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FE and Skills - Eight Months On · Insights from the Edge

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're listening to a new podcast from the Edge Foundation.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: This series is designed to be heard in short verse, as a coffee or a commute.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: We'll bring together experts in policy, research, and practice.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: We'll explore how education and the world of work are developing for young people and education providers.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be asking how that world will give young people across the UK the knowledge and skills they need to flourish in their future life and work.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Insights from the Edge.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_03: Hello, I'm James Gordon, Senior Policy Provider at the Edge Foundation.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_03: In today's episode, we're looking back at what's happened in FE and Skills Policy over the course of 2026.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_03: And we'll also be looking forward to what the remainder of the year might hold in store.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_03: This episode follows on for our first ever episode of Insights on the Edge, which was recorded back in January, where we asked Ben Rowland from the Association of Employment and Learning Providers and LJ Rulings from Youth Employment UK what they're anticipating for the world of FE and skills in 2026.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_03: Now a lot's changed since then.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_03: We have a new Prime Minister and Education Secretary in post.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_03: So joining us for today's episode, we have Ben back with us again, alongside LJ's colleague Basra Meyer, who is director of policy and research at Youth Employment UK.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_03: So I thought we could start with a quick icebreaker.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_03: I'm going to ask each of you to describe Andy Burnham's approach to FE and skills over the first two months in a phrase or a short sentence.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_03: Should we start with you, Ben?
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: I I see this as too good, too bad.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: The two goods are the emphasis on parity of esteem between vocational and technical routes and the academic route.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: And you get the feeling that Andy Burnham isn't just saying that, he he really believes it from his experience in Manchester.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: I'm also really excited about the opening up of the pre-16 education system to vocational technical skills.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: We've got a long way to go to figure out what on earth that is, but the conversation is now happening, which I think is really good.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: That's too good, too bad.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think there's still uh and maybe even more so actually with the new Prime Minister naivety about the role of employers.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of sense of employers should, and it's like actually there's no employers should when it comes to youth employment.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: Employers need to do what they need to do.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's up to us to make that really attractive for them to do it.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: And then the second thing that I that I think is great, I don't think this has changed dramatically under the new PM, but it hasn't got better, it may have got a little bit worse, is not understanding the richness of our training provider base.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a natural reach out to colleges because they are place-based and they're big and at on, but actually we've got all these amazing other providers who are all part of the system as well.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it's definitely a case of kind of practicing what he preaches.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Bass?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, well, so I massively agree with uh Ben's remarks.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think of it as like nationalizing and scaling up the MBAC to uh to all parts of the country seems to be a lot of the driving and animating energy behind what Burnham's thinking in the first couple of months.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Devolution and like municipalization, both of power and funding in relation to post-16 and indeed earlier education is also a theme that looms really large.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: But there's still so much yet to see in terms of what that looks like in practice, and I think like much of the sector, waiting with anticipation for both the Melbourne review's recommendations and also the autumn budget, in which a lot of that is going to become much clearer in terms of the kind of environment we're operating in here.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, lots to be excited and interested by, but sort of early, too, still too early to say how interested and excited we should be by all of it.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_03: You mentioned there's one of the main things uh that Burnham's been doing is around devolution, and undoubtedly it's obviously one of the key themes of his premiership so far.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um and this was also extended to FE and Skills.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um we've seen the announcement as one of in one of Burnham's first weeks that strategic authority mayors will take control of 16 to 19 skills budgets, uh, which will cover provision in six school sick forms, sick form colleges, FE colleges, and independent training providers.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so Baz, starting with you this time, uh, do you think this change could help improve uh young people's employment prospects in male strategic authority areas?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of promise here potentially.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it's always been the case internationally that the UK is a little bit of an outlier in terms of uh how much determining power in relation to uh education sits just at that national level and how little sits at that more kind of like municipal level.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: So this would definitely put the UK much more in line with a lot of our, you know, like cognate international uh other uh international countries.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's broadly a good thing in terms of being able to achieve what lots of other countries have been able to achieve, in terms of, you know, there being better alignment between what happens in our education systems at a local level and what's going on in the local labour market.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: There's often been a real lack of coordination between the supply of skills and training and the outcome in terms of the human capital of young people and the demand in the local economy for jobs and for those skills.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: It really can help with giving young people potentially some really some much clearer local pathways.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we've just uh published the national findings for our youth voice census for 2026, 11,508 responses from young people.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that came through so clearly in that across like a wide range of data points was just how, you know, young people do have lots of ambition, they do have lots of aspirations, they do often have a lot of confidence about the skills that they have and that what that would bring to potential employers in the labor market.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: What's often really lacking is that clear pathway in front of them.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, some more of this kind of uh local generation of education opportunities in line with local employer demand can create some of those clearer pathways.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: So there's certainly some promise here.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's also some challenges and limitations.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: The rate at which all parts of the country would need to, you know, migrate into a strategic authority uh would have to be pretty rapid.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that's obviously going to consume potentially a lot of kind of like resource and political will at the local level in order to achieve that.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: There's already a huge issue in the UK, right?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like with spatial inequality, like the variance in outcomes and opportunities for young people between London and the South East and the Northeast is really stark.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: But the real risk here is like this kind of greater devolution of powers can further widen those gaps, and you're going to just introduce even more postcode lotteries, or indeed increase the stakes of those postcode lotteries through this greater municipalization.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of the real challenges that we hear from young people directly, but also through other sources of data, it are related to overall supply of jobs, they are related to quality of public transport infrastructure, they are related to mental health challenges that young people experience.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: So if the broad aim here is to ride the kind of pretty pronounced public narrative about youth unemployment, then you know it's certainly something, but it's only taking in a relatively small corner of the issue.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so we really do need to look beyond the education sector as part of this.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_03: There's so much divergence between, say, the kind of support the young person in London might need to compare to a young person in the North East, for example.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_03: So, Ben, I want to ask you about um the provider perspective.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_03: I'm aware that many of ALP's members are involved in 16 to 19 provision.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_03: So, what challenges and opportunities do you foresee for providers?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: The interest of our members is not just to do with those who do 16 to 19.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: The on-flow of people into apprenticeships and the availability of apprenticeship opportunities is one of the key issues which devolution should could play a role in.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: The real opportunity, we had one of our uh a dinner last night with some of our key people across the sector and with one of the leading devolved authorities.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the key things that can happen at the devolved level that cannot be done at a national level is to stitch together things that already exist.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the great opportunity to create the linkages and the pathways between the things that already exist.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: The challenge is that the temptation for each and every individual strategic authority is going to be to come up with more things of its own.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: But actually, we don't need more things.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: We need better pathways between the things that already exist.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: So that's why we've created, we're socializing now, beginning to socialize this model for devolution, which talks about three levels, not two, not national or we're calling it core or central, because the word national is banned now, but core at one end or devolved at the other, which we're calling activate and innovate to give it a bit more intentionality.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: But there's a level in between, which we're calling flex, where actually local areas can take the program that exists across the country, but can tailor it and flex it, whether with funding or eligibility in their particular area to tweak it to the opportunities and needs that they have.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: So we think we need to have a really kind of clear intentional framework as to how we go about this.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: And each authority may take a slightly different view, but we're all operating from the same, we're all on the same page.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_03: So just on apprenticeships, on weather back in January's episode when we last recorded, uh, we discussed the forthcoming introduction of the Growth and Skills Levy, uh, which came into force in April.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_03: And since then we've seen the launch of a limited number of apprenticeship units uh as part of flexibility within the levy, alongside a series of tweaks to how the levy operates as part of the government's uh mission to rebalance uh apprenticeships towards young people.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_03: So those changes have included uh funding 100% of training for all under 25s, for example, uh, doubling the hiring grant for non-levy payers, and defunding or restricting certain standards.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_03: So, Ben, do you believe these changes will have a positive impact on apprenticeship opportunities for young people?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't think we're gonna move away from the levy uh because it's uh 4 billion rising to 5 billion.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_02: So the levy as a revenue-raising tool will continue to exist.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: How employers get to use it is what is going to change.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the ALP members understand what the government is trying to do in terms of tilting it back towards young people.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: But the key thing that they've got to get right here is they've got to keep employers on board, they've got to keep employers engaged.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: So how they do that tilt, how fast they do it, how convincing the explanation is, how they can make other aspects of it much more uh amenable and digestible to employees, isn't just cosmetics.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's absolutely key because it just at that moment when we want employers to be leaning in and doing something that they haven't been doing hitherto, which is opening up even more, you know, doubling or tripling the number of opportunities for young people, we can't afford to do things that make them kind of shrug their shoulders and say, What on earth is going on?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: This is a crazy system, we're gonna back away from it and come back when it's settled down.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so we really need to kind of work on government to make sure that they've got that high enough in their minds.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: It comes back to the point I began with, where sometimes you just get the sense that, you know, ironing out kinks between ministers is more important than engaging one million employers.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's not.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: If they want to achieve their aims, we've got to have those employers on board.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_03: So how they make bring about these changes and how fast is going to be critical.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_03: We've seen over the past year the number of young people to only uh tip over a million for the first time in over a decade.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_03: The government has pledged to create over 300,000 additional work experience and training opportunities, primarily through the youth guarantee, uh, something we discussed in our previous episode back in January.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_03: And that includes a series of new financial incentives that are aimed at employers hiring young people, such as the youth jobs grant for out of work under 25s.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_03: Now, Baz, is this is something that the Youth Employment UK has championed for a while.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_03: Do you believe that the current package of incentives will be enough to turn it down the needs crisis?
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: So we really welcomed seeing this coming into place, particularly as it it recognises a couple of things that I think are really important.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: One is that there are multiple pillars to the youth guarantee.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: There is, of course, the kind of uh the job creation uh side of things, but there is also there are also pillars of activity that reflect education, mental health challenges, welfare.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it really recognises the complexity of the issue, a through line that it's also really welcome to see in the um uh Alan Milburn's interim report that came out earlier on this year.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that's really welcome, and also a general acknowledgement that a lot of the challenge here is about the lack of supply of opportunities, and it's about you know, literally increasing the the supply of those opportunities, the number of opportunities in order to uh have somewhere for young people to go.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's one of the kind of most brute indirect, but fundamentally most impactful ways of um, you know, making uh reducing the number of young people who are need.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: For some of those pillars, you know, in relation to to welfare and in relation to health, it's probably going to be like quite difficult for a little while, I think, to be able to see the impact that they have.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's mainly those kind of like flagship programs, like the um the youth jobs guarantee and also the uh the youth jobs grant, where we're likely to start to see some of the impact uh of that sooner.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so the youth jobs guarantee, which uh that's just come towards the end of its pilot stage, uh, where it was trialed in about eight areas across the UK.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: Be super interested to see the results from it.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: We definitely have heard a lot of a lot of noises from the DWP that it's been it's been working, but you know, we'll we'll see in the actual data.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the planners for that to be scaled up nationally, that's going to be happening over the course of the next few months with uh nationally appointed delivery partners.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um similarly, we've seen the youth jobs grant come in, where any employer who uh applies for it is eligible for£3,000 for um hiring a young person who has been on universal credit for um, I believe it's uh uh six months.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think there's a lot to there's a lot to welcome there, but I think there's also lots to be like concerned about and to wonder about whether this is going far enough, fast enough, or whether this is the right approach.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: What we've heard from employers, for example, in our Good Youth Employment National benchmark is that for a lot of employers, they simply are continuing to struggle to navigate the system.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: There's often not a clear kind of digital front door for them to go to to understand what's the stuff that they can do if they want to bring in a young person.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: My big concern here is particularly among um SMEs and kind of micro employers as well, who really just don't have like the headroom or the capacity to be grappling with some of these bigger government programs when they're not necessarily really ergonomic and intuitive for them to be able to easily access.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there needs to be a lot more focus there on SMEs.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: That um the the overall proportion of employers in this country who are SMEs is much higher than bigger national employers.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: As we've observed before, Youth Employment UK, if each SME or microemployer was able to take on just one young person, then the knee crisis would be over overnight, right?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so thinking about where SMEs sit in relation to this and making sure packages and support are stratified to be able to better support organizations of that size, I think is really important and is maybe something that's currently a little bit missing.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: There's certainly lots here that could be impactful.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: We certainly really welcome it, but I think it certainly needs to go further.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: And the way that we do see this going further or want to see it go further at Youth Employment UK is going from the Youth Guarantee as a kind of relatively short government initiative to scaling that up and embedding that as a youth participation system that sits across the whole country.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: A good start, but it needs to go much further.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_03: It's something that I'm sure uh DWP will be monitoring and promising to hear about the early success of that programme.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_03: The final section, uh, I want to touch on the Millburn review, which has been a constant theme for the FE and skills sector over the past nine months after its launch towards the back end of last year.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we saw the interim diagnostics report that was published in June.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_03: We know that, for example, the new Prime Minister is working closely with Millburn on this, um, and therefore that his recommendations are likely to hold significant weight across government.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_03: So I want to ask each of you what the one thing you'd like to see come out of the final Millburn report is.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_03: Ben, should we start with you?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: I've got three things, and the third of them has three sub bullets.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but they it they work together.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: But first is remove English and maths as an exit requirement for apprenticeships 16 to 18.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's a change that we campaigned for for we wanted it to be for all apprentices.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: The government um agreed to that at the start of last year to remove it as an exit requirement for those who are 19 plus.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's been transformative for the sector, but it's removed a lot of misery.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's allowed a lot of people to move forward, and it's been uh a game change in terms of making the money go much further because it's been able to go on the things that actually matter.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: So do that for 16 to 18 year olds, and you suddenly open up a whole load of opportunities for young people who are either putting it off or are not getting through simply because of that.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_02: Which is not to say we don't think English and maths are really important, we just think insisting on GCSE level four is a terrible way to implement a very good objective, which is to get people numerous and literate.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: Secondly, foundation friendships should be restructured so that they can work over four months.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: At the moment, it's still an eight-month programme.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: No one wanted an eight-month programme.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone wanted a three to five month programme.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: So make it three to five months, and that's what will make those uh thing.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: And then the final bit is if you want to keep employers on board, you've got to do something big, big sim a big gesture.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_02: Release the top slice, release the 650, 700 million that the Treasury currently retains, and then very visibly use that for three things.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: One is brokerage, now they're already doing that, but that's about assembling local demand, building viable cohorts, educating people so that training providers don't have to go from scratch every time.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: Secondly, use that top slice for the extra costs of pastoral support, so supplements for providers to deliver that extra support that apprentices need, and finally to uplift those funding bands that apparently magically have managed to swerve inflation.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: If only we could all swerve inflation in the way government thinks that their skill system has.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_02: But that very visible release of the top slice will be a thing you can sh government can show to employers and say, look what we're doing for you.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: This is what we're doing.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: We're releasing more money into the skill system to help you take on the young people we want you to.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: Those three things are my one thing that I want to see come out of it.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for indulging me on that.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_03: But I think it's important to have them all agree, particularly on the brokerage point, and that's something that we've been speaking about for a while.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_03: That kind of boots on the ground presence in local areas um to identify a training provider, recruit a young person, it's so important unless there's not enough funding in the system as it stands.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_03: Bash, we go over to you.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_03: What's your one thing you'd like to see come out of the Milburn review?
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_03: Or three, if you like.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: How about five?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: If I can uh that build on the indulgence that you've given uh given Benja.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um so our our kind of five key recommendations to Alan Milburn.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: So working towards a system with at least these five components to it.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: Firstly, we think that some kind of entitlement for young people while they're in compulsory education, um, aged 11 to 18 that provides greater guaranteed access to uh work experience, to enrichment and extracurricular activities, to high-quality careers support.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we really saw in our youth voice census this year how lacking that is for so many young people around the country.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: The youth participation system that I talked about earlier on is absolutely central here.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think Ben was so right to talk about brokerage at that local level, that connecting tissue between employers, training providers, education providers, young people, other local support services, that is really lacking at the moment.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: As part of that, some commitment through the youth participation system to reckoning and grappling with what are the local access barriers within an area, you know, whether that is related to mental health, as it will be in some parts of the country, whether that's related to public transport, whether that's related to housing, having that access and opportunity set of considerations and a plan for alleviating them sit at the heart of the local youth participation uh strategic approach.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: I really think as as Benna said earlier as well, the the way we engage employers is so important here.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: There is a lot of will among employers.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there is a lot that employers can do here, clearly, but there is a real, there is a little lack of support and a real lack of guidance.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the only final thing I would say is um there is already myriad, myriad, myriad data on young people's outcomes, but what's often lacking is an understanding of what are the specific challenges young people experience, a more sophisticated approach towards understanding young people's experience here as part of monitoring the impact of this new system and adjusting it accordingly.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think those are the things I'd love to see.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_03: And a great way to round off the episode as well.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's been a pleasure talking to you.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, the education skills policy landscape has changed in so many ways over the past nine months, and we're looking forward to seeing how it changes in the remaining months of 2026.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_03: Insights from the Edge, we'll be back to talk more about it very soon.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast was produced by the Edge Foundation.