Cleveland Engine Plant No. 1 at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio. Credit: Dustin Franz for The Hechinger Report
Vanderford pointed to a PowerPoint slide showing more than 90 manufacturing companies in the area he said the college has worked with: “We basically tailor our curriculum to meet their workforce needs.” In some cases that means wedging into a class syllabus training on some specialized machine that might be used at only a handful of employers.
Rather than simply having advisory committees with a few large companies that meet occasionally, today Lorain and many other colleges follow a model that involves frequent discussions with company leaders, instructors directly participating in those meetings and a greater focus on the skills employers need.
“Those relationships take time,” said Shalin Jyotishi, managing director of the Future of Work and Innovation Economy Initiative at the think tank New America. He says that it is hard for other community colleges to replicate best practices from Lorain because they are labor-intensive to enact.
Employers also have a tendency to change their plans. For instance, when Tesla pledged to build an electrical vehicle plant in Flint, Michigan, the local Mott Community College started an EV program, said Jyotishi. But the plant never came. “The college still has a Tesla sign,” he said.
The numbers no longer add up at Gogebic Community College, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
When the college suspended its program in manufacturing technology in May, it had just three students.
As with many programs at the college, a single employee was charged with administering and teaching. Doing all that plus staying on top of nearby companies’ workforce needs was “unsustainable,” said Ball, the registrar.
The few small manufacturers in the area all say they have different needs, rather than one clear set of skills, she said, noting that “you can’t be a generalist in manufacturing.” Even when the college does identify a needed skill to teach, it takes at least six months to a year to get the program approved by college leaders and the accreditor. By then, companies might need something different.
And the pay offered by small manufacturers is often low, despite an expectation of training beyond a high school diploma, said Ball.
The Richard Desich SMART Center at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio, houses the microelectronic manufacturing systems program, which teaches students about the manufacture of semiconductors. Credit: Dustin Franz for The Hechinger Report
Nationwide, automation has reduced the earning power for many manufacturing jobs, said Jyotishi of New America. “For a long time manufacturing was the bedrock of the middle class,” said Jyotishi. “That wage premium for manufacturing has actually gone away.”
And there’s a danger that as colleges aim to please employers, they will create programs that are too narrow, argues Davis Jenkins, senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Community College Research Center. (Editor’s note: The Hechinger Report, which produced this story, is an independent unit of Columbia’s Teachers College.) “You don’t want specific skills training — you don’t want to just train students to work in a fab,” he said, referring to a facility where microchips and other electronics are produced. “Whenever schools buy a lot of specific equipment for training, I worry a lot. What students really need are broader skills.”
Even Lorain doesn’t always find the right fit. During the pandemic, the college started what it calls fast-track programs, which typically run 16 weeks, across a range of professional fields (not just manufacturing). But because of mixed success attracting students, officials recently slimmed the list from 60 to 13, said Tracy Green, vice president of strategic and institutional development at Lorain County Community College. And the college recently started winding down a program in industrial safety because of a lack of student interest, even though there are still a large number of job postings by local companies for jobs with those skills, said Iselin.
One provision in Trump’s new “one big, beautiful bill” promises a boost to manufacturing education, however. For the first time, the law will allow low-income students to use federal Pell Grants for short-term certificate programs, in what is known as Workforce Pell. It’s a change many community college leaders have been calling for for years as they have created more short-term programs in response to demand by students and employers who want to quickly gain new skills in fast-changing areas, including manufacturing. But that program won’t be up and running until the 2026-27 academic year.
The promise of a big new employer moving to town can galvanize student interest in manufacturing.
In Ohio, the talk for years has been a $28 billion Intel chip manufacturing plant under construction in Columbus. The facility is expected to bring some 3,000 jobs to the area, and the company has committed $50 million to workforce education in the state, including $2 million to Lorain County Community College, which it used to buy new classroom equipment, support student scholarships, and pay for program development and instructor training.
Chris Dukles, 36, an electrician apprentice for Ford Motor Co., takes notes during a course taught by Brian Iselin at Lorain County Community College. Credit: Dustin Franz for The Hechinger Report
The top graduates in Lorain County Community College’s microelectronic manufacturing program each year typically get internships at Intel’s closest existing plant, which is in Chandler, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix. It’s a motivator to work hard in their classes, some students say.
Lia Douglas, a student in the microelectronic manufacturing program at Lorain, scored one of those slots and headed to Arizona last summer. The experience, though, was sobering.
“My plan really was to make a good impression with my internship, get a job maybe in Arizona even if it was for a year or two, and then try to move back to Ohio when they have an Ohio plant,” she said.
But one day last July, all the employees were unexpectedly summoned to an all-hands call where the company announced a wave of layoffs and reductions in some benefits that had interested Douglas, including a sabbatical program. This year, Intel announced that the opening of the Ohio plant has been delayed until 2030.
“I learned I had a little too much faith in a company and the promises of a company,” she said. “And it reminded me that at the end of the day, the company has to make money.”
She’s still glad she chose Lorain’s program, which has landed her several local internships and opened her eyes to the many small and mid-sized manufacturers in the area.
Lia Douglas is a student in the microelectronic manufacturing program at Lorain County Community College. Credit: Dustin Franz for The Hechinger Report
And she has been hooked on a career in making things ever since she was in middle school and a family friend taught her a bit of welding. Her hero was Adam Savage, co-host of the TV show “MythBusters,” who she even got to meet at a comic book convention in Cleveland.
Douglas complains that students are told in high school that they either have to choose a trade for hands-on work or an academic track to prepare for a career behind a desk that might involve design and project management. She says that as manufacturing changes, there’s plenty of room to do both. In fact, she says, when a group of doctoral students from Kent State University recently visited the college’s clean room, she was amused to see them struggle with some of the tools the students routinely use in the microelectronic manufacturing program.
“It takes as much brainpower to figure out what is the right tool for the right process as getting a Ph.D.,” she said.
Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at [email protected].
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