Who Will Deliver the Skills Revolution if Not the Workforce?

The Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper (October 2025) has set out to reshape the current landscape of further and higher education for a generation. With new Technical Excellence Colleges, a Growth and Skills Levy, and £200 million in capital investment through the Skills Mission Fund, the government is making their ambitions clear to build a world-class skills system that looks to enhance growth and opportunity.

It’s a bold and timely vision. Yet the document’s optimism is hiding a difficult truth. “Skills revolution” will only be successful if the people expected to deliver it are supported, and if the reforms reach all learners, not just those aged 16-19.

Ambition Meets Reality

As Danny O’Meara recent deep dive for FE News highlights, the White Paper promises a system defined by specialisation, evidence, and collaboration. Technical Excellence Colleges will sit at the heart of that new structure, providing hubs of advanced teaching linked to priority sectors such as digital, clean energy, defence, and engineering.

Meanwhile, £1.2 billion in additional annual investment is pledged by 2028-29, and resit students in English and maths will receive at least 100 hours of in-person teaching. These are welcome, evidence-based commitments designed to raise standards and strengthen progression routes.

But there’s a clear imbalance between what the government wants colleges to deliver and how it plans to support the people doing the delivering.

Where Is the Workforce Strategy?

The White Paper talks about professional development, new standards for Initial Teacher Education, and a universal offer of improvement led by the Further Education Commissioner. Yet it doesn’t provide an integrated workforce strategy which connects recruitment, retention, pay, workload, and wellbeing into the plan.

The most recent DfE Further Education Workforce in England 2023-24 report highlighted that 3.9 unfilled teaching posts per 100 positions. This issue must be tackled with full force; the system is risking becoming stretched well before reforms are fully implemented.

Ambitious policies can only be delivered by a motivated, well-supported workforce. Colleges need teachers who can not only teach new technical curricula but also adapt to more inclusive, flexible, and data-driven models of learning. That requires investment in people as much as in programmes.

The Overlooked Adult Dimension

As Andy Forbes pointed out in his FE News piece, “Skills White Paper: We Will Make Lifelong Learning a Reality”, the 2025 White Paper devotes most of its attention to younger learners. Initiatives such as the Youth Guarantee and automatic college places at 16 are important, but adults who represent the majority of the future workforce are barely mentioned.

This omission matters. The UK continues to face persistent productivity challenges, with skills gaps widening in digital, engineering, and health sectors. Adults already in the labour market are the ones who can fill those gaps quickly, yet participation in adult learning has been declining for more than a decade.

The White Paper’s few references to adult upskilling rely heavily on the forthcoming Lifelong Learning Entitlement, due to launch in 2026. While this will allow flexible, modular study at Levels 4-6, its success depends on creating inclusive pathways from lower levels, and that starts in further education. If adults can’t access high-quality, affordable provision at Level 2 and 3, the LLE risks becoming a policy tool without a pipeline.

Teaching Quality Without Burnout

Raising standards in English and maths is one of the White Paper’s centrepieces. The new 100-hour requirement for resit teaching, plus higher funding and disadvantage payments, could genuinely improve outcomes for students who’ve struggled before. The Education Endowment Foundation will continue to build the evidence base to support these changes.

This progress should not come at the cost of teacher well-being. FE staff are already under immense pressure to deliver under intense workloads, with growing administrative demands and complex student needs. Expanding teaching hours without parallel investment in staffing capacity or wellbeing measures risks creating a quality agenda that burns out the very people expected to sustain it.

A System That Includes Everyone

The government’s ambition, as set out in the White Paper, is for a high-performing, specialist further education system that supports every learner and region, with new Technical Excellence Colleges providing a prestigious model of FE provision aligned to national priorities.

A genuinely inclusive system must recognise the diversity of its learners from young people needing a second chance at GCSEs to adults returning to retrain or reskill. It must also value the professionals at its core: the teachers, trainers, and leaders who make policy a lived reality.

If the new Technical Excellence Colleges are going to become models of excellence, they should lead not only in technical specialisation but they must also lead in inclusive and sustainable workforce practice. This will require to embed professional development, mentorship, and wellbeing into their culture and DNA.

Conclusion: The Human Infrastructure of Reform

The Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper paints a bold picture of England’s future skills system. But ambition alone isn’t enough. Without the skilled staff being supported, trained, and valued, even the best-designed reforms will struggle to succeed.

As colleges prepare for new standards, qualifications, and expectations, we should be asking one simple question: Who will deliver the skills revolution if not the workforce?

Investing in staff development, wellbeing, and adult participation is vital. It will be the foundation of sustainable reform. If the government wants its skills strategy to succeed, it’s imperative to match its policy vision with the same ambition for the people who are going to make this vision possible.

By Imran Mir SFHEA, FSET, CMgr MCMI, FRSA