Welcome to FE Soundbite. The weekly e-newsletter and journal brought to you by FE News. This is our round up of the big announcements and exclusive thought leadership articles from experts Further Education, Skills, Employability and exploring the skills for the jobs of the future. This is edition 666 and Jeremy Hunt has just been made Chancellor... I'm not reading anything into that!

So the Government Great Reshuffle continues, with Jeremy Hunt announced as the Chancellor.

Reports and Announcements from this week:

We have had the latest ONS figures from this week: Record lows in unemployment and record highs in long-term sickness poses huge challenge for policymakers.

Sutton Trust found: First findings from COSMO Study on impact of the pandemic – almost half of young people have accessed no catch-up.

NFER had a cool report come out looking at the jobs of the future (and we have a cool 'unpacking' thought leadership article from Lisa around the report as well): New report suggests fundamental change in employment prospects by 2035. With NFER highlighting, that by 2035, higher skilled jobs and healthcare roles set to offset the millions of jobs displaced by automation and artificial intelligence.

Exclusive thought leadership articles from this week on FE News

This week we had 13 exclusive main features / thought leadership articles, I know it has been full on, so here they are in case you missed them:

Lisa Morrison-Coulthard unpacked the NFER report for us with a cool exclusive: By 2035, higher skilled jobs and healthcare roles set to offset the millions of jobs displaced by automation and artificial intelligence.

Now with the NFER report in mind... and with 2035 not that far away looking at the impact of automation and AI... this article by Marie Angselius-Schönbeck is very interesting: Raise Up: why we must celebrate women in AI ... highlighting that women are heavily underrepresented in emerging professions like AI. Now my wife runs a couple of AI projects... and in her company there is a very small number of women... surely we need to sort this out, upskill and reskill, especially looking at what NFER see as the future in just 13 years time!

Lessons learnt in Diversity

We had a bit of a diversity theme this week on FE News. We had a lot of different views and insights on developing a diverse board of Trustees with Trentham Productions: Lessons learnt in developing a diverse board of trustees. AELP's Jane Hickie also shared the outcomes from their first first EDI summit: What we learnt from our first ever Equality, Diversity and Inclusion summit. So I hope you find these articles helpful and inspirting.

Student Poverty

We had a great article from AoC's Eddie Playfair: Student poverty is now an urgent issue for colleges.

We also had a cool exclusive article from the Welsh Government: “It is pivotal that barriers to employment are removed,”... Vaughan Gething MS is the Minister for Economy so I would highly recommend checking this out this article by Vaughan on the ReAct+ programme.

Reflections on the Party Political Season

This week we had some excellent insights and views from different experts who reflected on the Conservative Party and Labour Party conferences. Honestly, the World is in such turmoil at the moment, a general election could come about faster than we think... we are very much in a VUCA World at the moment. What was cool is that we had cool insights from different parts of the FE and Skills Eco-system:

REC's Kate Shoesmith wrote a cool piece: Winning the war of words isn’t enough to deliver growth.

My mate Tom Bewich shared: Both Conservatives and Labour fail to answer the productivity challenge – but FE has to step up as well and Edge's Olly Newton shares his reflections from Party Conference Season 2022.

Dr Jo Foster wrote a cool piece: Let’s give students the tools they need to achieve and Andy Forbes asks: Lifelong Learning and Skills – What Are We Waiting For? .. Andy... to be honest, I dunno?

Keith and Joan shared their Lessons Learned from Maths Lessons and ózsef Boda, CEO of Codecool and Michał Mysiak shared their insights on Mind the skills gap: building a career in tech.

Did you check out these cool livestreams this week?

We had a couple of cool livestreams this week. We had a very cool stream on Thursday with our mates NCFE on the #FutureOfApprenticeships and looking at engaging Small Businesses.

We also had a cool College Roadshow edition with SkillsWorldLIVE: Leeds City Region Skills Development and esports... if you have ever really wondered, erm what is esports - check out this episode!

Next week I will be at the FAB conference in Leicester, not being funny, I don't get out much these days, so if you see me say hi! As I am a bit of a hermit of late! We will also have five very cool livestream sessions from the FAB conference on a takeover on FE News on Thursday and Friday! Last year, the FAB conference, was well... FABulous! The tickets are like gold dust for this event... so if I see you there, please say hi and if you can't make it to the conference or the FAB awards... don't worry we've got you covered!