The phrase “take back control” has been tarnished by its association with pontification, prevarication and provocation during the Brexit debate. But in the tumult of the “post-truth” era, taking control of your destiny seems an eminently more sensible approach than relying on external agencies to have your best interests at heart.

Nowhere is this more pertinent than in further education. As a report by City & Guilds Group pointed out last month, FE and skills has switched between government departments 11 times and resided under 65 different secretaries of state since the 1980s. In this policy context, attempting to stay one step ahead seems to be a vital survival skill.

Unlike Scotland and Wales, England has no national policy on English for speakers of other languages (Esol), despite a lengthy campaign by the National Association for Teaching English and Community Languages to Adults (NATECLA) calling for one to be created.

‘A gap in government policy’

So NATECLA produced its own. As Holex’s Sue Pember put it at the time, this was a response to “a gap in government policy that the sector has started to fill”.

And there’s an even bigger policy vacuum waiting to be filled: GCSE English and maths resits. Comments by ministers Justine Greening and Robert Halfon at the Association of Colleges’ conference in Birmingham last month implied there was at least some acceptance of the need for an alternative qualification for post-16 learners. But there has been little official appetite to open up the debate more widely.

That’s where we come in. Having run a series of exclusive stories on this issue in recent months, we’ve received a steady stream of pieces exploring what an alternative system might look like. We’ve had contributors backing functional skills, a modular GCSE, project-based learning and even a new GCSE in applied English.

In the new year, TES will host a roundtable with UKFEchat to explore how a future system might work. The more ideas, the better - so keep them coming.

@stephenexley