Welcome to FE Soundbite Edition 718. 28th October 2023. 20 years, 20 voices: Wrapping up our 20th-anniversary celebrations

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.

Our Top 3 Thought Leadership Articles This Week

Making Sensible Recommendations on Apprenticeship Funding by Dr Mandy Crawford-Lee, Chief Executive, UVAC. She discusses the pros and cons of the recent IFS report’s proposals and explores why unspent Levy should not be used to support other forms of skills training.

One of our personal top three thought leadership articles of the week is ‘Contextualised and Community-Oriented: Two C’s that are part of successful education interventions’ by Niamh Whelan and Aurelio Amaral, World Innovation Summit for Education. This article discusses the key steps in supporting impactful education projects that understand learner needs, build adapted and contextualised strategies and drive community-orientated collaboration.

Finally, we have ‘Reflections on championing Inclusive Professionalism’ by Dr Vikki Smith, Executive Director of Education and Standards at Education and Training Foundation (ETF). Following a keynote address at AELP’s recent EDI Summit, Dr Vikki Smith shares her reflections on championing inclusive professionalism in the context of ETF’s commitment to Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging (EDIB) and its importance to the Further Education and Skills sector – especially to tutors and trainers who deliver a myriad of transformative opportunities to learners.

This week, we have also had some other epic exclusives:

Breaking Barriers: Technology’s Role in Making World Class Higher Education Accessible for All

Education and Business the Driving Forces behind Equity in the Workplace

Ensuring we have the digital workforce of the future

Leader Wellbeing

Skills are key to boundaryless careers

20 Voices this week

Last month marked our 20th anniversary of FE News and we decided to celebrate with a twist! We kicked off our anniversary celebrations with an epic series called “20 years, 20 voices”. We reached out to brilliant thought leaders, influencers and friends of FE News to embark on a captivating journey down memory lane, reflecting on how the FE sector has evolved over the last 20 years and looking at what the future holds for the FE Sector.

We’ve had so many cool perspectives that September couldn't contain them all, so we rolled our celebration into October. It's been a blast! For this last week of our anniversary celebrations, we had the pleasure of featuring the wonderful insights of:

Olly Newton [Executive Director at Edge Foundation]

Lisa Mytton [Strategic Director at National Training Federation for Wales (NTfW)]

Kathyrn Rowan [Executive Director, GAN Global]

As our first-ever FE Collective event concludes and 20 years, 20 voices wraps up, we officially bring our 20th-anniversary celebrations to a close. We'd like to take a moment to express our heartfelt gratitude to everyone who joined us in making this milestone extra special. Cheers to 20 fantastic years and to the exciting future ahead in the FE sector! Thank you for being a part of our journey.

What’s New in the World of FE?

This week we saw the monthly labour market report that highlighted that the labour market continued to cool over the summer – but data quality problems make it harder to make crucial decisions on interest rates and inactivity, check out the sector response on this.

We had lots of great featured voices articles this week, check them out:

Students set to study responsible use of AI alongside A-levels

From classroom to cybersecurity: protecting the education sector from digital threats

Incorporating digital skills into qualifications key to future careers

Why graduates as junior professionals are the key to solving the data skills crisis

Unravelling TAQA: A Guide to Training, Assessment, and Quality Assurance

The AI dilemma: Lean in, look on, or opt out?

Understanding Accessibility Beyond The Physical Classroom

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!

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