How Many Working Days Have Been Lost Due to Labour Disputes? FE Soundbite 695

Welcome to Soundbite Edition 695! 20th May 2023. This week the girls are taking over!

This is the weekly e-newsletter and e-journal brought to you 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.

This week’s highlights in the FE sector

This week has seen the EPA 2023 Awards where this years winners were announced.

It has also been announced that Tom Bewick is to stand down as FAB CEO in September!

We have also released our first Reel from our brand new series this week! We are working with Cognassist to create chunked-up episodes. This series is called Neurodiversity: Empowering Learning and Employment. In each episode, we delve deeper into conversations with Cognassist’s Louise Karwowski, with our final episode on the 27th of July where you, our audience, will have the chance to ask questions in our live Q&A!

This week we have kicked off FE News on the Go! We are using generative AI to turn our main features into podcasts. These can be found at the end of the article, but you can also subscribe to keep up to date!

National Numeracy Day has also come and gone this week. To help us celebrate, we had Guy Opperman MP, Minister for Employment, write for us! In his article, he discusses the importance of numeracy skills and its role in helping to grow the economy and create better-paid jobs.

Another month, another record set for the number of people out of work due to long-term health conditions. This month’s labour market stats have been released. These stats show that there were 556,000 working days lost because of labour disputes in March 2023, up from 332,000 in February 2023.

Our top thought leadership articles this week

College funding is a crisis which often fails to make headlines, writes Anne Murdoch. College leadership adviser at the Association of School and College Leaders, Anne Murdoch discusses how the government’s record on education funding is particularly woeful in respect of colleges. We have previously received reports which show that over 50% of education staff spent own money on school supplies. If the government is serious about improving the skills of the nation and social mobility, it must put significantly more funding into the very institutions which deliver those skills.

This week we had Heather Sharp, James Goulding and Peter Twining from the University of Newcastle, Australia discussing ‘Unpicking the thread of digital badges in assessment‘. They go into detail about the benefits of integrating digital badges into higher education assessment after reflecting on their findings from a recent pilot study, which was funded by educational charity NCFE’s Assessment Innovation Fund.

Ritam Gandhi’s article discussing ‘How the government’s AI task force will impact innovation, growth, and consumer AI experience‘ provides fascinating insights into the UK’s AI task force and its role in shaping future AI strategies and policies. With a notable commitment of £100m from the UK government, this initiative is set to strengthen the country’s tech sector and establish it as a prominent leader in the adoption of AI technology.

On top of all this, we have also had some other epic main features, such as:

• Formalising the informal?, By Stuart Martin, Senior Consultant, Skills Group

• Maths to 18- Whose going to teach it, By Fleur Sexton – Deputy Lieutenant West Midlands and CEO of PET-Xi

• Soft skills for youth development, the current challenges, By Gavin Hoole

We hope that you’ve enjoyed this week’s soundbite. Now that you’re all caught up on what’s going on in the FE Sector this week, we hope you have a restful weekend! But stay tuned for our second episode of FE News X Cognassist reels next Thursday!

Kind Regards,

Finley, Digital Project Manager

Holly, Junior Digital Project Manager

Danielle, Junior Digital Project Manager