Every year, thousands of learners navigate their way through the tumultuous landscape of further education in England. The question I often find myself asking is: what motivates these people to attend, work hard and develop relationships with staff and peers alike?
The obvious answer is that learners simply want to gain whatever qualifications they find themselves studying towards. On an individual and subjective level, this is surely the most important thing in the learner’s educational life. So, the relationships they develop along the way must merely be vehicles for progress and attainment – pure working relationships with a means to an end, to get the learner to the next stage of their journey.
However, in light of the pandemic, the subsequent crisis of motivation and achievement, and the constant pressure from centralised bodies to ‘add value’ and develop the ‘hidden curriculum’, surely we owe it to these individuals to give them more?
