In this article, Tracy Stuart, Curriculum and Quality Consultant at FE Associates, explores the key developments she believes will impact the further education and skills sector from 2025 onwards. From the anticipated effects of devolution and the UK’s industrial strategy to the evolving demands of AI in education and the shifting landscape of skills and employment, Tracy outlines how these major policy and technological changes are likely to shape the future of the sector.
Section 1 – Strategy:
- Devolution
The English Devolution White Paper outlines a comprehensive framework for transferring powers from Westminster to local governments across England. Key points include:
- Goals of Devolution:
- Address regional inequalities and stagnant growth.
- Empower local authorities to tackle economic and social challenges.
- Strengthen public trust in governance by enabling local decision-making.
- Proposals:
- Establish Strategic Authorities to oversee regions and manage devolved powers.
- Replace the current ad hoc approach with a clear, statutory Devolution Framework.
- Introduce Integrated Settlements, consolidating budgets for housing, transport, skills, and infrastructure.
- Role of Mayors:
- Expand powers for Mayors, especially in housing, transport, skills, and public services.
- Mandate a simple majority voting structure for decision-making in Mayoral areas.
- Encourage directly elected Mayors for visible and accountable leadership.
- Public Services & Governance:
- Align public services geographically for improved integration.
- Support local councils with long-term funding stability and autonomy.
- Modernise accountability mechanisms and local government structures.
- Next Steps:
- Introduce the English Devolution Bill to codify changes.
- Facilitate local government reorganisation for better efficiency.
- Expand the role of Mayors and Strategic Authorities in economic and public service reforms.
The English Devolution White Paper
- The Industrial Strategy
The “Invest 2035: The UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy” document outlines the UK government’s ten-year plan to foster sustainable, inclusive, and resilient growth. Key aspects include:
- Vision and Goals:
- Promote investment in high-growth sectors to create quality jobs and increase productivity.
- Address barriers like skills gaps, infrastructure needs, and regulatory hurdles.
- Support regional development and align with net-zero and economic security objectives.
- Vision and Goals:
- Focus Sectors:
- The strategy identifies eight priority sectors: advanced manufacturing, clean energy, creative industries, defence, digital technologies, financial services, life sciences, and professional and business services.
- Focus Sectors:
- Partnerships:
- Collaboration with businesses, local leaders, unions, and devolved governments is emphasised to ensure policy relevance and effectiveness.
- Partnerships:
- Stability and Governance:
- Establishment of a statutory Industrial Strategy Council for long-term consistency and oversight.
- Stability and Governance:
- Global Context:
- A commitment to free and fair trade, leveraging global partnerships, and promoting the UK’s competitive strengths in research, innovation, and talent.
- Global Context:
The strategy seeks input from stakeholders to refine its focus and implementation plans, with detailed sectoral strategies to be published in Spring 2025.
Invest 2035 – The UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy
- The Future of Skills Employment 2030
The document “The Future of Skills: Employment in 2030” explores the evolving landscape of work and skills, using a comprehensive methodology to predict changes in occupational demand across sectors in the US and UK. Key points include:
- Focus Beyond Automation: The study goes beyond the risks of automation to consider globalisation, urbanisation, demographic change, inequality, and environmental sustainability as significant drivers of change.
- Occupational Trends: Education, healthcare, and public sector roles are expected to grow, while some low- and medium-skilled jobs may remain stable. Demand for creative, digital, and environmentally focused roles is projected to rise.
- Skills in Demand:
- Interpersonal and higher-order cognitive skills (e.g., problem-solving, critical thinking) are critical.
- System skills, such as judgment, decision-making, and systems analysis, are essential for future roles.
- Skills in Demand:
- Uncertainty and Adaptability: About 70% of jobs are in areas of uncertain growth, emphasising the importance of workforce retraining and occupational redesign.
- Policy Implications: The report advocates for better alignment of education and skills training with emerging industry needs, leveraging insights into complementary skills to redesign jobs and enhance employability.
4. Further Education and Skills Enquiry Announced
Government policies on further education funding, curriculum and staffing are under the spotlight in a new wide-ranging inquiry launched by parliament’s education committee today.
MPs have opened a call for evidence in twenty-one areas of interest, including “funding issues” in apprenticeships, GCSE resits, the FE workforce, barriers for SEND learners, attainment gaps, and mental health support for students.
Individual policies, like capital investment, T Levels and the role of Skills England, will be scrutinised. The inquiry’s terms of reference also asks for much broader evidence around how to improve student outcomes, how to “resolve the skills shortage,” and improving collaboration with employers and local authorities.
The inquiry comes amid industrial unrest due to the growing pay gap between teachers in schools and colleges.
Rising numbers of young people not in education, employment and training are also on the committee’s radar as new figures next month are expected to show the number of 16-24 year-olds who are NEET has surpassed a million.
The committee scored an early win this year when education ministers seemingly heeded their advicenot to proceed with plans to remove funding from level 3 qualifications that rival T Levels in the short term.
Anyone can submit written evidence by the March 7 deadline. It is expected sector figures will be invited to answer questions from committee members in oral evidence hearings later this year
Further Education and Skills Enquiry
Section 2 – Technology:
- AI – The AI Opportunities Action Plan
The UK’s “AI Opportunities Action Plan,“ published on January 13, 2025, outlines a comprehensive strategy to position the nation as a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI).
The plan, developed under the leadership of Matt Clifford CBE, Chair of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), presents 50 recommendations aimed at:
- Laying the Foundations for AI: This includes building secure and sustainable AI infrastructure, unlocking data assets in both public and private sectors, and addressing the AI skills gap through education and immigration policy adjustments.
- Embracing AI to Transform Lives: The plan emphasises integrating AI across government operations to enhance public services, such as healthcare diagnostics and educational tools, thereby improving efficiency and citizen experiences.
- Securing the Future with Homegrown AI: Strategies include establishing AI “growth zones“ to foster innovation, increasing public computing capacity by developing a national supercomputer, and creating public-private partnerships to drive AI adoption.
The government has accepted these recommendations and is committed to their implementation, aiming to boost economic growth, create jobs, and transform public services. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer highlighted the plan’s potential to position the UK alongside the US and China as an AI superpower.
The Rt Hon Peter Kyle MP, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
‘This plan shows how we can shape the application of AI within a modern social market economy. We will do so by working closely with the world’s leading AI companies, Britain’s world-leading academics and entrepreneurs, and those talented individuals keen to start up and scale up their businesses here. Our ambition is to shape the AI revolution on principles of shared economic prosperity, improved public services and increased personal opportunities so that:
- AI drives the economic growth on which the prosperity of our people and the performance of our public services depend;
- AI directly benefits working people by improving health care and education and how citizens interact with their government;
and
- The increasing prevalence of AI in people’s working lives opens up new opportunities rather than just threatening traditional patterns of work.
Expand education pathways into AI. Higher education is the most common pathway into AI careers and will likely remain so at least until 2030. To meet the demands of the labour market and the changing skills needs of the future, however, government should encourage and promote alternative domestic routes into the AI profession – including through further education and apprenticeships, as well as employer and self-led upskilling.
Ensure its lifelong skills programme is ready for AI. AI will continue to change the labour market, though exactly how and when is unclear. What is certain is while some jobs will be replaced by AI, many will be augmented – and an unknown number will be created. The government should ensure there are sufficient opportunities for workers to reskill, both into AI and AI-enabled jobs and more widely. The UK should also learn and adopt best practices from other countries that are preparing their skills systems for the long-term impacts of AI. Singapore, for example, developed a national AI skills online platform with multiple training offers. South Korea is integrating AI, data and digital literacy throughout its education pipelines through an AI curriculum and a variety of training and education programmes. Skills England and the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review present an opportunity to consider the merit of such approaches in our system.
The AI Opportunities Action Plan
2. Hello Future – Embracing AI in Further Education
The document “Hello Future – Embracing AI in Further Education“ is a collaborative guide by FE sector leaders, offering strategies and case studies for integrating AI into education. Key themes include:
1.
- Strategic Leadership: AI’s role in reducing administrative burdens, supporting personalised teaching, and improving operations, with a focus on ethical considerations and bias.
- Teaching and Learning: Tools like Gemini and Quizizz streamline lesson planning and assessments, enhancing creativity and saving time. Case studies showcase AI fostering inclusivity and better student engagement.
- Curriculum Development: Aligning AI skills with future industry demands, focusing on adaptability, critical thinking, and global readiness.
- Staff Development: Importance of training for AI integration, fostering collaborative learning, and encouraging innovation through AI champions.
- Ethical and Governance: Emphasising robust frameworks to manage AI use responsibly, including data privacy, bias, and maintaining human oversight.
- Resource Allocation: Balancing investments in AI tools, training, and infrastructure while ensuring alignment with institutional goals.
Each chapter provides actionable insights and emphasises experimentation, strategic planning, and a culture of continuous improvement.
Section 3: Regulation
- Ofsted Inspection
The Review of the Area SEND Inspection Framework
In response to The Big Listen, plans include:
- consulting on new inspection criteria for inclusion across education settings
- establishing the Ofsted Academy to improve SEND training and recruit SEND specialists
- enhancing our inspections of area SEND provision
What will be included in our review
A focus on how we can enhance the existing framework, so that it supports quicker but sustained improvement.
Working with CQC, we will publish a summary report on the national issues local area partnerships face, as well as examples of good practice.
We recognise the challenging context that leaders are working in. This includes:
- national decision-making that reduces the availability locally of children’s health assessments and services
- at a local level, the participation of some multi-academy trusts in fair access and inclusive pathways for children with SEND.
We have paused the introduction of our monitoring inspections under the new framework. Before we introduce them, we will use the review to ensure that they are well-designed. What’s next
Over the next few months, we will be talking to children and young people with SEND, their families, SEND professionals and local area leaders. This will inform any changes that Ofsted and CQC will make. We want to hear from local area leaders to understand how our inspection activity can be as supportive as possible, while continuing to hold local area partnerships to account.
We will shortly be consulting on proposed wider changes across Ofsted to support children and young people with SEND. These will include proposals to increase our focus on inclusion in schools and other education providers through our updated education inspection framework. T
We plan to finish our review in spring 2025.
- The Gatsby benchmarks update Jan 2025
As the government announces significant employment reforms, including expanding work experience and career advice, 2025 is shaping up to be a ground-breaking year for career guidance. At the Gatsby Foundation, we have been working on updating our Gatsby Benchmarks – already used by over 4,700 colleges and schools – to ensure the framework continues to define the very best careers, education, information and advice for young people.
The Gatsby Benchmarks at present
- A stable careers programme
- Learning from careers and labour market information
- Addressing the needs of each young person
- Linking curriculum learning to careers
- Encounters with employers and employees
- Experiences of workplaces
- Encounters with further and higher education
- Personal guidance
Careers guidance has been transformed since the benchmarks were introduced 10 years ago to provide a clear, evidence-based framework to help colleges and schools provide world-class career guidance to young people. Mass adoption: more than 90% of colleges and schools now measure and plan their career provision using the Gatsby Benchmarks. Widespread implementation: the average number of benchmarks being achieved has more than tripled since 2018.
Tangible outcomes: Young people in institutions that meet more of the benchmarks are significantly less likely to be not in employment, education or training (NEET) at the age of 16 and 18. Good career guidance is crucial for all young people, regardless of their background, driving social mobility and contributing to social justice. In addition to incredible innovation in colleges and schools, the last ten years have seen extensive education reforms, labour market shifts, and technological change. In 2023, we set out to future-proof the benchmarks, updating the framework where the evidence showed potential to achieve even more for young people. The changes centre around five key themes:
1. Careers at the heart of education and leadership
- Careers guidance is both a whole-staff and a whole-institution endeavour. Updates emphasise the importance of linking careers to a college’s vision and strategic plans, as well as acknowledging the importance of staff development and including distinct responsibilities for leadership, governors, career leaders and advisers.
2. Inclusion and impact for each and every young person
- Woven through multiple benchmarks are updates that emphasise the importance of tailoring provision to young people’s individual needs. We pay particular attention to inclusion and support for vulnerable or disadvantaged young people or those with special educational needs and disabilities.
3. Meaningful and varied encounters and experiences
- Emphasis has been placed on multiple encounters and experiences and the impact of these. We have expanded the definitions of ‘meaningful‘ in benchmarks five and seven and added one to benchmark six. We have also emphasised that variety is important (e.g. with different settings for further and higher education, or different sizes of employer) as is giving young people time to prepare and reflect.
4. Focusing on the use of information and data
- Careers’ information not only needs to be shared with young people but also used by them to inform their decisions. Data collection in colleges should now include intended destinations, as this helps inform how to tailor support. Knowing young people’s sustained destinations remains vital for evaluation.
5. Engagement of parents and carers
- Parent and carer engagement has been strengthened, including highlighting the need for careers programmes to set out both how parents and carers will be engaged and how they will be helped to access and use labour market information, to ensure they can play their part confidently in supporting young people.
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