Further education has been through a particularly rough patch since 2010. It’s had to contend with funding cuts, frequent changes of direction, a revolving door of ministerial changes, a switch of departments and a partial, hurried set of disruptive area reviews driven primarily by financial necessity.

FE leaders at the start of the year could have been forgiven for agreeing with former communist leader Enver Hoxha’s sentiments in his 1967 New Year’s message to the Albanian people: “This year will be harder than last year. On the other hand, it will be easier than next year.”

A quarter of the way into 2017, I feel more optimistic about the future for FE than at any time in the last seven years. This, despite the onset of an early general election. My optimism arises from what seems to be a general consensus around what might be called “Policy with a Big P”. This exists at the level of Green Papers, budget settlements and prime-ministerial announcements. It is the domain of thinktanks, clever and mostly young civil servants, and ambitious ministers in a hurry.

Keeping objectives broad

Manifestations of Big P Policy include the prominence of technical education in the industrial strategy; the additional funds in the budget to develop and deliver T levels and to pilot alternative approaches to adult education; a measure of protected funding in the autumn statement (reinforced in the Budget); and the introduction of the apprenticeship levy. All of this is bolstered by the imperative of growing our own skills in the wake of the Brexit decision. None of these developments seem to me to be the subject of serious political dispute, giving some prospect of high-level consensus over the broad policy direction and the possibility of greater policy stability over the next 10 years than what we have seen since 1992.

The critical word here is broad. Big P can only be made real through the development of detailed legislation, funding direction and regulation. This is Small P policy. It’s the domain of much-maligned experts, officials experienced in delivery and ministers who are in it for the long term, with an ability to listen, but also a capacity to retain sight of Big P’s original goals.

Here, I am much less optimistic about the future. The denudation of expertise in the Education and Skills Funding Agency and the lack of a policy memory in the Department for Education means learning from the past is less likely. What expertise remains is also at risk of being overruled by adherence to wider government dogma, such as competitive tendering in all areas of business. The recent mislaunch of the register of approved apprenticeship providers is a case in point. The Big P aim is to deliver an increased number of high-quality apprenticeships making best use of levy funds. An enabling requirement for the Big P aim is a provider base that can deliver high-quality apprenticeships across all sectors working with employers and local stakeholders. It became patently obvious that Small P policy was not going to deliver that outcome and, pragmatically, the register has been paused.

This example points also to another feature of Small P policy: it’s most likely to be done well when it’s done iteratively and with the involvement of those that it will affect, rather than being made up in a darkened room. There is a clear role here for membership bodies, such as the Association of Colleges and the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, in informing detailed policy as it’s formulated and helping to foresee unintended consequences and unwanted behaviours.

There is, though, also a risk in succumbing too easily to inevitably self-interested cross-lobbying. In making and carrying through Small P policy, ministers and officials need to keep in mind at all times Big P aims. There is a head of steam building from some sections in FE for the requirement for 20 per cent of apprenticeships to consist of off-the-job training to be removed or considerably watered down. While it might be reasonable to seek clarification over accounting for the 20 per cent (a Small P requirement), to remove the requirement entirely would take away the full educative value and distinctiveness of an apprenticeship in comparison to narrower work-based training. The consequence would be that the Big P aims of increasing productivity and supporting individual prosperity and development would be put at risk.

Reform often loses its way

There will be many such dilemmas and unintended consequences as Small P policy is developed around the FE reform agenda in the months and years ahead, not least in the roll-out of T levels and the formulation of a distinctive technical education pathway.

We have been here before with the development of alternatives to the predominant English academic system - in recent memory, NVQs, diplomas and the Qualifications and Credit Framework. On each occasion, reform has lost its way through being misunderstood, short-lived and partial; this has led to the continued dominance of the academic and theoretical over the practical and applied.

This time, the development of detailed policy needs to be properly resourced, sensibly paced and draw upon the widest expertise, while keeping in sight the Big P objectives of the change programme. Failure to do so would mean that a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build an English dual system to rival those elsewhere in the world would be lost.

Martin Doel is the Further Education Trust for Leadership professor of leadership in FE and skills at the UCL Institute of Education