What does the election mean for FE and have you seen the recent NEET figures? FE Soundbite Edition 747

Welcome to FE Soundbite Edition 747, 25th May 2024: What does the election mean for FE and have you seen the recent NEET figures?

This is the weekly e-newsletter and e-journal 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

Gavin’s Reflective Perspective

The election announcement is the obvious thing to focus on for Soundbite this week. Here is the sector reaction to Rishi's announcement. We have a lot of perspectives and thoughts about the upcoming election on their way. So keep an eye out for that.

As we are going into the election and Gov departments going into the purdah / pre election period. There will be a flood of reports between now and the end of next week! So we will have a bunch to explore. Other organisations who were planning pre-election reports and research will release this early... so in the next week or so, there is going to be a tsunami of reports and research coming out! So I will do my best over the coming weeks to give you a 'heads up.. this is a significant thing to look at'.. otherwise things could be buried or lost!

One of those reports that came out literally the day after the election announcement, which was the ONS NEET data. This would normally have a lot more eyes and noise, especially as it is estimated that 12.6% of all people aged 16 to 24 years are NEET!.. that is 900,000 young people and up from 810,000 people the year before. Normally... this would attract huge attention ... but this week with the election, not so much! There was more news on Rishi doing his election announcement in the rain, rather than basically 100,000 more NEETs in a year!

Another big report and announcement was from our friends at the Black Leadership Group, who released a really important report called Ethnic Equity in Education: FE Report. This is crazy: Just over 7% of leadership positions in the FE sector in England and Wales are Black... at a time when more than 30% of the student population are from Black communities. This needs sorting out! So check out the Ethnic Equity report for more info.

WorldSkills UK had a cool event this week... and here is a cool essay from the amazing Ann Limb: Using skills excellence to drive regional economic prosperity.

ETF published a report on building a sustainable and self-improving sector.

So much to talk about.. I haven't mentioned all of the stuff happening in AI and the major conference in Seoul and so many Maths and Literacy initiatives (please see both below).

So there is a lot going on... and thanks Danny for putting Soundbite together when I was away at the OneFile conference.

I also loved the OneFile conference this week, luckily it was the day before the election announcement. Loads of content on its way from there and we are doing a three way collab on content with OneFile, LearnBox and FE News. Exciting to mix things up and try new things!

Our Top 3 Thought Leadership Articles This Week

Green Changemakers – A Paradigm Shift in FE - By Dr Lou Mycroft, Co-Director FE Constellations, a nomadic educator, writer, and Green Changemaker

We need to win hearts and minds before we unleash the robots - by Matt Rhodes is the Head of Sport at AoC, with oversight of digital and AI policy

Reports of a decline in business spending on employee training unsurprising - by James Sutton, Strategy and Commercial Director, CIM