A New Industrial Strategy Needs New Leadership
The long awaited Industrial Strategy White Paper has finally been published. And it makes good reading. There is a strong emphasis on backing winning sectors…
Nick Isles
What do the Pisa 2015 results mean?
Every three years Dr Andreas Schleicher of the organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reveals the results of tests on 15 year-olds from across…
What does FE need for Christmas?
I am sitting writing this blog from the AoC annual conference surrounded by college Principals, their number 2s and 3s and the consultants who offer…
New Government, new future for FE?
Dave and George have departed stage left followed by a bear, well a Gove in fact. Nick Boles the previous skills minister resigned before he…
After the Referendum
So it has happened. The atavists have won. Leave managed to encourage enough of the disempowered in the cities and the viscerally conservative shire English…
Why the FE community should be campaigning to remain part of the EU
The EU referendum is on 23 June and the campaign is in full swing. Without doubt this is an important vote. The ‘leave’ camp believe…
What happens after an area review has been and gone?
The Budget has been and gone and the outcome was relatively benign for FE compared with previous such announcements. The stage has been set. Local…
Northern Powerhouse – guiding light for area reviews or a damp squib?
So the government have announced a loan facility for colleges going through a post area review restructure. The days when government issued grants seems to…
What should be the skills agenda for 2016?
Now that 2016 is well and truly underway what’s this year’s agenda? The CSR was not as bad a story as some had feared and…
What is in store for FE from the comprehensive spending review (CSR)?
Policy Exchange has done it again. Probably the most influential of our current crop of think tanks, Policy Exchange published an interesting report that grabbed the headlines…