Results Day is Transforming, How are Frontier Firms Reshaping Skills? FE Soundbite 796

May 10, 2025

Welcome to FE Soundbite Edition 796: 10th May 2025 | Results Day is Transforming and How are Frontier Firms Reshaping Skills?

Hachette Learning sponsors this week’s Soundbite

This is the weekly e-newsletter and e-journal 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.

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Gavin’s Reflective Perspective

So another big week in the World of FE, Skills and the future of Work.

Will a new Education Record App saving £30M really be used for FE Educator Salaries?

The Government is trialling a new App for Education Records and Results. So no more pics of young peiople holding pieces of paper for results day! They will ironically be picking this up via an App on their phone... after schools would have banned young people using their phones in school!

More than 95,000 young people in Greater Manchester and the West Midlands will also receive their GCSE results via the app this summer, ahead of a future national rollout.

The government estimates the move could save schools and colleges up to £30m per year once the full rollout is complete, which is enough money to pay the salaries of more than 600 new teachers in Further Education. The savings can be ploughed back into boosting skills to support the government’s growth mission.

A lot of 'can' and 'could' there... so let's see if the app that saves £30M... is re-ploughed back into teacher salaries.

OfS highlights Financial Decline for Universities and Colleges for the third consecutive year!

The Office for Students’ (OfS’s) annual financial sustainability report shows that the financial performance of universities and colleges is forecast to decline in 2024-25 for the third consecutive year. With 43% of institutions included in the analysis forecasting a deficit for 2024-25.

Length of Teaching Apprenticeships Cut to Only Nine Months

The Government announced that the Postgraduate Teaching Apprenticeship (PGTA) will be cut from a year to nine months. This is to line up with the academic year, so a new teacher can start looking for a role for the next academic year. So it makes sense.

But, is this a bit more of the 'Flex' we were promised in Apprenticeships, as we haven't heard the full news on the ins and outs of the new Flexible Growth and Skills Levy, but this is now two priority skill areas for the Government that have shorter duration Apprenticeships. Teaching and Construction.

What more will or could follow? A bit of clarification on the Levy changes, would be great! We know Apprenticeships can be down to eight months, but with Construction there has been feedback that 8 months for an Apprenticeship might be too quick, as new Apprentices need fundamentally important skills and learning, not just for them, but the entire site on things like health and safety.

So could additional training be needed anyway, who will pay for this, does this potentially create a two tiered approach for employers on the shorter duration apprenticeships? I wonder what the feedback is from employers of shorter duration Teaching Apprentices?

Berlin, G20 and Sherpers

So on Monday and Tuesday, I was in Berlin at a fringe G20 think tank event. It was really interesting. I also picked up a bunch of new insights from across the Globe, also new language (who knew a G20 Sherper or G20 Yax was a thing)? Big highlights for me were cool developments in AI, a new Nature Credit system from the EU, new ways to measure 'Human Flourishing', and hearing about the priorities to focus on for the Global North and Global South.

I chatted with a lot of people about AI and the way I saw things going for skills, employment and work. I met some really interesting people. Then a very cool Report on AI Agents, employment, organisation structure and restructuring work came onto my Radar from Microsoft.

Frontier Firms - This is probably the most important report on the Future of Work for a very long time!

The report by Microsoft called 2025 The Year of the Frontier Firm. This builds on the article and ideas of the skills needed for the future of work that I wrote about after reflecting on my AO Forum speech from the other week. This is the idea that we need a rethink on skills that are required around Agentic AI and CoBots.

Microsoft's Frontier Firm report says about the changing nature of work and the skills needed and brings in new terms like an Agent Boss (someone leading a team of AI Agents), then new terms like Human Agent ratio... new roles for HR and IT to becoming intelligence resources... and organisation charts will change... not to functional expertise, but around jobs that need to be done. Really interesting stuff!

So I hope you enjoy FE Soundbite this week and thanks to Hachette Learning for Sponsoring FE Soundbite this week.

Epic Exclusives Thought Leadership Articles

Our Top 3 Thought Leadership Articles This Week

Firstly, A New Approach to Inspection Needs Pragmatism from Ofsted By Simon Ashworth, Deputy Chief Executive and Director of Policy, AELP

Secondly, Beyond Language: Preparing Adult and ESOL Learners for Life, Work and AI with STEM7 By Aleks House, Google Innovator and Deputy Head for Digital and Innovation, Adult, Community and ESOL, Leeds City College

Finally, AI Skills Revolution: The Spring Statement’s Opportunity for Growth By Professor Rachid Hourizi MBE is Director of the Institute of Coding, which is led by the University of Bath