Welcome to FE Soundbite edition 676: Does Rishi's Maths to 18 add up? This is the weekly e-newsletter and e-journal brought to you be FE News ISSN 2732-4095. We know life is busy, so here is a snapshot of the latest announcements and cool thought leadership articles from influencers and cool thinkers across FE and Skills this week on FE News.

Happy New Year! 2023 is a big one for us at FE News... FE News is 20 years old! This means that FE News has been a publishing platform and news site longer than Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, SnapChat and TikTok - the World was very different in 2003 when we launched!

This is also FE Soundbite edition 676... which means that FE Soundbite is 13 years old today! Arhh the, FE Soundbite is a teenager!

Talking of teenagers, one of my daughters (who is 14) pulled the best teenage face ever when I told her she would be studying Maths until the age of 18! I had a bad Dad moment and creased up laughing at her face! It didn't go down well!

So first week back from the New Year, I hope you had a great break (I had the flu and all the family!... hurray). So first week back and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had his New Year speech and he launched Maths to 18. We had a lot of comments on the announcement. Personally, I think it is a good idea.. but there aren't enough Maths teachers already. Maths is around us everywhere from ordering the right number of bricks for a wall, to budgeting for your shopping. Would 'real World Maths' be a bit more interesting and relevant to learners. As my daughter was not impressed, but she does like budgeting for clothes. Do we then need Mathletes to teach this, or could we equip our young people to see Maths in the everyday, like pensions, saving for trainers or whatever?

New Years Honours - who received an CBE, OBE or MBE?

So we had the King's first New Year Honours List. Here is the full list of who received a CBE, OBE or MBE.

Who was the most popular thought leader and influencer on FE News in 2022?

We also concluded the first FE News Unwrapped - highlighting the top 10 thought leaders and influencers on FE News in 2022. This is a major achievement to be in the Top 10 most popular thought leadership articles (we had 465 Exclusive main features in 2022, I lost count how many articles and content in total!)

As the main features were so popular, we decided to run the numbers (Rishi would be proud) on the FE Voices articles and here is our top five FE Voices pieces of 2022.

Supporting our Neurodiverse learners to Global Success

Remit's Susan Pittock wrote a really cool article - Proof that neurodiverse apprentices can win WorldSkills competitions. This really cheered me up, with the right support everyone is able to thrive... and globally! I would highly recommend checking this article out! ... and congrats to Susan for her recent OBE!

FE News in 2023

I know I have said it already, but Happy New Year and thanks to all of our readers, subscribers and thought leaders. 2023 is a massive one for us at FE News. 20 years old! Wow, I was a lot skinner back in 2003 and had mainly dark hair instead of metallic! Did you know, we launched FE News and FE Careers at the Ministry of Sound in 2003 (Masters at Work were launching a new album!).

This is going to be a year of celebration, we will be celebrating our thought leaders and influencers (Unwrapped was a very successful experiment). We will also be encouraging a year of innovation! This week alone we have upgraded our servers, updated the PHP and added a bunch of new services in the background to see if it will negatively impact the performance of the site. I have said, if we don't break an egg or two, we aren't trying hard enough on the ole innovation front. I might regret saying that, ha ha