I read A Christmas Carol this week – what a story it is. And as I slept, the ghost of further education and skills future paid me a visit. It showed me what the sector would look like in the future…

It's 2025. Colleges are finally funded on an equal footing to schools. 

Following the encouragement given by Baroness Wolf upon publication of the 2019 Augar report, college principals worked together to bring about change in the funding methodology – the unions got involved too, thanks to one college principal who took the initiative to work with them to coordinate a campaign.

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This unions had been fighting under a slogan of “stop school cuts”, telling its members that when they said “school”, it included colleges too. Members from FE – who incidentally were paid less than their peers – were paying fees to support campaigns for their richer, better-funded colleagues. This brave college principal began meeting with union leaders and members in their college, pointing to the absurdity of this situation and worked with the unions to create a campaign that was deliberately inclusive of the sector.

They won and in 2025 colleges received the same funding per student as schools. The teachers in the sector even enjoy the same salary and holiday allowance.

Expert, specialist knowledge 

After a successful campaign, other changes in the sector are noticeable. 

Perhaps the biggest indication of this change was when staff from a large college in the South East left a development session in which the presenter spoke about “pupils” and “schools”. 

The change to funding means that vocational classrooms were now industry standard, and staff now take pride in the specialist knowledge they have, and aware that they’re the experts.  

Elsewhere, in adult education the funding has allowed lecturers to work with their learners to develop provision that’s truly inclusive and focused on the development of lives and cultures.  

Naturally, presenters who assumed that all good teaching was found pre-16 education, who couldn’t see the knowledge, skill and expertise that went into teaching in FE, were roundly ignored. I won’t go into detail on what angry staff did with one presenter’s flip chart…

Thanks to increased self-belief and recognition of FE’s expertise, lecturers who taught GCSE English and maths resits were invited into discussions about the policy. The collaboration of lecturers, employers, awarding bodies, students, trade unions and other experts led to the development of a new qualification which offers students a genuine pathway to success in maths and English.

Awarding bodies aren’t the only people who work with lecturers from the sector. Many colleges began to champion academic research undertaken by their teachers, and encouraged them to be practitioners, as well as lecturers. As a result, Ofsted has recently unveiled its new framework, which requires their inspectors to develop an understanding of subject-specific knowledge and skills.

The impact on all of these changes has made a real impact on the students. As they progress through their careers, students now return to the colleges in which they trained, confident in the resources and expertise they find there. Community projects have evolved so much – and more adults are in education than ever before. Lecturers and practitioner researchers are involved in dialogues, research and consultancy work that helps to shape the sector they work in.

Action speaks louder than words

Sadly I woke up, just as Scrooge did, and found myself back in 2019.

Action speaks louder than words, and I urge you to think about what steps you can take to make your own future visions of the sector a reality.  In 2020, I’m going to work to ensure that my trainee teachers and other lecturers in the sector develop and recognise what makes them experts and to encourage leaders and policymakers to consider this too.  

What will you do?

Sam Jones is a lecturer at Bedford College, founder of FE Research Meet and was FE Teacher of the Year at the Tes FE Awards 2019