If I’m going to be honest, I don’t often take note of wider policy in FE. I’m a teacher first and foremost, and sometimes it’s difficult to give my full attention to anything but the immediate concerns that my role brings. My focus is pretty much at the classroom, rather than the national, level.  

And then someone mentions five million quid and, strangely enough, I am all ears. Because money.

Anne Milton, the apprenticeships and skills minister, announced the Taking Teaching Further programme this week and, along with it, a cool £5 million that the government seems have found down the back of the sofa. Once they’ve given it a wipe, it’ll be used to train 150 “top professionals” in industry to become teachers in FE and enable FE/industry partnership projects, and then all will be well in the sector because someone will actually turn up to teach T levels or something. It will involve “improving education for everyone and crucially plugging the skills gap”, so I’m assuming it’s about plumbers.

Now, contrary to what the job that I do may suggest, I actually like cash. You can do a fair bit with it. Give me £5 million and I’d show you some right stuff and no mistake. King-size popcorn at the cinema. The big light on at all hours and not just when company is over. Avocados.  

A decade of underfunding

But I’m only one person. Now, this might be my lack of wider policy knowledge talking, but we’re talking about a whole sector - a sector that has had funding removed from it in real terms for at least the decade I’ve been working in it. A sector where “more for less” has become the unofficial motto. A sector that has suffered from a large case of the invisibles for the longest time. Can £5 million actually bring about all that much change? And if it can, then why couldn’t we have had it before?

If I was being cynical (which is my default setting, so there’s not much of an “if” there, but still...), I’d suggest that the skills gap might be a direct result of the chronic underfunding and undervaluing of FE and it’s going to take a little bit more than £5 million to try and reverse that. It’s also telling that the ethos behind the project is a ”commitment to bring industry expertise and practical experience into England’s further education sector” as I could’ve sworn that we already have that, and, strangely, it hasn’t seemed to have garnered much respect with policymakers for some reason.

The bigger picture?

Perhaps this classroom veteran is missing something. Perhaps my lack of expertise on programmes such as this one means I’m not seeing the big picture. Perhaps I’m being ungrateful and I should be full of positivity about this new direction. The problem that I have is that it just seems a little too close to the old direction to get really excited about. Oh, and it’s not even close to being enough money.

There’s my analysis. I’m off to plug some gaps.

Tom Starkey teaches English at a college in the North of England