Dear Gillian,

Congratulations on your appointment to what is one of the best jobs in government: apprenticeships and skills minister. You might expect me to say that, but I want to explain why I think this, as well as offer up some of the issues you might want to get your teeth into over the coming weeks.

At its simplest, the further education and skills brief involves you with a sector that helps millions of people every year to realise their ambitions and maximise their talents. It also supports employers to get the people they need to be successful, thus developing a stronger economic base for the prosperity of the country. A sector that has a major impact on the lives of every citizen and on our future in the world.

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The prime minister and the education secretary have already committed to helping every college to thrive and to enabling more young people and adults get on in life. After years of campaigning and bringing to life the amazing work that goes on in colleges, we know that recognition of the vital role they play in employment, productivity and place-making is beginning to happen. The education secretary has visited more colleges in his short tenure so far than many predecessors have achieved over several years.

Plus, the appointment of Baroness Wolf to advise the prime minister is a hopeful sign that this government is taking colleges and skills more seriously than ever before. I really hope that when it comes to policies and resources, you have an open door.

This would probably be enough to make it a decent job but, as you’ll be aware, it is so much more than that. You’ll know from your own constituency that colleges are entrepreneurial, vibrant and excellent beacons of hope for the places they operate in, for the people and communities they serve and for employers wanting skilled workforces. I’m sure you will have met articulate, determined, skilled, switched-on and impressive students, staff and leaders at Chichester College. The great thing about your new job is that you will be meeting so many more in colleges across the country.

The neglect of FE

Enough of what you already know. You may not know that the majority of 16- to 18-year-olds study in colleges and that colleges deliver the complete range of courses and options from apprenticeships through A levels to technical and vocational education. So far, so good, but sadly a decade of neglect has meant that the hours of teaching time those young people benefit from has dropped to around 15 per week. Their young counterparts in other Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries usually have 25 hours or more.

For adults, the picture is just as worrying, with opportunities to learn more than halved in the past decade, and evening, part-time and flexible courses much less common than they were in 2010. On top of that, staff pay in colleges has been severely cut meaning it lags far behind schools, with many college teachers not having had pay rises for years. The condition of buildings in many colleges is also clear evidence of the lack of available capital, and IT hardware and software are often wholly inadequate for modern teaching and learning.

You’ll hear a lot about the need for better leadership and governance in colleges, but you might want to read my blog from last week, which reported on an important piece of research that the Department for Education has just published. It sets out how funding cuts and constraints over the past decade have made it almost impossible to keep every college financially viable and stable.

That’s why better funding tops my list of priorities for you to pursue – both in terms of the rate of funding per student, which has not risen for over seven years, and in terms of the number of students supported, which for adults is pitifully low. With rising numbers of young people across this decade and employers crying out for skilled people to recruit, these pressures will only get worse.

With a Budget just around the corner and a Spending Review to follow, you might want to read our submission to the Treasury. It sets out the short- and longer-term priorities we have for helping colleges to maximise their impact. You’ll also see that there is an urgent need to bring some future certainty to the apprenticeships programme. The introduction of the levy was combined with fundamental policy shifts, most of which were sensible, but there is a need now to be clearer about the priorities for what is an overstretched budget. That will mean ensuring that everyone on the programme meets the definition of an apprentice and that there is sufficient resource to support small and medium-sized enterprises.

Sadly, funding constraints mean that your department cannot now guarantee that every young person who wants an apprenticeship will get one, even when they find an employer who wants to employ them.

I’m hoping that you will be in post long enough to get to grips with another knotty issue: funding for learners with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). We’ve just commissioned research into this that will help to describe the scale and nature of the pressures on the budget and will also provide pointers on how this part of the system could be improved to make it work better. I know that you’ll want to understand it better because these are some of the most vulnerable learners in FE.

Colleges are ready to help

The commitment at the general election to a capital budget, to a new National Skills Fund, to carefully consider the Augar report and to reform the system will keep you busy. We can help – we are already working closely with officials on all of these and we’ve thought deeply about what needs to happen on each. So, whether its about how to rebalance post-18 funding, or ensuring capital encompasses IT investment or the role colleges can play in improving productivity through the NSF, we are ready to help, as is every college in the country.

As if all of that were not enough, I’m also looking forward to introducing you to the work of the Independent Commission on the College of the Future. The commission will offer you a vision for the roles and purpose of colleges in 2030, as well as how the system they operate in needs to change. Uniquely, this is a four nations project, providing great insight into how the post-16 systems operate in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, so there is a lot to learn from. There’s still time to engage with it before the final report launch in the summer, and definitely time to influence the action plan for England which we are developing with your officials, employer groups, college leaders and many more.

You’ll appreciate that I have just skimmed the surface in terms of priorities and issues in this letter. It really is a complex brief in a diverse sector but it’s such an exciting time to be a part of it. I truly believe that you’ve come into it at just the right time to benefit from an important "moment", in which resources, investment and policies will all be focused on supporting every college to thrive and make an ever bigger impact in the places and communities that they serve.

Yours sincerely,

David Hughes

David Hughes is chief executive of the Association of Colleges. He tweets @AoCDavidH