Tackling Change: How FE providers can stay ready for reform

Mark Dewell, SVP of Education, Government, and Housing at OneAdvanced, considers the pressures created by ongoing reform in further education and the practical considerations providers can apply when reviewing systems, data and AI use.

Change is nothing new in further education. What is new is the pace and precision with which reform is now landing on colleges and training providers, and the widening gap between what the sector is expected to deliver and the systems many organisations still rely on.

Recent reforms across further education and apprenticeships are creating real pressure for delivery teams. Not because the direction of travel is wrong, but because the demands attached to these changes are more immediate and harder to absorb within the current framework. Changes to inspection and evolving data requirements are already reshaping what providers need to evidence and how quickly.

For many teams, this work is being carried out on technology estates that were never designed to support continuous visibility at this level. As a result, the operational burden falls not on systems, but on people.

These pressures also sit alongside familiar constraints. Funding remains tight, workforce capacity is stretched, and expectations around learner experience, employer engagement and demonstrable impact continue to rise. Delivery is expanding across a growing range of apprenticeship standards, many with distinct evidence and assessment requirements.

Learners and employers want assurance that provision is well organised and responsive, while inspectors and funders expect a clear line of sight from activity to outcomes. Meeting these expectations is not new ground for further education, but delivering them consistently and under closer scrutiny places sustained pressure on the educators, assessors, support staff and leaders delivering education every day.

The question is not whether the sector can meet these demands. It already does, routinely. The more pressing question is whether reform is being delivered in a way that is sustainable for the workforce expected to carry it.

This is where technology, including the responsible use of AI, matters most. Not as another initiative to manage, but as a means of removing friction from everyday work, reducing avoidable workload and enabling staff to focus on learner outcomes and quality provision.

Reform has raised the bar for day-to-day delivery

One of the most significant shifts for further education colleges and apprenticeship providers has been inspection reform. Following consultation and pilots, Ofsted inspections for further education and skills now use report cards with a broader set of graded judgements, moving away from a single headline rating.

The intention is to provide a more rounded and transparent view of provision. For leaders and teams, this brings clarity, but it also changes what inspection readiness means in practice. Preparation is no longer about assembling evidence in the run-up to a visit. Providers now need accurate, coherent learner-level information to be maintained throughout the year, with a clear link between delivery activity, inclusion, progress and outcomes.

Alongside inspection reform, funding and programme structures continue to evolve. The move towards modular and stackable provision, and the introduction of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement, increase both the volume and frequency of information providers must hold and connect.

Apprenticeship assessment is also changing. Skills England is replacing the traditional endpoint assessment model with a more integrated approach that samples knowledge and skills throughout the programme. Independent assessment of behaviours will be removed, some standards will include mandatory qualifications, and new standards are already entering delivery, with the full set due to be in scope by August 2026.

Taken together, these shifts reinforce a simple reality: the margin for fragmented systems and manual workarounds is shrinking.

Accountability without additional capacity

Accountability itself is not the challenge. Few would argue against clearer expectations, ownership or better insight. The difficulty arises when those expectations are applied to delivery models that cannot support them from end to end.

Across further education, many providers still operate technology environments that have developed organically over time. Learner management, finance, quality assurance, risk tracking, analytics and performance reporting often sit in separate systems, connected by spreadsheets, exports and manual intervention.

In practice, responsibility falls to staff, who routinely bridge system gaps by cross-checking learner and funding data, tracking risks beyond core platforms, and reconstructing evidence for different stakeholders.

Under current inspection and funding arrangements, this approach is increasingly fragile. It increases the risk of inconsistency and error, intensifies pressure during audits and assessments, and steadily erodes time that could otherwise be spent on teaching, coaching and learner support.

Pressure points across the workforce

The combined effect of tighter accountability, changing data requirements and existing capacity constraints is felt across the workforce, though its impact differs by role.

Leaders are expected to maintain strategic clarity, protect financial stability, uphold quality and support staff wellbeing, often without a single, joined-up view of performance or emerging risk across the organisation.

Educators and delivery teams are working with more complex programmes and a broader range of learner needs, alongside the additional coordination required when learner records, assessment evidence and reporting processes sit across different systems.

MIS, finance, quality and support teams play a central role in pulling together funding, learner progress, performance and assurance information across reporting cycles.

The hidden cost of complexity

Fragmentation is often discussed in terms of inefficiency, but its effects are broader.

When systems are slow, incomplete or poorly connected, teams naturally develop workarounds. Data is checked more than once, information is held in parallel formats, and insight can arrive after key decisions have already been made.

The time required to compensate for disconnected systems is time that cannot be directed towards curriculum development, employer engagement or timely learner support.

Designing systems around delivery, not inspection

For further education providers, technology only earns its place when it supports the way education is actually delivered – not when it creates additional steps, parallel processes or new administrative effort.

Inspection reform, changing assessment models and more granular data requirements are not one-off pressures. They reflect a longer-term move towards continuous assurance.

In practice, it comes down to whether current ways of working generate the information needed for assurance as a by-product of delivery, or whether it still has to be assembled after the fact.

A useful test is to look for routine workarounds. Regular manual reconciliation, duplicated records or reliance on a small number of staff who ‘know where the data is’ are indicators that processes are misaligned, not individual performance issues.

Evaluating the technology estate: decision criteria, not feature lists

When reviewing their technology estate, providers are often presented with long feature lists that are difficult to connect back to operational reality. A more productive approach is to focus on practical criteria that reflect sustainability, assurance and organisational resilience.

One criterion is whether staff can see a complete and current picture of a learner’s journey – including progress, assessment, support needs and outcomes – without relying on multiple systems or personal workarounds.

Inspection readiness is another useful lens. If preparation still requires validation and evidence gathering outside routine delivery, this suggests that assurance remains episodic rather than embedded.

Providers can also test how well current systems and processes cope with change. When funding rules, reporting expectations or assessment arrangements shift, can the organisation adapt through clear process ownership and manageable adjustments, or does it rely on additional manual steps and improvised workarounds?

Finally, governance should be explicit. Clear ownership of data, defined roles and permissions, and agreed ways of making change are increasingly important as expectations around accountability, safeguarding and assurance continue to rise. When engaging vendors, ask them to demonstrate how routine delivery creates inspection-ready evidence, how change requests are handled, what audit trail is available, and how data can be exported if you ever need to switch.

Responsible AI in further education: governance before adoption

AI is now part of the wider technology landscape, but its use in further education requires particular care. Colleges and training providers hold extensive personal and sensitive data relating to learners, employers and staff, and any use of AI should begin with governance rather than convenience.

In practical terms, responsible AI use starts with clear policy decisions: defining approved and prohibited uses, clarifying accountability and setting expectations for how outputs are reviewed and acted upon. AI-generated insight should remain advisory, with human judgement retained wherever decisions affect learner progression, funding, support or safeguarding.

One of the most immediate risks facing the sector is unregulated use of consumer AI tools by well-intentioned staff seeking to save time. Without guidance and approved approaches, this can introduce compliance, safeguarding and data protection risks that sit outside existing assurance arrangements.

The aim is not to discourage initiative, but to remove uncertainty – so staff know what is acceptable, where to go for support, and how to use AI in ways that strengthen confidence rather than creating new risk.

Making assurance part of everyday delivery

In many organisations, there are periods where confidence rises and falls. Activity intensifies around inspections, audits and funding deadlines as teams pull together information created for different purposes.

A more sustainable approach is one where assurance is part of everyday work. Information is built up through routine activity, risks are identified earlier, and inspection becomes less about reconstruction and more about confirmation.

For staff, this difference matters. Workload is spread more evenly across the year, reliance on individual knowledge is reduced, and organisations are better able to cope with change, growth and staff turnover without destabilising delivery.

Future readiness as an operating principle

Being future-ready in further education is not about predicting every reform. It is about being able to adapt without creating additional strain.

That depends less on individual tools and more on whether systems, processes and data ownership reflect how provision is actually delivered. When roles are clear and information is reliable, teams spend less time chasing updates, reconciling records or rebuilding evidence at the last minute. The practical test is simple: does change create extra work for staff, or can the organisation absorb it through everyday ways of working?

Why this matters now

Further education is not short of expertise or commitment. What is under pressure is capacity.

If reform is to improve outcomes without accelerating workload and attrition, it must be supported by ways of working that reduce avoidable complexity and make assurance part of normal practice.

Reform is already in place. The question now is whether colleges and training providers are equipped to sustain it – in a way that supports educators, protects learners and allows quality to be demonstrated with confidence.

By Mark Dewell, Senior Vice President of Education, Government and Social Housing at OneAdvanced