As MPs return to Westminster, I sincerely hope that they can save a little bit of headspace to think about some of the big domestic issues that confront them. They will be sorely distracted by the understandable drama and momentousness of the Brexit shenanigans, debates and votes. If that doesn’t consume every waking moment then there’s always the party leadership speculation, in-fighting and positioning to get embroiled in.

At the Association of Colleges (AoC), we will be helping to give them as much opportunity as we can to think about education, skills, training, lifelong learning and the vital roles colleges play in every one of their constituencies. I suspect that, like many others, we will also find it impossible to resist the temptation to link the issues that matter to us with Brexit; and of course, they are linked.

We know that many skilled and semi-skilled jobs have been filled for some time now by EU nationals moving to our country. We also know, from the published numbers, that there are fewer EU nationals coming now than there have been for a long time, fuelling concerns amongst employers that they will struggle to recruit.

Colleges need more money

In many ways, our ambition to get more investment in and better policies for post-16 education and skills should be easy. A casual or even forensic perusal of the manifesto and policy positions of all the main political parties can only result in the conclusion that they agree on so much in this area.

As far as I can tell, it’s impossible to put a cigarette paper between the parties on their commitment to ensuring that every young person can realise their talents and ambitions, helping adults improve their skills and retrain, supporting employers to be able to recruit and develop people with the skills they need and addressing the longstanding productivity stagnation. They even all talk eloquently about the ageing skilled workforces in many sectors, the emerging fourth industrial revolution and the need to develop the skills of people already in the workforce as Brexit looms.

There truly is a consensus about the need for our populous to have the education, training, capabilities and skills that will help our country flourish. There’s even a growing consensus that we need to balance the prestige and value accorded to so-called academic education and long misunderstood vocational training, which it is increasingly trendy and more accurate to call technical and professional education.

The resurrection of lifelong learning

Perhaps even more surprisingly, after years of decline in interest in adult education, has been the resurrection of lifelong learning as something that everyone now seems to love and admire. That’s a big shift from my five years at Learning and Work Institute (which only ended two years ago), where I recall being told that having a strategy committed to lifelong learning was a bit naive and never likely to be taken very seriously. Times have changed, and politicians are lining up, quite rightly, to talk about their commitment to education, learning, training which can help people throughout their lives. What is it they say about standing still long enough?

So far, so good. Our analysis of the challenges and opportunities in post-16 education is now the consensus. The Conservative government is investing in T levels, the National Retraining Scheme and is reviewing post-18 education with a clear intention to improve technical and professional options. Labour is promoting its National Education Service, a cradle to grave offer of free education and training to help people throughout their lives. The Liberal Democrats have never wavered in their firm support for lifelong learning and have a commission now looking at how to implement it.

But here’s the rub. Colleges are vital to this agenda, able to deliver across this agenda in every community, in partnership with schools, universities, third sector organisations, employers and others. And yet, colleges have been starved of investment for the past decade and could do so much more with the trust, policies and money to lead on this party-political consensus.

Colleges are ready to grow

The 266 colleges in England provide education and training to 600,000 young people aged 16 to 18, 300,000 apprentices and 1.4 million adults, including 150,000 taking higher education courses. They do this despite an average 30 per cent funding cut in the decade from 2009 to 2019. They are ripe for investment, ready to grow and extend their impact, full of great staff who provide great student experiences and outcomes and accessible to people and employers in all our communities.

That’s our agenda for this next session of Parliament. Simple, consensual, vital. We’ll be calling on every friend and supporter of colleges to support our efforts to realise better investment. Join us in October for the first Colleges Week, to share your passion, reasons and evidence of why colleges matter to you.

David Hughes is chief executive of the Association of Colleges