Welcome to FE Soundbite edition 665. This is the weekly e-journal with the latest announcements and thought leadership articles from this week on FE News.

This week was the Conservative Party conference. On this week's SkillsWorld LIVE show, which was recorded at the Conservative Party conference, where there was a bit of a clash over ‘mickey mouse’ courses.

Skills Minister Andrea Jenkyns spoke at a fringe Brexit event at the Conservative Party.. and said:

"Yet the current system would rather our young people get a degree in Harry Potter studies than an apprenticeship in construction. Now, it doesn’t take magic powers to work out that this is wrong, which is why the government is committed to putting the broomstick to good use and carrying out a spring clean of low-quality courses. If a course isn’t providing someone with a positive outcome leading to a well-paid job, then it makes no sense why the government should be funding it, especially taxpayers."

..and she shared her views on T Levels and said she thought the brand had been “tarnished slightly” by some of the recent grading controversy that was associated with the new qualifications.

Interesting!

Interesting Reports... one I loved on AI and the job market

Our friends at Lightcast released a really interesting report: Demand for AI Skills Triples in UK Labour Market. This to me is very interesting! At FE News, we have had AI for about seven years.. and on my date night with my wife this week, we mainly talked about AI and Agile! I mean how geeky!.. To be fair my wife does Project Manage two AI projects. ... but AI is very much a part of our worklife (mine in media, creative and skills... her's in Engineering and Aerospace)... and this is just in our household. AI is all around us, big and small... it is here to stay, so I think this report on AI in the workplace is well worth a read!

There were also announcements of Prison Apprenticeships kicking off with employers (which is excellent news).

Interesting Exclusive thought leadership articles from this week:

We have had some really great thought leadership articles this week and a really cool range:

I love Nahla Summers articles... like always, now Ann Gravells is regularly one of our most popular articles each week on FE News... but Ann hasn't written for a couple of years!... until this week: with Minimum Core 2022.

Megan Thomas from Hinkley Point C, wrote a great piece on Engaging the workforce of the future, ERSA's Elizabeth Taylor also wrote an excellent article: the Mini Budget offers mini impact on UK’s missing workforce.

Maryam Al-Khalaf, who is a Research Associate at the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) wrote a really interesting article... on digital addiction... which is hardly spoken about to be fair: Digital addiction and technology overuse among adolescents from an education perspective.

Jules Bennington from CMI wrote about: Black History Month 2022: Managers and leaders need to bridge the ‘say versus do’ gap to tackle workplace disparities

EDSK's Eleanor Regan wrote an interesting article following on from her recent report: Why we need to create a new culture around investing in skills.

Ian Castledine from RM wrote about: Ensuring qualifications provide students with real-life skills

We also kicked off the first episode of the new livestream season this week - #FutureOfApprenticeships - the first episode was looking at 16-19 year olds and Apprenticeships... and we found a star in John-Joe. If you missed it ... well here it is.

Episode 2 is exploring Apprenticeships and Small Businesses... 10am on Thursday 13th October.