Closing the Autism Employment Gap, AI in Education, and Green Skills: Soundbite Edition 702

Welcome to Soundbite Edition 702, 8th July 2023, brought to you by Finley, Holly & Danielle. This week has been busy within the FE sector, with yet again another week full of great Exclusive and FE Voices articles on FE News.

This is the weekly e-newsletter and e-journal brought to you by FE News: ISSN 2732-4095. We know life is busy, so here is a snapshot of the latest announcements and epic thought leadership articles from sector influencers and cool thinkers across FE and Skills this week on FE News.

In this soundbite, we will give a rundown of this weeks exclusive articles, our personal top three and even a quick rundown of this week’s major news and announcements!

As usual, we have picked out our top three exclusive articles from the week:

• Closing the autism employment gap, by Danae Leaman-Hill, Director of External Affairs and Development at Ambitious about Autism. Here she discusses the barriers preventing autistic people from accessing work, what the charity is doing to support more autistic young people into the workplace and the Buckland Review of Autism Employment.
• AI will help, not hinder, education, we just need to trust its potential, by Gregor Müller, Co-founder and COO at leading EdTech company, GoStudent. Gregor discusses how we can better understand what the ideal learning environment looks like by using AI and how we must evolve with technology, not against it as it could never replace human teachers.
• Growth in sustainability qualifications reflects workforce demand, by Maddie Booth, National Head of Education for Sustainable Development at the Education and Training Foundation (ETF). Maddie explores the rise in sustainability qualifications and how this reflects the growing demand for green skills across different sectors. She also argues for the importance of a holistic approach to education for sustainable development.

On top of these epic exclusives, we have also had:

• Tackling Workforce Velocity: Strategies for CEOs to Overcome the Challenge
• Five takeaways from AELP National Conference 2023
• University courses: Is blended learning here to stay?
• Achieving Your Potential: Accessibility for Students with Vision Loss

Weekly Catch up

This week has been a busy one for the FE Sector and FE News…

This week, we released the FE Collective agenda, so make sure to check it out, and keep an eye on our socials as our epic speakers will be announced soon!

We also revealed our Top Three most popular exclusive articles of June… Can you guess who won? Find out who our FE News Top Three was here.

Now for a quick run through of the major news and announcements from within the Sector…

Labour Launched their Opportunity Mission, and the sector has responded. You can read Keir Starmer’s speech here.

Following on from the EdTechX conference, we have published a catch up of one of their sessions: The Debate on ChatGPT – A Learning Tool or Threat to Education. We also had the opportunity to interview Charles Mcintyre, Carla Aerts and Stavros N. Yiannouka on Artificial Intelligence, Organoid Intelligence, personalised learning and so much more!

Our series of FE Reels with Cognassist is almost over… Reel #8 is now live and we chatted with Lou about Memory and inclusive learning strategies. Check out the season so far here.

We have also had a weekly article from TDI around Reducing the Risk of Sexual Harm. This is a vital topic that needs to be discussed. This week was episode 4 of the season and was around the challenge of technology. Following this, we have also had an article around a recent report from the Women and Equalities Committee which found that sexual harassment and sexual violence continues to be a scourge in schools.

BTECs and T-Levels is an ongoing topic in the sector. This week, the Education Committee expressed disappointment at the Government’s response to its report the future of post-16 qualifications, which called on ministers to review overall FE funding and pause its withdrawal of technical qualifications that are due to the replaced by T Levels. Labour has responded saying that they would pause and review planned scrapping of BTECs.

More news in the world of AI! UK Universities have drawn up guiding principals on AI Literacy! These will ensure that both staff and students are AI Literate. This news comes as the sector struggles to adapt teaching and assessment methods to deal with the growing use of generative artificial intelligence.

We hope that you’ve enjoyed this week’s soundbite. Now that you’re all caught up on what’s going on in the FE Sector this week, we hope you have a restful weekend! But stay tuned for our ninth episode of FE News X Cognassist Reels next Thursday!

This week’s Soundbite is brought to you by:

Finley Vile, Platform Growth Manager, FE News

Holly Wheaton, Digital Project Manager, FE News

Danielle Watters, Digital Project Manager, FE News