As we await the new FE White Paper, due in Autumn 2020, with great interest, David Summers, OCR Stakeholder Relationships Manager, asks whether it may herald a significant change in the political consensus around post-16 education that has existed for the last 30 years.

There has been a 30-year view that more and more young people should go to university to study undergraduate degrees and in turn, this would have a positive impact on the skills and productivity of UK PLC.

Except it hasn’t really worked out like that. Tony Blair’s Government came into power in 1997 with the mantra “education, education, education” and within a couple of years had set a target (some argue it wasn’t a target, more an ambition) of 50% of all 18-30 year olds to have some experience of higher education.

To put this into context, the HE participation figure in 1980 was 15% and by 1990 it was 25%. 2018 saw the target achieved (50.2%) and for the first time ever, more young people went into higher education than not.

But the part that hasn’t worked out is not the participation. In fact, there are clear examples of where wider participation has had a really positive impact on social mobility.

The bit that doesn’t appear to have worked is the impact (or rather the lack of impact) on productivity and skills over that period and it is this that has caused concern. There is now substantial evidence of “filtering down” - graduates taking non-graduate jobs and the fact that a significant number of graduates fail to gain much advantage from going into HE at all.

That is not to say there haven’t been successes. There are excellent examples up and down the country of universities working with large employers and SMEs alike, focussing on highly technical skills development and having a major impact on business performance and development.

Add to this the Augar Review of 2018/19 which was set up (by the then Prime Minister, Theresa May) to look at the post-18 education system and which concluded that colleges, and not universities, require the most urgent attention.

Philip Augar pointed out that successive governments have neglected non-university courses and training. Yet these institutions of further education, so often ignored in favour of the more prestigious higher education sector, hold the key to boosting social mobility and productivity.

And that brings us to an FE White Paper to be published later in 2020. We are told that gone will be the days of FE being a Cinderella sector and FE will have parity with HE in the importance of the country’s economic future and recovery plans post Covid-19.

Gavin Williamson, the Secretary of State for Education, outlined his vision for FE in a speech to the Social Market Foundation, saying “FE stands for further education but for too long it may as well have stood for forgotten education”.

The White Paper plans to build a world-class, “German-style” further education system in England and level up both skills and opportunities. Gavin Williamson describes this as a comprehensive plan to change the fundamentals of England’s FE landscape. He urges us to think seriously about the post-16 education system that we need in this country.

In keeping with changes that we have seen since David Cameron came into power in 2010, it will focus on two key themes. The first will be high-quality qualifications based on employer-led standards which will be at the heart of a new technical system.

The second principle of the White Paper will be to ensure that FE colleges play a leading role in developing skills in their geographical areas by responding to local economic needs, and acting as centres for businesses and their development. Gavin Williamson wants to see locally-trained people working in local businesses. For those of us who have been around for some time, this rings quite familiar - think Learning & Skills Councils and Strategic Area Reviews and Beacon Colleges.

Where this chimes with the Augar review (and the importance of funding for FE) is that the Secretary of State says that he “won’t accept that if you are not part of the 50% that have gone to university then you have somehow come up short and also that there is an in-built snobbishness that higher is “better” than further…both can lead to skilled employment”.

Now this is breaking with the 30-year consensus and why that is important for us is that we need to consider carefully the progression routes of our learners for the future and the qualifications that are developed for them to use for progression as the landscape changes.

And how will HE respond? Will its offer need to be much broader than three-year undergraduate degrees? We know many universities have entered the degree apprenticeship market, sensing that change is coming.

The Secretary of State has said that the purpose of education is to give people the skills that they need to get a good and meaningful job. Perhaps the White Paper will see a new dawn for FE and rather than being forgotten, it could well be the catalyst that drives productivity and recovery post Covid-19.