|
Welcome to FE Soundbite Edition 842 & 843: 18th April 2026. 957,000 NEETs vs 50,000 Apprenticeships: Is the Maths Adding Up?
This is the weekly e-newsletter and e-journal by FE News: ISSN 2732-4095. We know life is busy, so here's a snapshot of the latest announcements and epic thought leadership articles from sector influencers and thought leaders across FE and Skills this week on FE News.
Gavin’s Reflective Perspective
Welcome to Soundbite. This week is a double whammy; we're combining last week and this week into a double edition, so there's plenty to get through.
The Announcement Highlight Reel
Let's run through the Government's last fortnight: £429 million for the Experts at Hand SEND offer (£1.8 billion across three years), £175 million for 19 new Technical Excellence Colleges, Erasmus+ back for 2027, student loan interest capped at 6%, and a Care Leaver Deaths Review after 91 notifications in a single year.
Impressive on paper. Good on the Government for moving, but...
A Bit of Gavin Maths, some things don't add up
James Farr from Think reminded us this fortnight that 957,000 young people aged 16 to 24 are now NEET, a level we haven't seen in over a decade. The proportion of 16 to 18 year olds going straight into work or apprenticeships has dropped from 24% to 16% in a decade. Career entry at 21, rather than 16 or 18, is becoming the default.
So... 50,000 new apprenticeships spread over three years, sitting against 957,000 young people who need the first rung on the ladder. Even in the unrealistic scenario where every new apprenticeship went to a NEET, the vast majority are still standing at the bottom. Is the scale of the response really matching the scale of the problem?
Meanwhile on college funding
The mood music from colleges this week is that the 16 to 19 funding formula is under real strain. Colleges are enrolling more young people than they are being funded for, because they believe in the power of learning to keep young people engaged, and they are absorbing the cost. At the exact moment the government is rightly trying to tackle NEETs, that tension should be setting off alarm bells.
Ian Pryce Nails It
Ian Pryce CBE's piece this fortnight argues our FE quality model rewards tiny providers with high achievement rates and ignores the big players actually delivering volume. 71 of the top 100 apprenticeship providers in the achievement tables have fewer than 50 leavers. 50! That is not where the country's workforce gets built.
Colleges are meant to sell out stadiums, not play to small audiences. Love it. Read it.
Becoming a Plumber Will Not Save You If You Cannot Think
Rose Luckin's piece genuinely made me stop. The "trades are safe from AI" narrative is everywhere. Geoffrey Hinton, Jensen Huang, and plumbing apprenticeships nearly doubled in a year. Fair enough, physical work is harder to automate, but... is safety conditional?
A plumber who cannot evaluate an AI diagnostic, who cannot verify what the compliance tool spits out, is not safe. They are dependent. AI literacy has to be baked into vocational routes, not bolted on as a generic digital skills add-on.
Also Worth Your Time
Richard Holliday's 20 year look back at apprenticeship data (Gatsby funded) lands on a point that should make us all pause: apprenticeship numbers are driven by policy, not labour market demand. Ouch. Emily Tanner at Nuffield on AI in career guidance is urgent reading, given how many young people are already using ChatGPT as their careers advisor. And Nathan Flynn at MK College shares his survival guide for the new Ofsted ITE inspection.
I hope you enjoyed the double edition!
Epic Exclusives Thought Leadership Articles
Our Top 3 Thought Leadership Articles This Week
What To Expect From The New Ofsted Initial Teacher Education Inspections By Nathan Flynn, Group Director: Quality and Standards at MK College Group
Why We Need Better Evidence to Inform the Development and Use of AI in Career Guidance for Young People By Emily Tanner, Programme Head of Post-14 Education & Skills at the Nuffield Foundation
Looking Back At 20 Years Of Apprenticeships: What The Data (and people) Told Me By Richard Holliday
This week, we also had some other Epic Exclusives!
Regulating on Ambiguity: Why FE Initial Teacher Training Needs Practitioner Research, Not Just New Rules By Dr Paul Tully is the Chief Executive of FEthink
Becoming a Plumber Will Not Save You If You Cannot Think By Professor Rose Luckin is Professor of Learner Centred Design at UCL Institute of Education and founder of Educate Ventures Research.
Neurodiversity at Work: Stop Taking Formula One Talent to Tesco By Nathan Whitbread, Founder of The Neurodivergent Coach
Misaligned Means Much Maligned By Ian Pryce CBE
Ready To Work, Nowhere To Go: The UK’s Growing Youth Jobs Gap By James Farr, Think
Before Introducing New Quality Metrics, We Must Make Better Use Of QAR By Harry Hobbs, Head of Business Intelligence at Baltic Apprenticeships
Green Skills Aren’t Optional. They’re The Next Functional Skills By Lindsey Poole, PGCE MEd
What’s New in the World of FE?
Announcements
19 more Technical Excellence Colleges announced for April 2026 launch By the Department for Education (DfE)
Government Unveils £429m ‘Experts at Hand’ Offer to Get SEND Support Into Mainstream Settings Without an EHCP
Next generation to study and work across Europe as Britain rejoins Erasmus+ By the Department for Education (DfE)
Government to Examine Deaths of Vulnerable Care Leavers By the Department for Education (DfE)
New Think-Piece on How to Improve English and Maths GCSE Resits By the Social Mobility Commission
Interest on Plan 2 and 3 Student Loans Will Be Capped at 6% Instead of RPI+3% From 1st September By the Department for Education (DfE)
Solving the Skills Passport Challenge: NOCN Defines the Standard for Trust and Consistency By NOCN
Report
AI early career fears rise, but employers say roles are not yet being replaced By Prospects at Jisc
Voices
All four. Always. By Alex Harding is the Head of IT Services at Runshaw College
In The Know
We have big plans for upcoming Collectives, and you can get involved. We have learnt a lot from the Green Mindset Collective, and we are drawing from this on how to give people more of a voice.
See you on the 24th April 2026, at Tavistock Square in London, for the Bridging the SEND Transition Collective in partnership with ETF
Join us for the Breaking Barriers Collective event in partnership with Edge Foundation, working together collectively to solve the NEET puzzle.
These aren't conferences; these are collectives. These aren't lectures or chalk and talk, but interactive: it's rolling up your sleeves and making real change, where you get involved and actually give real input. These are two massively important Collectives, so join us and help shape the report and sector response!
By Danny O’Meara, Operations Manager, FE News and | 