Well it’s certainly interesting times in Westminster at the moment. Between Brexit and a huge overhaul of politicians in the Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet, it’s been pretty hard to keep up with what it all means for the country. In the middle of the political turmoil and chaos, it would have been entirely possible (particularly for those who don’t work in the FE sector) to miss the fact that the Skills Plan was released on 8 July.

Just days later, skills minister Nick Boles exited stage left and it was announced that responsibility for skills and apprenticeships would move from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Bis) to the Department for Education once again.

It ought to stand to reason that, post-Brexit, the FE and skills sector should become more important than ever, as we are likely to have an increasing reliance on home-grown skills, both to meet our own needs and to enable us to export and compete on the global stage.

So the question is: will the Skills Plan and new structure of the DfE enable us to better meet the skills needs of the country in this new post-Brexit landscape? Or will it mean more meddling with a cursory nod to skills before the focus returns to schools once more?

Let’s start with the changes at Bis (now Beis) and the DfE. On the whole, the reaction from the sector so far has been one of cautious optimism about the many possible benefits of this transition. The change may mean that careers advice can become more balanced and joined-up so that young people and their families understand the breadth of choices available to them via both the academic and professional and technical routes.

If handled correctly, we may also finally begin to see greater parity of esteem between these two routes into work, given that the same department is watching over them.

Prioritise skills

However, the need for caution arises because we have been here before. In the days of the former Department for Education and Skills, skills was treated as the poor relation.

The government must now make a concerted effort to ensure that all educational routes, whether they be A levels and degrees or Tech levels and apprenticeships, are given equal weighting and attention by the DfE.

Additionally, throughout these changes, it will be vitally important to make sure that the links to employers and industry - which have only recently been reforged via the apprenticeship reforms - aren’t lost.

It will be crucial now to have the right people in place at the DfE with the experience, knowledge and employer connections to support high-quality education and skills development in the UK.

The role of the Institute for Apprenticeships, with its new brief in technical skills, has to connect to industry, not just education, if we are going to witness a step change in the outcomes we need.

Moving on to the Skills Plan; if I were being optimistic, I would say that this does provide a real focus on what the FE sector delivers and some direction on how it might be better shaped for the future, with tighter links to what industry actually demands rather than what the funding is available for.

The principles of the plan will mean a simplified system with far fewer qualifications than the extremely confusing 20,000 that are currently available, and with clear routes to careers in one of the 15 industries that most need skilled workers in the UK.

However, there are a number of things that cause me real concern. First, the idea of young people having to choose either a vocational or an academic route seems reminiscent of a post-war era, two-tier educational system. We would like to see a new, more flexible approach, allowing young people to study for a particular career with clearly defined progression routes that integrate, rather than separate and segregate learners into academic and vocational paths.

While we wholly agree that some rationalisation within the sector is necessary, the suggestion that only one awarding organisation (or one group of organisations) can deliver specific qualifications is also of concern as it risks creating a monopoly. The potential long-term impact of this could be that the market no longer offers up healthy competition and choice based on quality and best fit for the ultimate end users - the employers.

This plan does leave a lot of questions unanswered, but we cannot ignore the fact that it does also present an opportunity for the FE sector to work in a clearer partnership with employers to create a lasting change. However, it’s important that government policy supports change and doesn’t dilute or make more complex a process that should simply be about providing quality and choice in a joined-up education and skills system.

My parting comment is a call to government to set this course now with the sector and employers and stick to it over the coming years, enabling the sector to adapt to change and stabilise in the same way that schools and sixth-form colleges have been able to do with GCSEs and A levels since the 1980s.

Let the dust settle

We have seen so much change in recent years, with the apprenticeship reforms, area reviews, the Skills Plan and the move back to the DfE; we need to have some time to let the dust settle.

In our 2014 report Sense and Instability, we highlighted the fact that FE had been through unprecedented change over the past 30 years, moving from department to department within government and having no fewer than 61 secretaries of state in charge of the sector (compared with just 18 in schools and 16 in higher education). Since then, two more names have been added to the list: Sajid Javid and now Justine Greening, the new education secretary.

We called for stability then - and we call for it again now. Don’t let the Skills Plan be just another flash in the pan.

Kirstie Donnelly is managing director of City & Guilds

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