Many of us working in further education and skills have seen and felt the impact of policy making. Reduced funding, qualification disorder, “quality” systems which seem to close conversations about effective pedagogies have been the norm for as long as I have been in the sector – and for some considerable time before then. Indeed, discourses in further and higher education have been driven by neoliberal models, and this has been accelerated since then prime minister Callaghan delivered a speech at Ruskin College, Oxford, in 1976, which outlined a verdict on the previous three decades of education - a verdict that pronounced that governments between 1944 and 1976 had overseen an education system which was incapable of delivering high standards. The speech is noted for initiating the “Great Debate” about the role education should play in the economic development of the Country. It set the tone for education in subsequent years.
The marketised system we find ourselves in over four decades later is affecting working practices and professional integrity, because it lays constant emphasis on performance. It is against this backdrop that diminishing resources have affected the sector.
While I have seen and experienced the agility with which further education can respond to challenges, I am left perplexed at how this history has left providers, teachers and other practitioners to wrestle with the big issues of the day. Issues such as: how do changes to AI change the nature of the workforce?; what does a world with sustainable development look like?; how do we inculcate curiosity and encourage democratic participation in students?; what does work in an increasingly automated world mean?; do T Levels and HTQs prepare people for this? Without space and time to reflect on these questions the students of today will not provide fresh thinking to the problems of tomorrow. It is this potential in further education that is so often overlooked by policy makers I feel.
