ETF Response to the Education Committee’s Report on Further Education and Skills

The Education Training Foundation (ETF) welcomes the Education Select Committee’s powerful new report on further education (FE) and skills (House of Commons Education Committee, 2025). The Committee has captured what many of us working in the sector know all too well: that FE and skills is central to the country’s future but is held back by fragmented policy, underinvestment, systemic inequities and the absence of a long-term workforce strategy. 

Building a coherent and empowered system 

The report is clear-eyed about the challenges and ambitious in its recommendations. It calls for a stronger Skills England, capable of bringing coherence and independence to the system through sharper data and national priorities. It urges government to extend devolution, recognising that local places are best placed to shape provision that meets their communities’ needs. It points to the need for clearer and fairer learner pathways, demanding parity of esteem between academic and technical routes, and apprenticeships that are simpler, broader and better aligned with learners’ ambitions and employers’ needs. 

Crucially, the Committee also highlights the system changes needed to make this work: 

• Improved data, paragraph 31 
• Deeper devolution, paragraph 42 
• A streamlined approach to local skills improvement plans (LSIPs), paragraph 51 
• The creation of a Skills Coordination Board, paragraph 64.  

Together these reforms lay the foundation for a more coherent and empowered skills system – one that providers, employers and learners can navigate with confidence. For ETF, the challenge is to ensure these system reforms are matched by equal investment in the teachers and leaders who deliver it. As the system becomes more devolved, it is imperative that teaching excellence remain at its heart. 

Learners at the centre 

The Committee is right to put learners front and centre. Its recommendations on stronger mental health support, a student premium for disadvantaged young people, better provision for those with SEND, and a national transition programme for care leavers all point to a system in which opportunity is not only available to all but accessible and meaningful.  

Supporting this vision depends on equipping teachers, trainers and leaders with the confidence, tools and recognition they need. That is why any response to the Committee’s recommendations must go hand-in-hand with a long-term workforce development strategy – a plan to sustain, develop and value the people who support learners every day in the ways the Committee rightly calls for. 

The workforce challenge 

The report makes one point unmistakably: none of these ambitions can be realised without the workforce: 

‘The Department for Education must address the underlying and unresolved reasons for the recruitment and retention crisis amongst school and college teachers, which include pay disparities, excessive workloads, limited professional development and job insecurity. In so doing, it must develop incentives for post-16 teaching staff to remain in the profession. It must include specialist colleges within the targeted retention incentive payments scheme and consider alternatives to that scheme for mid- and late-career teachers.’ (House of Commons Education Committee, 2025, para. 236) 

ETF also welcomes paragraph 237: a strategy to secure a pipeline from skilled trades into vocational teaching, including secondments and retirement pathways. Taken together, these are important and timely recommendations. They move beyond short-term fixes and point to the need for a sustained national approach to workforce development that tackles structural problems systematically, plans for the long term, and creates conditions for the workforce to grow in a fast-changing environment. 

A genuine strategy must do more than address pay and incentives. It must plan for the next decade and beyond, ensuring the FE and skills workforce is resilient, professional and future-ready.

That means: 

• Evidence and data: modelling supply and demand over a 10 to15 year horizon across all teaching, training, leadership and support roles, underpins the need for robust data systems and advocacy; by strengthening sector-wide data collection and analysis, we can anticipate workforce pressures, inform policy, and ensure targeted interventions, which aligns to ETF’s response to the inquiry regarding the need for better data 
• Pay and retention: closing the pay gap with schools and working to establish stability – and retaining staff by tackling workload, supporting wellbeing, and establishing clear career pathways 
• Professionalism: championing dual professionalism, embedding professional recognition through Qualified Teacher Learning and Skills (QTLS) status and Advanced Teacher Status (ATS), and ensuring universal access to high-quality CPD; this aligns with ETF’s call for ITE kitemarking, assuring high-quality initial teacher education and training, marked by rigorous standards, which is central to developing professional identity and maintaining workforce standards 
• Partnerships: deepening employer partnerships, not only for secondments but for co-designed training, leadership exchange and innovation 
• Inclusion and equity: prioritising diversity, inclusion and wellbeing so the workforce reflects and supports the communities it serves 
• Skills: future-proofing skills by equipping staff for digital pedagogy, sustainability, and evolving local labour market demands. 

Conclusion 

The Education Committee’s report is more than a critique of current policy: it is a call to think long-term about the future of the sector. It names the challenges with honesty and points towards solutions. ETF welcomes it wholeheartedly. What comes next must take a coordinated approach – government, providers, employers and the workforce working together – grounded in professional standards, responsive to local needs, and built on evidence. At its heart, this is about valuing and empowering the people who change lives every day and with such a shared commitment, FE and skills can consistently deliver for learners, employers, and society.  

By Dr Vikki Smith, Executive Director, Education and Standards, Education Training Foundation

References 

Education Training Foundation (ETF) (2023) Professional Standards for Teachers and Trainers in Further Education and Skills. London: ETF. 

Education Training Foundation (ETF) (2024) Towards a Workforce Strategy for the FE and Skills Sector. London: ETF. 

House of Commons Education Committee (2025) Further Education and Skills: Sixth Report of Session 2024–26, HC 666. London: The Stationery Office.