From the crystal ball of Gypsy Lee to Nostradamus predicting world events, those claiming to have foresight to future outcomes are often mocked.

Yet much of our positivity and decision making rests on some form of ability to anticipate and form strategy and policy while experiencing a world of volatility and uncertainty. 

Taking ideas out for a walk helps to explore some possible futures and anticipate changes to our operating environment. You don’t have to think for long before you can elicit a set of scenarios that are not only possible, but probable in the post-Covid-19 world – some of which would mean widespread structural change for our sector. 

This is not about "glass half empty" or "half full". I have my own views on what is desirable, necessary or unwelcome but that’s not really the point of this exercise. Here are eight factors which signal large-scale structural change for our sector. 

It is for you to think about what you may wish to do next – if anything at all. 

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Market and institutional failure

Colleges are seeing income rates rapidly fall as commercial arms of business are shut down and apprenticeship starts are halted. When combined with increasing costs and the underlying financial fragility of high debt and low margins, it will mean a number of institutions are likely to fail – and soon.

In some towns, this might mean a market failure and restrictions to provision available or possible future mergers. College collaboration may flourish or local "fights to the death" competition could rise with scarcity.

Collapse of apprenticeships

As the job market rapidly contracts, the most vulnerable will be the creation of new apprenticeships. Many small-to-medium enterprises could step away from training to reduce business costs, while some levy payers will still wish to spend their "tax". 

There are so many questions. What will happen to the young people who struggle to get onto an apprenticeship programme? And what about the adults whose training is restricted? Will colleges need to step away from high-cost, low-margin training that is high risk and requires capital? Will colleges need to disassemble apprenticeship infrastructure and reduce capacity to make ends meet?

The collapse of the school leaver jobs market

Many lower-level starter roles were already under pressure from automation and digitisation. As a direct impact of Covid-19, graduate jobs will decline, and structural adult unemployment will then create further market displacement.

When this is combined with high business failure rates in sectors like tourism, retail and hospitality, it means that young people will be further away from any workplace than ever before.

This year’s school leavers may not have received any formal education since March. Students who were already sporadic in attendance and commitment may now have disappeared completely. 

This could create immediate challenges for September enrolment or perhaps even a longer legacy of disfranchisement, which, in turn, would drive local inequalities deeper. 

Will there need to be a recalibration of the curriculum footprint? Or the jobs colleges are training leaners for? Will we see a shift away from skills acquisition to a more rounded education?

The tectonic plates of FE and HE

As the cash cows of international students, post-grad students and accommodation markets expire, universities will be quaking in their boots. They will need to turn their attention to new revenue to survive. They may carry their gold-plated brands more heavily (under the disguise of social mobility) into year zero, apprenticeships, HNDs and local-based HE in a forced rush to rediscover polytechnics.

There may even be government-encouraged collaboration or mergers developing as the tectonic plates of FE and HE collide.

Digitisation driving exclusion and realigning markets

Colleges have gone above and beyond to shift teaching and learning from physical to digital classrooms. Work in this area has truly been extraordinary – but questions must be raised about those who may be unintentionally excluded due to digital poverty.

How will colleges invest capital that traditionally has been in buildings or hardwired infrastructure? Digitising education will inevitably lead to national delivery models and bigger market entrants offering learning solutions not based in one "place". 

This week, Harrow School launched its first online sixth form with Pearson. How long before the first national digital FE college is set up? What are the points of differentiation if everyone is exclusively online? How might national responses improve quality?

Rise of the regional recovery 

Local economic resilience will look different in each part of the country and the differential rates of recovery will create more uneven playing fields for FE.

Local-focused responses through town deals and LEPs focused on post-coronavirus recovery will drive local skills decision making with a very short-term focus looking for faster returns on skills investments. What is the role of the local FE college in this recovery?  

Rediscovery of education as a public good 

There is the possibility that education will need significant bailouts and investment to drive a centralised post-coronavirus skills recovery. Education is a lever for driving economic and social recovery. Recognising education as a true public good, combined with government bailout in FE and HE, must surely challenge the ownership models of FE. This would lead to a renationalisation agenda with a cross-party consensus.

Navigating new local, regional and national relationships may have to start now.

Changing social attitudes

This pandemic has forced reflection – and that in turn has created lasting changes to social attitudes. People are thinking about work in a different way, with many seeing the benefits of working from home. Furlough is forcing many to re-imagine household budgets. Fresh appreciation of public sector and key workers could lead to greater investment or a shift to training that leads to public good. 

Acceleration of the sustainability agenda may force colleges to change behaviours. It's likely that there will also be a shifting attitude to household debt in a global recession and UK depression.

How will all this change people’s decision to choose FE/HE programmes? 

What are you going to do?

Any of these scenarios could play out, if not on a national scale, then within a region or more local civic space. There are already strong signals that some have already begun.

Some scenarios have the possibility of moving very rapidly indeed and create lasting structural change. And while the change might be sector-wide, our responses in colleges will often be local. 

So, what are your predictions for FE in the future? And more importantly, what are you going to do about it?

Stuart Rimmer is principal and chief executive at East Coast College and a visiting senior fellow at University of Suffolk Business School