In this series of 10 short blogs – which will issue in rapid succession – I will consider in turn the top themes that have emerged from 50 interviews with teachers, leaders, policy-makers, academics and others from across and beyond the English FE system. Each blog will end with a question which I hope will generate debate on LinkedIn, where the blogs are signposted.
The core question considered has been “what might be the features of a self-improving FE system?” Interviewees have also considered the key features of the FE system as it stands, and what is holding it back from being self-improving.
Many of my interviewees felt that a defining characteristic of a self-improving system would be that it adopted collective solutions to collective problems. The most commonly mentioned such problem was staff recruitment, which is either a problem or a crisis depending on where you sit in the system.
Several colleagues noted that we only seem to have one solution to the recruitment crisis, and that is to poach other people’s staff. Obviously this just shuffles the problem around, and in some ways makes it worse as it also creates unplanned churn.
