There is a great deal to welcome in the education secretary’s speech. It marks the long-overdue moment when UK government policy reassesses the future role of colleges in England and upgrades their importance to delivering a range of social and economic goals. The UK-wide Independent Commission on the College of the Future has been grappling with these issues over the past year or so, and we recognise where Gavin Williamson’s thinking is coming from. His speech this week suggests that there is now an opportunity for real and profound change. 

That English colleges have been underfunded and operate in an unhelpfully competitive quasi-market has been said time and time again. Colleges have been trying to compete with each other to the death while their funding base has dwindled. The education secretary is right that the reform needed in England cannot come in the form of incremental changes, made up of initiatives and short-lived projects.

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Model of resourcing

A comprehensive and systemic plan is needed to both set out a clear role for colleges, and to develop a strategy and model of resourcing that will ensure that they can best address skills needs. As the UK government sets out its proposals for the White Paper, attention must be paid to the leadership, workforce, funding, governance and infrastructure needed to support a new mission for colleges.

As the education secretary notes, colleges are institutions that are embedded in their local communities and play a leading role in responding to the needs of employers and individual learners. A new vision for colleges in England must be about a more strategic role, to both meet and stimulate employer needs, and to play an expanded role in various forms of innovation and business development. The support that colleges can offer business will be a key weapon in gradually reducing the length of the “long tail” of low productivity firms in our economy. 

Colleges are also central to a skills-assisted recovery from Covid-19 and vital to meeting the long-term challenges of creating a new technician workforce and of up- and reskilling adult workers who have been displaced by structural change in the labour market. Before Covid-19, it was readily apparent that we faced a looming crisis with adult skills and learning, and this challenge has only been magnified by the changes that the pandemic is bringing in its wake.

It would be foolish to be distracted by conversations that create divisions and binaries. Everyone will benefit when colleges have a strong and sustainable position in the education system and economy, supporting the needs of the labour market. This is about arriving at a coherent system of provision that embraces schools, colleges and universities. One where all types of institutions thrive and cooperate to play their part to meet the diverse needs of all people aged over 16.

The whole education and skills system in each community needs to work together, with a shared understanding of each other’s strengths and missions, supporting pathways for learners and productivity for employers. This joined-up, systems-based approach is good for people, employers and communities, and it is essential that collaboration becomes a key principle that is integral to the new system.

Four nations

Many look outside the UK, notably to Germany, but there is a varied and diverse landscape of colleges across our four nations that offer lessons to England. For example, in Northern Ireland a systems-based approach has taken hold, wherein a single college “hub” takes the lead on the development of the curriculum and pedagogy in a given subject area, and supports the other colleges in the delivery of that subject. In Scotland, the recent Cumberford-Little Report on the role of colleges sketches out a route map for building on and enhancing their involvement in business support and innovation policy.

This week’s announcement is a good start as we look to what we want and need from colleges in 10 years’ time. We also have a unique opportunity across the UK’s four nations to learn from each other and to further develop college systems that will deliver for people, employers and communities.

Professor Ewart Keep is co-director of SKOPE and an emeritus professor in the Department of Education, University of Oxford. He is a commissioner on the Independent Commission on the College of the Future, which will set out its vision for the college of the future later this month