Is £160M in Funding enough for the FE Recruitment and Retention Crisis?  FE Soundbite 798

Welcome to FE Soundbite Edition 798: 24th May 2025 | Is £160M in Funding enough for the FE Recruitment and Retention Crisis?  

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This is the weekly e-newsletter and e-journal 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.

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Gavin’s Reflective Perspective

So another week of big announcements.

£160M Funding to Bridge Educator Recruitment and Retention Crisis

The pay gap from School Teachers and FE Educators is widely known. So thank goodness that there is an additional £160M for FE Colleges to be able to match the pay increase recommended for school teachers

Recruitment is key… new entrants into the sector is key, but retention is massively important (otherwise it will be impossible to fill the sector talent bucket, if the bucket is slowly made into a sieve!  

How about a bit of support for ITPs and AOs?

So this is great for Colleges… but how do we also address the pay gaps for ITPs (who deliver 70% of Apprenticeships)… and AO’s who are flat out making changes at the moment to things like the Foundation Apprenticeships and more that are being rapidly deployed. College staffing isn’t the only area that needs help with Recruitment and Retention!

OECD released a report: OECD publishes ‘The State of Global Teenage Career Preparation’.  Any report from OECD is massively important… but this report is very interesting, it was a major report of 700,000 15 year olds in 80 countries and highlighted the huge mismatch globally between young people’s career aspirations and the future job types available.

Alarmingly: Whilst jobs have grown rapidly since the year 2000 in the digital, computing, data science, renewable energy and green sectors, the jobs that young people aspire to has hardly changed in 25 years!

OECD: in the UK 46.4% of young people are uncertain about their career options

In the UK the study found that 46.4% of young people are uncertain about their career options – a rise from 24.6% in 2018! This placing the UK as one of the worst rated countries out of the 80 countries in the research.

50% of young people focus on just 10 job professions

Even more alarmingly… 50% of young people’s career aspirations and interest are focused on just 10 jobs which include actor, doctor and lawyer. 

Not surprisingly, a very large numbers of young people are also focusing on jobs such as social media influencers and sports stars where the chances of succeeding in these areas are very slim, rather than training for employment in areas that are expanding and in need of resourcing.

This is massively important data. How do we address this? How do we equip schools to have a wide angled view of progression routes (as progression routes = jobs)! How do we reach learners younger to open their eyes to options?

Do we need a rethink on Careers Advice? On new approaches on ‘have a go’s’ or taster sessions like WorldSkills? How can we open the eyes of young people? But also open the eyes and options to teachers and parents? This has been a theme in both of our live streams this week (on Durable Skills and Empowering Childcare Learning).

The Great Gatsby

The brilliant Jon Yarman wrote a great article on The Updated Gatsby Benchmarks are a Golden Opportunity. That ties all of this together, I would highly recommend checking it out!

Why does it feel like HE is going through the same cycles that FE was 15 years ago?

I have been feeling this for a while now, but it is now playing out to be more and more of a reality. Higher Education is going through massive change at the moment.

This week we had two interesting announcements from OfS:

OfS Faces £108m Funding Cut as £1.3b HE Grant Announced for 2025-26

So less funding again in the HE pot.

This is not a one off. Just two weeks ago OfS again highlighted that  the financial performance of universities and colleges is forecast to decline in 2024-25 for the third consecutive year. With 43%  of institutions included in the analysis forecasting a deficit for 2024-25!

Sub-Contracting

Just as the Further Education sector had SubContracting Governance challenges 15 years ago due to declines in funding. HE is now looking at different models of delivery and is now starting to see challenges with SubContracting Governance. OfS fined Leeds Trinity University £115,000 this week due to oversights in managing the SubContracting process.

Now I am not anti-subcontracting, far from it… but this is an interesting observation. Next will no doubt come the mergers and acquisition approach, merging Universities or pooling provision.

Is there a way for us to all come together and share ideas, vision, particularly best practice on everything from Sub-Contracting, to Sustainability to Recruitment and Retention of staff? How can we Collectively share solutions across the different segments of Education and Skills?

Frontier Firms

I wrote an article this week about the impact of Skills with the rapid emergence of Agentic AI and the changing role of Leaders, supervisors and staff… this is all from the Frontier Firms report from Microsoft, that is looking at not just the future of work, but the now. There is an immediate Skills and training need that is fast emerging, is FE and Skills ready to step into this gap?

Not being funny, Agentic AI, when FE becomes a Frontier Firm, will this change our need for Careers Guidance (erm yes), will this change the Recruitment and Retention crisis (erm yes, but in a different way), will this increase productivities and cost savings (erm yes).

So we need one eye on the now and one eye on the future (as not being funny Frontier Firms are the 2025 phenomenia.. eg the now)!

Enjoy Soundbite and the bank holiday!

Thanks to Hachette Learning for Sponsoring FE Soundbite this week.

Epic Exclusives Thought Leadership Articles

Our Top 3 Thought Leadership Articles This Week

Firstly, Foundation Apprenticeships – A Flexibility Too Far? By Alison Morris, Head of Policy, Skills Federation

Secondly, Why AI Agents and Frontier Firms Mean We Need An Urgent Rethink on Skills and Assessment Gavin O’Meara, CEO and Founder, FE News and FE Careers   

Finally, The Apprenticeships Debate Rumbles On By Andy Forbes, Executive Director, Lifelong Education Institute

This week, we also had some other Epic Exclusives!

The Updated Gatsby Benchmarks are a Golden Opportunity By John Yarham, Interim CEO, The Careers & Enterprise Company (CEC)

From Burnout to Better Workplaces: Why Mental Health Support Starts with Great Management By Petra Wilton, Director of Policy and External Affairs, Chartered Management Institute (CMI)

What’s New in the World of FE?

Announcements

FE Secures £160m for Teacher Recruitment Crisis as Sector gets 4% pay rise By Department for Education (DfE)

OfS Impose £115k Penalty on Leeds Trinity University for Inadequate Oversight of Subcontracting Arrangements By Office for Students (OfS)

OfS Faces £108m Funding Cut as £1.3b HE Grant Announced for 2025-26 By Office for Students (OfS)

UK-EU Summit Boosts Youth Employability and Education Opportunities

Government Extends Flexible Working Programme By Department for Education (DfE)

Livestreams

Future skills – Ep5 – Durable Skills

Empowering FE Learning – Empowering Childcare Learning

Voices

Young people more uncertain than ever about their career options, according to the OECD By the Education and Employers

CITB Achieves Consensus for its 2026-29 Levy Proposals By CITB

New Edge Bulletin Tackles UK’s Skills Divide with Lessons from Formula 1 By The Edge Foundation

From £3m Drug Addiction to Managing a Rehabilitation Centre By NCFE

In The Know

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We hope you enjoy FE Soundbite this week. Stay curious, keep innovating, and let’s shake up the world of FE together – catch you next week!

By Danny O’Meara, Digital Project Manager, FE News

By Gavin O’Meara, CEO and Founder, FE News and FE Careers