Professor Ewart Keep: New thinking essential to help leaders address FE policies and pressures

Research aims to combat marketisation challenges facing leaders in FE

The scale of challenges that the further education sector is facing means there is an urgent need for fresh new thinking to enable leaders to rise to them.

That’s according to a new report written by Professor Ewart Keep and produced in collaboration by the Association of Colleges (AoC) and Centre for Skills, Knowledge & Organisational Performance (SKOPE). The project was undertaken for the FE Trust for Leadership (FETL) on the long-term implications of the marketisation of FE in England.

Professor Keep’s paper demonstrates not only the unprecedented nature of these challenges – but also the inadequate base of knowledge on which leaders can draw in responding to them. Change in the sector is so abrupt and so constant that there is a struggle to develop the theoretical understandings needed to make practical sense of change. The paper asks important questions about how leaders can deliver against their social and political mandate and fulfil their role at the heart of their communities as fully and effectively as possible, within this highly competitive marketised environment.

Professor Keep acknowledges that FE is not helped by the failure of government to articulate a clear vision for the sector’s future or to be clear or consistent in its own thinking about markets, their purpose and their limitations.

David Corke, Director of Policy at the Association of Colleges, said:

“This important work concludes with four strategic tensions that FE leaders need to give further thought to – do we want an FE system or market(s), do we want a single regulator or defused regulation, what works better national or local priorities and how can we achieve higher-level VET as well as social inclusion at the same time?

“It really is for college leaders to script the future, but we believe that systems have much greater potential to produce better educational outcomes than markets. On the issue of regulation, it is thought that a single regulator would be too powerful, but some consolidation is needed.”