What we really learnt this week at the AoC conference is that our political class (currently) has no real answers for the FE funding and workforce skills conundrum.
First up was a business-like speech from the shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson. Her address to college leaders was predictably upbeat. The fact she turned up at a post-16 event tells you that she cares enough to have a serious stab at what the opposition might do in government.
A lot of spade work has already been done by the party’s council of skills advisers, led by one of the most successful Labour cabinet ministers of his generation, Lord David Blunkett.
We heard a repeat of the need to flex the apprenticeship levy. The desire to replace competition with more collaboration at the local level. And the setting up of a new national body, Skills England.
