Department For Education
Good morning, and thank you for that introduction.
The Association of Colleges is an important voice for further education, and a key contributor to the work of the department. After a year in-post as Skills Minister, Im delighted to be speaking today on how we are continuing to move skills to the centre of education.
I first visited Harlow College shortly after being elected as an MP. Thanks to the vision of two exceptional leaders including Karen Spencer, the current Principal it has been transformed into one of the countrys leading colleges. Ive now visited more than 100 times, as well as many other FE colleges, from Loughborough to Oldham, Waltham Forest to Stroud, and Telford to Gateshead. Seeing their facilities and focus on training students for success, helped me understand how FE colleges bring about social justice.
FE colleges are places of social and economic capital, and I am proud to be their champion in government. From beginning on the backbenches, to chairing the Education Select Committee and my time as Skills Minister - everything Ive done in Parliament has been to promote skills education and boost support for FE.
I dont hold a meeting, or comment on a ministerial submission without asking: What about FE? What are we doing to help it thrive?
As my officials will tell you, further education does not get forgotten on my watch.
I believe FE colleges are a key pillar of the Ladder of Opportunity, enabling people of all backgrounds to gain sought-after skills and good jobs.
Im really proud of what weve achieved over the last year. We saw more than 335,000 apprenticeship starts, with full figures for the academic year to be published shortly.
To help colleges and providers accommodate these new apprentices, in March we distributed 286 million via the Capital Transformation Fund to enhance your facilities. In July we announced 185 million for the 2023-24 financial year, to drive forward skills delivery in further education. This will be followed by 285 million in 2024-25. It will allow colleges and other 16-19 providers to improve recruitment and retention of teachers in high-value technical and academic subjects. In fact I was delighted to receive feedback last month from a college Principal, who was able to give their staff a significant pay award following this announcement. Our investment recognises the importance of your work to the countrys future economic growth and prosperity.
In order to look to what the future holds, Id like to glance back to the past. Some of you may know that Im a great admirer of many 20th Century American presidents. The obvious parallel with my life is that of Franklin D. Roosevelt - who despite being paralysed by polio, taught himself to walk short distances with leg braces and a cane.
The great wartime president famously pitched his 4 universal freedoms in 1941 to persuade America to abandon non-interventionism and join the war effort.
As Im sure you know, those freedoms were: Freedom of speech, Freedom of worship, Freedom from want, and Freedom from fear.
While Im glad to say that further education does not face a comparable existential threat, Roosevelts freedoms got me thinking about what FE needs to thrive, and where its future lies. I think there are 4 challenges it will need to meet over the next few years. I will outline them here, along with the support government is providing to help the sector face these changes.
The first challenge is fully resourcing the further education we know we need.
Properly resourcing further education includes allowing colleges to focus on what you do best teaching vital skills, rather than negotiating bureaucracy and red tape. I will make sure we deliver existing commitments to make things easier, such as bringing together multiple revenue and capital grants in a Single Development Fund. We have already simplified funding rates at Level 3 and below, and reduced the apprenticeship onboarding process by a third. Our Expert Provider pilot is exploring how to further simplify the delivery of apprenticeships, so that you can focus on growth and quality. I have asked officials to think radically about streamlining end-to-end funding processes, and would welcome your input on this.
Deploying funding where it will hold most value for learners and businesses is really important. Last week we announced the Local Skills Improvement Fund allocations - more than 200 million for colleges and universities to offer training to address specific regional skills needs. Through Local Skills Improvement Plans, priority sectors are now able to steer funding towards the local skills provision needed to grow their workforce and the regional economy.
Bringing about a skills revolution, where more people choose high-quality technical education, necessarily means more FE teachers. On top of the additional 470 million I previously outlined to help with recruitment and retention, we are also investing in a package of direct support for those entering the workforce. This includes the new measures linked to the Advanced British Standard. We are expanding the Levelling Up Premium to give eligible teachers up to 6,000 annually, after tax, in addition to their pay.Thats those in the first five years of their career, teaching key STEM and technical subjects indisadvantaged schools, and for the first time in colleges too.
It is really significant that the Prime Minister mentioned these incentives in his speech to party conference, an arena where further education hasnt frequently been acknowledged. When I say we are bringing FE to the centre of our policy plans, I mean it. I hate it when people call further education the Cinderella sector - but as in the story, Cinderella is now well on her way to joining the royal family. FE is central to the world class education system we wish to build.
This brings me to the Advanced British Standard, and our second challenge: rolling-out T Levels while we develop this new, overarching qualification.
When the ABS was announced, there was some concern that it had come to bury T Levels. What was the point of 3 years roll out, if T Levels were eventually going to be surpassed by something else? Im here to tell you that one supports the other: T Levels will provide the backbone of the Advanced British Standard. We will continue to roll them out, with more to come in 2024-25.
Technical education has undergone unprecedented reform over the last decade, and we will continue this programme to simplify the skills landscape and create a stronger set of qualifications than ever before. All of this puts T Levels in a better position than any current qualification. As I say, they will be the backbone of the occupational route of the Advanced British Standard - making them the most future proof option you can offer 16-19-year-olds.
Its thanks to all those pioneers here today, who championed T Levels from the start, that we can see a way to achieving a long held ambition: parity of esteem for technical and academic education. But we need your continued support. The best advocates for T Levels, who can demonstrate their benefits and versatility to upcoming year groups, are yourselves Principals, tutors and teachers.
Ive really enjoyed meeting college staff who have welcomed the Advanced British Standard, and the breadth of education it will, for the first time, afford every young person. Thousands of T Level students have gone on to take apprenticeships, jobs with top employers and places at university. Now is the time to persuade the Year 11s visiting your open days to consider T Levels, and the life-changing opportunities they bring.
The third challenge is to re-enforce further education as the Ladder of Opportunity for those who need it most.
FEs power lies in the difference it can make to the lives of people who need a leg-up.
Thats why Im so enthusiastic about it, and keen that this life-changing difference can reach as many as possible.
The Lifelong Learning Entitlement will do just that, democratising access to student finance like never before. It is the most exciting opportunity for learners in a generation, opening up skills training to people who previously thought it wasnt affordable or applicable to them.
The LLE will transform FE when it launches in 2025. It will provide a loan entitlement equivalent to four years post-18 education (37,000 in todays fees) for use throughout peoples working lives.
As well as conventional higher technical or degree level studies, it will be redeemable against high-value modular courses, provided by FE colleges and universities.
I think its hard overstate just how much flexible student finance will alter attitudes to retraining and upskilling. Like getting on and off a train, learners will be able to alight and board their post-school education when it suits them, rather than being confined to a single ticket. They can choose to build their qualifications over time, using both further and higher education providers. They will have real choice in how and when they study, enabling them to acquire life-changing skills to improve their employment options.
The prospect of attaining good, skilled work will be in closer reach of everybody.
And that opportunity is so important. My hero President Roosevelt knew this.
When he spoke directly to the American people in 1937, he said:
The inherent right to work is one of the elemental privileges of a free people. Continued failure to achieve that right and privilege by anyone who wants to work, and needs work, is a challenge to our civilization and to our security.