The Association of Colleges' annual conference starts in Birmingham today amidst enormous political, social and economic uncertainty.

The ongoing Brexit negotiations seem no closer to resolution, giving political commentators a horrible task of trying to forecast potential outcomes. Good luck to them for that.

Meanwhile, we will be hosting over 1,200 people from the college world, all keen to learn, to network and recharge in a tough funding environment.

Despite rhetoric that austerity is over, colleges face another two academic years of ever-rising costs and frozen income.

Budget disappointment 

The recent Budget gave no support to colleges and little recognition of the skills crisis we seem to be sleep-walking into, despite report after report setting out our recruitment and productivity problems.

It will be fascinating to see how the mood of college leaders is coping with all of that. They’re a resilient lot, of course; they have had to be with 30 per cent overall funding cuts in the past decade.

They are resourceful and focused, so will lap up the breakouts covering everything from student voice and student social action to funding, quality and inspections.

They will hear from some great speakers helping to make sense of the world we are living in, about the technology which is transforming our lives and the changes in society which require new thinking for the millennial generation.

'A united purpose'

Beyond that, I am confident that college leaders will be coming to their annual conference with a new determination and a renewed sense of united purpose.

Our recent #LoveOurColleges campaign week showed all of us what can be done when we work together, when we mobilise the resources, staff, students, stakeholders of every college.

We had thousands marching to a rally in Parliament Square and politicians from every party praising colleges and recognising how vital they are to their constituencies and constituents.

We found that when people were given the space and the platform, they shout about how they really do love their college and are proud of what colleges do.

'People in colleges are so resilient'

They are proud of the transformation they drive for people, communities and employers. We all knew that pride was there; that’s how and why people in colleges are so resilient. They believe in what they do and how important it is. What we hadn’t seen before was just how powerful that pride is when translated into a national campaign.

We will use the two days to plan our next steps in raising the profile of colleges. We know that the spending review next year will be "make or break" for colleges and for the people and employers they work so hard to support.

The extra investment we are asking for is essential if our country is going to cope with the fall-out from Brexit, whatever happens. It is also essential to help young people to have successful journeys to being adults, to becoming citizens.

The pride in our sector will shine through at our conference. It will also carry us through the next couple of years before the spending review investment kicks in.

'Turn that anger into constructive action'

That pride will be bolstered by a growing anger amongst college leaders that they have been overlooked for too long. Our job is to turn that anger into constructive action and use the energy to win the investment we need.

I am confident we will, but we have a job to do in the next year to keep our profile high, to make the case, to persuade the Department for Education to make the investment in colleges a top priority.

We’ve made a great start in achieving all of that; we just need to work together, stay united and gather together our advocates to shout for us.

And then, just maybe, next year we can have a conference which celebrates the investment we have won and focuses on how we are going to make it work in driving the transformation we need in our society and our economy.

That would be lovely, eh?

David Hughes is the chief executive of the Association of Colleges