This @britishacademy.bsky.social report is solid, and makes sensible recommendations. The report stresses the "middle" (HNC/HND in old money) as a gap, as well as the need to boost provision for adults. (Skills "capital" is a stock as well as a flow.) www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/publications...

Care training in England has been at the whim of a (badly run) market, and this is the result - training providers abandoning provision Cutting off access to foreign workers without fixing the care training sector is mad feweek.co.uk/who-cares-fu...

The reason the nation has a 'skills problem' is a complete mystery.

A lot to digest on @feweek.bsky.social today: ✂️ DfE will cut national adult skills allocations by 6% next year in the latest blow to budgets: feweek.co.uk/dfe-announce... 😓A 'health top up' will be removed for out-of-work young people in a bid to reduce NEETs feweek.co.uk/benefits-cra...

Ex-education and employment secretary David Blunkett launched the education maintenance allowance (EMA) more than 20 years ago: now he's defending it against @theifs.bsky.social criticism

Can you imagine our party leaders doing a joint inquest - an hour after the exit poll drops - in roundtable format! www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

New DfE report showing the net present value of different qualifications. Note the largest benefit cost ratios are for learning at & below level 2. Definitely wouldn't want to be cutting further education & adult skills based on this... assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67adc0...

It's not finished. This is just the outline. But I wrote about why North England is poor. Which it really really is. tomforth.co.uk/whynorthengl...

'The government should spend some of its £2.1 billion revenue from the immigration skills charge to boost declining levels of ESOL funding over the last seven years.' @feweek.bsky.social write-up of joint @aoc-info.bsky.social- Bell Foundation report out yesterday. feweek.co.uk/aoc-immigrat...

Next week is important: it's the deadline to join the Devolution Priority Programme. Councillors in Essex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Surrey, Norfolk, Cumbria and Suffolk will be considering whether to do so by 10 January, as will East Sussex and West Sussex.

Why does comprehensive social care reform never happen in the UK, in contrast to other complex areas of public policy? It is largely a political-economic question, in my view. This from 2017 still holds largely true: blogs.bath.ac.uk/iprblog/2017...

1/4. Aim of English devolution white paper is universal coverage of strategic authorities. The carrot is enhanced powers for mayoral authorities, 6 of which will get integrated settlements. The stick is legislation that will allow Ministers to create authorities where leaders can’t agree

Here's how the Government envisions working with strategic and local authorities:

This problem was foreseeable months ago. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... The problem with Labour's policy - on building & repairing public services - is not "where will the money come from?" (a stupid qn) but "where will the workers come from?" stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_an...

Excellent read by @NeilDotObrien on Higher Education challenges. www.neilobrien.co.uk/p/higher-edu...

An interesting read on university and private HE finances, looking at some large subcontracting volumes and profits In some area, FE subcontracting rules are too tight but OfS could learn a bit from FE And a few in-person visits to the very many SLC-funded locations in London might be revealing

Fascinating to delve into the new PIAAC (adult skills) results from the OECD. Why am I not surprised that Finland tops the league table on literacy, numeracy, and adaptive problem solving? England does pretty well; better on literacy than numeracy. Report: https://bit.ly/3BxlXSL #dataisbeautiful

1/8. OECD’s survey of adult skills is a once-in-a-decade test of what people know across 31 countries, including England (but not rest of UK). There’s a lot going on but I’d say this is a big story www.oecd.org/en/publicati...

You don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.

1. Today’s UK immigration statistics remind me of the 3 years I attended a Home Office employers group (2017-2020). The Immigration white paper published on Dec 2018 set out firm plan for a single set of rules covering EU and non EU migration, ie higher barriers for former, lower ones for the latter

I'll be on BBC Radio 5Live at 5.35am today talking about the government's plans on increasing the employment rate to 80%, youth guarantee, changes to JobCentres and more

200k more 16-24 year olds are not in work or full-time education compared to pre-pandemic. Driven by falling employment rates for 18-24 year olds. Govt plan likely to be a Youth Guarantee (something we argued for) led by Mayor's in England (Scotland & Wales already have similar). Needs to work...

Skills minister, Jacqui Smith, at #AoC2024 conference. Announced a crown guarantee for college LGPS debts which should remove the risk premium many funds charge and thus reduce costs via 2025 valuations from April 2026 onwards

Budget day, for some of us, are like Christmas day (thanks @andywestwood.bsky.social). I'm still checking nothing's missed under the discarded wrapping paper while checking I haven't missed anything from the likes of IFS, IFG, FT, RF etc Here's a college-focused list www.aoc.co.uk/funding-fina...

IFS report on college finances. I helped them with raw data but their conclusions - that English FE finances are fragile albeit with recent improvements and that public spending cuts threaten to suppress pay and risk 16-18 year olds being left without a place are theirs ifs.org.uk/publications...

Excellent graphic in this post on this week’s Industrial strategy and spot-on in saying that the focus on “high growth” sectors could result in bad policy. I

A classic of the school funding advocacy genre (that happens to be true): it costs society less to educate a child today than to pay for the consequences of not having educated them tomorrow.

New industrial strategy green paper Monday at 930am This one due to focus on 8 sectors Some changes compared to the 2017 list. Professional/business services, finance , defence, clean energy In automotive, nuclear not on list but probably subsumed in others www.gov.uk/government/n...

1/3. The pre budget speculation has shifted to employer national insurance (ER NI) and whether Chancellor will extend it to ER pension contributions. If so, this will require a public sector fix, if not, this tax rise will suppress pay Colleges spend 10% of their income on ER pension contribs

Map of devolution bids assembled by LGCplus. Implies 35-40 devolved funding authorities for adult skills if all bids accepted, some with relatively small populations and budgets. Sussex, Norfolk, Telford, Worcestershire and Marches a bit of a puzzle. Ten years ago in November, GM agreed first deal

1/2. Nice to see one of the 4 leadership contenders saying that the government should spend the £600 million a year it collects via the Immigration Skills Charge on skills feweek.co.uk/tugendhat-pl... The surprising fact that is that this isn’t what happens now

Adult, Further and Higher education can change lives, build democracy and transform communities. I was delighted to contribute to 'Harnessing the power of post-compulsory education' co-written with Howard Stevenson & John Holford and published this week by @ucu.org.uk www.ucu.org.uk/article/1373...

Recent trends in UK working-age welfare spending, including this interesting graph. As a comparison, total education spending has been in same 4 to 6% of GDP range in recent decades. Currently sliding towards 4% as school population shrinks

What is common knowledge in my field, but shocks outsiders? Even with recent funding for "bootcamps" & the "multiply" scheme, adult education funding is 40% less in real terms than it was 15 years ago (IFS) and actual spending in 2024-5 likely to be a bit less because DFE rarely spends full budget.

The most constructive discussion I've heard in ages about tax-raising, tax-illogicality, and the impracticability of things that seem "obvious". From @theifs.bsky.social, with @pjtheeconomist.bsky.social, @danneidle.bsky.social, and Helen Miller: open.spotify.com/episode/4aZy...

www.ft.com/content/5164... In the interests of recognising some good news about the current generally shit state of Britain, although you can be sceptical about the projections, the trend this century is pretty good actually.

Listened to this podcast on AI in which a famous economist says that societies need better electricians, on the day after seeing a DfE Technical Occupational Qualifications (TOQs) funding list where there's a gap in that area Rethinking the AI boom, with Daron Acemoğlu - on.ft.com/47hKu9Z via @FT

Today's Ofsted announcements mainly about schools but, as Christine Gilbert's interesting review for the inspectorate says, only 41% of spending is on schools. This table, from 2023-4 Ofsfed accounts, shows 12% on FE/skills, 21% early years and 26% on children's social care (a £13 bil sector)

This is very good and clear-sighted by @jdportes.bsky.social, for example, on what are broadly three different approaches. Albeit they can be incoherently mixed and matched, as at present. www.theguardian.com/books/articl...

How are councils responding to unprecedented financial pressures? Research with International Public Policy Observatory (IPPO) & @wearenewlocal.bsky.social is exploring how councils are grappling with pressures, beyond the headlines of a few going bankrupt. 🧵 www.newlocal.org.uk/articles/how...

1. Good FT (£) article by Philip Augar on the existential issues around universities, using banks as a yardstick. I think he's right that UK govt would act to stop a collapse (as with colleges)... Universities, like banks, are too big to fail - on.ft.com/3XqkCFG via @FT

Overall single-word Ofsted grades for schools have been scrapped, with Phillipson arguing that they are "low information for parents and high stakes for schools" Check out @drsamsims.bsky.social work on how little Ofsted reports tell parents about school quality discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10...

Every time I think of the OfS student protection regime I tremble with rage. It’s so staggeringly useless. This is the published plan for Schumacher College, closing with immediate effect, last updated in 2021 & describing the chances of closure as low 1/n campus.dartington.org/wp-content/u...

The single figure I found most striking from the Wilson/Pickett and similar books, was the study that British teenagers came bottom for “trusting their peers”, with only 15% saying yes compared to 85% in Scandi countries. So closely correlated with social inequality.

This podcast is a superb summary of the university situation but within a larger education context. Includes a good description of what happened in English colleges. Podcast has a good twist at the end in terms of what the panellists think DfE priorities should be

OfS risk register (also in 2023-4 accounts) has more on uni finance risks but disguised within their oversight of 255 registered HE providers. See chart. Given recent UCAS data, I'd suspect.more are slipping down the funnel but those at the bottom may be IHEs not unis. PS. FE colleges not included

What gets measured gets managed There's an abundance of UK education data and analysis in some areas, eg university finances or pupil perforrmance Unprocessed, uncollected or unreported data often more important, eg apprenticeships policy happens without info on individual employer levy use

In recent months, I've read a lot about university insolvency. Have contributed to a very good Public First paper on the topic. But I was struck by DfE's risk register reported in its 2023-4 accounts. Their audit and risk committee is more worried about council finances and care home insolvencies.