Insight event: Delivering excellent technical higher education

This Insight event brings together a range of speakers to discuss technical higher education.

The event highlights the importance of technical higher education as a driver of social mobility and local and national prosperity, the part that universities and colleges play in its delivery, and the role of the OfS and other regulators in this area.

Find out more about the event:
https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/news-blog-and-events/events/insight-event-delivering-excellent-technical-higher-education/

The Office for Students (OfS) is an independent public body. We are not part of central Government, but we report to Parliament through the Department for Education (DfE).

Good morning everybody uh and uh thank you all for coming and Welcome to our uh the offs Insight event on delivering excellent uh technical education um I have been given one of these exciting uh Steve Jobs esque wander around the stage mics but

I’m um I I I love a good Leon so I’m going to I’m going to stick with this for a while but my name is John Blake and I’m the uh director for fair access and participation at the offs um um uh and I’m delighted to be uh your host and

Compare um for this event today because uh we’re here uh with a fantastic uh range of panelists and wide range of guests um both in person and online um to discuss uh and center the importance of of technical higher education um in the work of the offs and also in the

Worldwider work of the higher education sector so we all know that higher education in our country is vital to driving the economic success of the whole nation it has the power to incubate the PE in people the skills knowledge and experiences that they need to achieve their Ambitions and that they

Can contribute uh to The Wider economy uh and to its ongoing future so we’re here today to talk about technical higher education those courses with an occupational focus and how they can support people at all stages in their career and Life to benefit from higher education as I say I’m delighted to be

Hosting this event because the power of technical higher education rests not just in the way it can support the economy but also in the way it opens doors for all kinds of students uh including those from disadvantaged and historically excluded backgrounds you will hear today about

The ways in which we can seek to grow excellent higher technical education uh this is important not because it offers a uh this is important not because it offers a route for other people’s children to access higher education but because has the potential to offer the right route for all kinds

Of Learners and to develop a brighter future so today’s agenda uh first up we are going to hear uh an opening address from uh the chair of the office for students Lord Warton um and then we will uh hear a pre-recorded ministerial address um from uh the right honorable

Robert halin um and then we will have our first keynote address from Susan lorth our chief executive we’ll then wrap up the first half of the morning with our panel discussion on the challenges and opportunities for the delivery of high quality technical education and then break for Refreshments in the second half we’ll

Start with a panel discussion on how we create enabling environments to support higher technical education and then we will hear our second keynote speech uh which I’m delighted to say will be given by the baroness wolf of dullage and then finally uh I’ll provide um some closing remarks that will be much less

Insightful than any of the things you’ve heard up to that point um so uh with no further Ado uh I’d like to ask the chair of office of students James Warton uh thank you for joining us well uh thank you John and good morning everybody it’s a pleasure to be

Here and a pleasure to welcome you all to what is in effect the office for students feature length Christmas special we are delighted that you’re joining us for this important event uh and we of course here to talk about and discuss a very important area and part of higher education excellent technical

Higher education um delighted as well that we’re able to host this uh in this venue here at code node this is a venue that describes itself as the UK’s hub for all things Tech so it seems an appropriate location for our discussions today uh I’d also like to welcome

Everyone who’s joining us online uh I think it’s a great thing that we’re able to now do these these sorts of events both in person and online uh broadening the accessibility and the audience and as John said it will be made available afterwards for those who miss or perhaps

Mishar and want to catch up or follow uh any of the particular discussions that have taken place during the day we’re going to be exploring the roles of universities and colleges in delivering technical higher education these are courses which equip students with the right skills to meet employment needs

And in so doing they underpin local and National economies of the future uh we also discussed the role of the ofs in regulating this area as well as and alongside other regulatory bodies it’ll be a chance to hear a variety of perspectives from our speakers and of

Course from those of you in the audience who are uh able and who’ve come along to take part uh from students higher education providers employers and from us the regulator it rather reminds me of those those words you don’t want to hear Hello I’m from the office for students

And I’m here to help you well today we are here to help you uh and I hope that the discussion and debate will be fruitful and worthwhile uh technical higher education of course covers a very broad range of courses uh it covers also a broad range of ways of studying these

Include employer endorsed qualifications so we’re talking here about higher apprenticeships or degree apprenticeships and higher technical qualifications we’re also talking about those degrees undergraduate and postgraduate that have specific occupations or employment routes in sight such as engineering or teaching degrees we’re hosting this event at a time when there are lots of exciting

Developments in relation to building higher technical skills uh with more higher technical qualifications on offer and the promise of a more flexible approach to study when the lifelong learning entitlement comes into force uh I’m sure we’re all looking forward to hearing from our speakers and hearing from the comments and questions that you

Have to explore this very interesting and increasingly important topic uh it gives me a great pleasure to be able to welcome you here this morning uh I have every faith that will be an interesting discussion and a useful day this is an subject area and subject matter which I

Have no doubt is going to become increasingly important uh as education and its interaction with the economy continue to rise up the agenda and to take an important part of the national debate and discussion the roles that many of you play in that are key uh the

Approach that we take as regulator and the role of the different bodies that interact to deliver the best possible quality uh technical higher education are are more important than perhaps they have been for a very long time so it’s an important debate and discussion uh I

Think that is reflected by the range of attendees that we have and the interest that has been shown in this event I hope that you find it useful and worthwhile uh and I look forward to continuing the debate and discussion uh not just through today but as we take these these

Areas from our perspective as regulator and from your perspectives as those who are engaged in the education of higher technical qualifications I look forward to continuing this debate forward and delivering the sorts of uh educational outcomes that are going to be needed for the E economy of the future and for the

Jobs of the future for those uh who are securing them so thank you very much for coming uh it is my job I think I don’t do John do I hand back to you or do I hand back I hand back to John who will then hand over to the next stage in

Proceedings thank you very [Applause] much seamless there uh thank you very much James um uh if this is indeed our future length Christmas special then uh I’m delighted to introduce the next of our exciting cameos um uh unfortunately uh Robert halin was unable to join us in

Person this morning but um as the Min minister of State for skills apprenticeships and higher education uh and as those of us who’ve been involved in education policy for a long time will know a very long-standing advocate for the importance of um Technical and vocational education in in creating

Opportunity for all students especially those from the disadvantaged background um I’m delighted that uh the minister has been able to uh share with us uh the following statement hello everyone I’m sorry I can’t be with you today to talk about higher technical education I’ve always believed that technical education can be higher higher

In quality in delivery and higher in student outcomes I also want technical education to have higher Prestige equal to that of academic learning the enduring divide between further and higher education makes no sense so it’s great that we’re now taking steps to eradicate it the office for students is committed

To helping us build the skills training the nation needs together we are filling skills gaps and getting businesses to invest in their future Workforce but better technical education is not just a boost for industry and the economy it’s a boost for individuals families and communities helping people to climb the

Ladder of opportunity rung by rung to a good job and a great career social justice is a key pillar of the ladder making sure that these opportunities reach those who need the most so they can improve their prospects the other pillar that holds up the ladder is strengthening higher and

Further education we are spending 3.8 billion pounds on this over the current Parliament this includes designing skills qualifications with employers so they have real value and utility on the shop floor higher technical qualifications are the second rung on the ladder of opportunity and championing the skills that employers

Need historically there’s been a low uptake of level four and five courses in the UK sometimes called the missing middle of our skills system we rank sixth in the G7 countries for the proportion of those adults whose highest post School qualification sits at this level higher technical qualifications are fundamental

To changing this they are level four and five courses that have been approved against employer developed standards only an approved qualification can call itself an htq and display the quality Mark endorsement giving both students and employers confidence that they provide the skills needed for the job in hand this supports the third rung

Of the ladder of opportunity making sure we have trusted higher quality technical qualifications hdqs in digital construction and health and science subjects already lead to jobs in sectors like cyber security quantity surveying and sports coaching but we need to ensure that the high quality content is matched by high

Quality delivery to help providers deliver the exceptional teaching these qualifications demand we recently announced the second round of successful bids for our skills injection fund the first round enabled colleges like Barnett and Southgate to build a mock Hospital Ward for health gu students and provided virtual reality technology for the University of

Salford’s htq courses this is on top of the annual strategic priorities grant for higher education teaching and related activities this funding now includes 16 million specifically to support level four and five provision priori izing htq courses it shows that we consider technical education an integral part of university

Provision as well as improving content and delivery we are also tackling the artificial barriers between Technical and academic options from September this year hgq Learners have been eligible for tuition fee and maintenance loans on the same basis as degree level courses and they can claim this support for full or

Part-time coures coures allowing them to fit their studies around other commitments if needed but there’s more flexibility to come hdqs will be among the first courses eligible for modular funding with the LL the lifelong learning entitlement the lle fourth rung of the ladder opportunity is all about lifelong

Learning which is so important for allowing people to move with the times and update their skills to fit today’s jobs markets the lle will transform the student finance system from 2025 it will provide a loan entitlement equivalent to four years of post education £ 37,000 into today’s fees that people can use

Throughout their working lives to fund higher Technical and degree level learning I think it’s hard to overstate how much the lle will change the further and higher education landscape and the tremendous opportunities it will bring students providers and employers many Learners need flexible access to post 18 education in order to

Fit it around work family and personal commitments the lle will for the first time provide access to funding for high value courses on a modular basis starting with hdqs people will be able to space out their studies and learn at a pace that is right for them they may choose to

Build their qualifications over an extended period studying one module at a time and moving between further and higher education providers like getting on and off a train Learners will be able to alight and board their post school education when it suits them rather than being confined to a single

Ticket the office for students will regulate all providers offering L funded provision and we will support them to ensure that providers are fully aware of their requirements to help accommodate smaller providers who major in level four and five provision we have asked the offs to develop a new third category of

Registration in order to give this type of unregistered provider more time to prepare for offs registration we recently announced that we will extend the advanced learn alone funding to 2027 we expect the ufs to consult on the new third registration category before the lle launches in 2025 good regulation of higher education

Is important it protects students from poor outcomes protects taxpayers money and helps to maintain the sector’s reputation and success we look forward to working with the ffs to ensure a proportionate regulatory approach for the L so that it can benefit as many people as possible this wouldn’t be a speech about

Higher technical Education Without Me mentioning degree apprenticeships two of my favorite words in the English language they are part of the second rung of the ladder of opportunity champing the appren shps that employers need enabling students to climb to highly skilled well-paid employment I’m passionate about degree apprenticeships because they offer

Fantastic opportunities to students who perhaps couldn’t afford to do a conventional degree they offer the best of academic learning from World leaning universities and work-based training with some of the Britain’s best employers students earn a salary while they study have no tuition fees to repay on top of that level six apprentices

Have median earnings of over 34 and a half thousand once they complete demonstrating how valuable these workers are to employers degree level appr friendships have enjoyed year on-year growth since their introduction and now make up 14% of all apprenticeships but we need diversify beyond the programs that have fueled

Expansion that’s why I’ve made4 million pounds available for degree apprentiship growth in the next two years to get new courses off the ground and engage New candidates and businesses I’d encourage anyone listening to consider these opportunities for your institution and the difference they could make to the next generation of your

Students everything I’ve talked about leads back to the ladder of opportunity it’s a way of thinking about what we need as a country to create a skill system that supports people of all backgrounds into secure and well-paid employment delivering excellent higher technical education will allow more people to study quality qualifications

Gain sought after skills and reach the top of the ladder a career with good progression and earning potential this in turn will fuel the business expansion The Innovation we need and drive local and National Economic growth there is no downside to upskilling the nation these are the aims I think we all

Share for the country and for our students and they can be achieve with your help by delivering excellent higher technical education thank you uh thank you very much as I say I think uh those of us who’ve worked in education policy for a long time and certainly those involved in in higher

And Technical education uh will be aware of The Minister’s long-standing commitment again I think they his experience and understanding really shines uh through there of the whole system um uh albeit one one hopes for those of you who’ve traveled here today by train that post uh post compulsory

Education is rather more efficient than Southern Railways um I think it’s incredibly valuable to have that very clear statement of uh the ministerial and and the government’s vision for um the power and importance of higher technical education and I’m now delighted to welcome uh to the stage Susan lapworth the chief executive of

The offs to explain how we see uh our role um uh in this world so Susan good morning everybody good to see you all here and and and also on online and thank you for for finding the time to join us today I know it’s a really busy

Time of of the year I I imagine most of you will be familiar to to some extent with the office for students but but for those who aren’t a few quick words of of introduction the offs is the statutory regulator for higher education in England we want every student to have a

Fulfilling experience of higher education that enriches their lives lives and and careers our work has two main areas of focus the first of these is quality and standards so we think that all students should have a high quality academic experience that broadens their Knowledge and Skills and

Equips them for whatever comes next the second area of focus is equality of opportunity that’s about ensuring that all students regardless of their background can benefit from from higher education and for us those two things quality and equality go hand inand we’re not doing our job if if students

Disadvantaged by their backgrounds are recruited onto poor quality courses with disappointing outcomes as as speakers have have said today we’re focusing on technical higher education and and we use that term to mean those courses that are designed and delivered to students with particular employment or occupations in in in mind

And you can see how that focus of of the discussion today brings together those two strategic priorities quality and equality in the real world so we’re discussing how we can collectively make sure that technical higher education is high quality and accessible to students from all backgrounds we we’ve got lots of really

Interesting sessions to look forward to during the day contributions from colleagues inside and Beyond the sector I’m I’m particularly pleased to see colleges so well represented because they have such important role to play in this area but before we get to those conversations I was going to say a bit

More about the SS’s role here but I wanted to start by saying that excellent technical higher education really matters it matters to students to employers and to the economy excellent technical higher education means that students can feel confident that they’ll qualify with the Knowledge and Skills that they’re going to need for their

Their chos and occupation it means that employers know that future workforces will have the Knowledge and Skills that they’re looking for to succeed and it means that local and National economies are able to grow and of course it means that that universities and colleges can continue to offer a fulfilling experience of

Higher education by delivering valuable courses to the widest range of students so that’s why it matters but what’s the ‘s role in in all of this we want to develop the capacity of the higher education sector to deliver those excellent technical courses and we know that an important part of building

That capacity is recognizing the value that comes from the diversity of the higher education sector in England we’re constantly thinking about how our work can increase choice and opportunities for students but Choice isn’t just about deciding between IND individual universities or colleges that that deliver the same sort of higher

Education it’s about having a choice of the type of institution the type of course and how that course is delivered so a truly diverse higher education sector is important because that range of choice that comes from diversity is in the interest of students so we use our tools to support that diversity and

To build capacity in in different ways and here in this area in particular our funding power is particularly important in stimulating that that growth in in technical higher education the the minister talked a little about this a moment ago we’ve increased our our funding for level four and five courses

This year we’ve also launched a competition to to increase the number of of degree apprenticeships offered across England and our funding continues to be particularly important to those universities and colleges delivering health related courses so for instance we we we continue to work really closely with NHS England and and other parts of

Government to implement the recommendations in the NHS long-term Workforce plan so really important work for for the country 18 months or so ago we began to fund a partnership between the open University and further education colleges so the oou is now working with colleges to validate new courses at

Level four and five this year seven more colleges joined that partnership and we can see those Partnerships leading to increased choice for students greater uptake of higher education courses in in areas of low participation in the country and more courses that produce qualified workers who can meet those those really local skills

Need so funding is really important for us in in this area but our other regulatory tools are important too and and I think that’s about making sure that we’re not making assumptions that a a high quality course can only be one that’s delivered over three years on

Campus to to to people fresh from school who whose parents also went to to University so we set requirements for Quality that that properly recognize the nature of of technical courses and and how they’re delivered and we look at technical higher education through the lens of equality of opportunity again those two strategic

Priorities coming together one of the risks on our equality of opportunity risk register is the risk that there’s a limited choice of courses and delivery modes so students may not have equal opportunity to access a wide range of different types of higher education and we think that matters

Because that particular risk could have a particular impact for some students so for mature students disabled students those eligible for free School Meal s or or whose parents didn’t experience higher education and so we’re asking universities and colleges to consider how they can address that risk in their access and participation Plans by

Increasing the diversity and flexibility of their courses and thinking about the barriers for those particular students and of course we think higher technical education is a really important part of increasing diversity and flexibility in that way right across England so the off’s role continues to develop

Here the the next big shift and we we heard a little about that earlier is is the introduction of of the lifelong learning entitlement the lle that is a significant new policy as as Minister hon said the government has set out a real ambition for a more flexible

Modular approach to learning and a new approach to delivering loans for students that will change the way that students and universities and colleges think about higher education so the lle has the potential to bring far-reaching change across the sector and we think that inevitably has a significant impact on the delivery of

Of technical higher education so we might expect to see more growth in the delivery of occupation focused Knowledge and Skills so for instance through short bursts of of learning funded by taxpayer loans and we might expect that to open up opport unties to groups of students who don’t typically access higher

Education at the moment so important change the LL is bringing change for the ofs too as as you heard will regulate all institutions offering courses funded through the lle and we we’ve started to talk to the sector about how we might develop our regulation to respond to those changes so we’re currently looking

At responses to a call for evidence that we published earlier the in the year that ask how we we should think about and how we should regulate outcomes for students studying on a a modular basis so what might count as a good outcome for a student studying flexibly over an

Extended period And when do you measure that outcome if study is episodic so do you measure after each module or or at the end of a series of modules and and if so which modules and which institution gets the credit for those good outcomes if if if a student has has

Studied across different institutions in the sector we know that we need to work through these and and other really tricky policy questions because what and how we regulate is going to have to change in in in this new environment an early look at at the responses to to that call for evidence

Suggests really positively that that institutions are thinking creatively about the possibilities and the benefits of of the lle so really seeing it as as an opportunity but they’re also telling us that they’re worried about how they can show that connection between the study of individual modules and longer term

Outcomes for students and and and they think that that’s going to be particularly tricky if more students start to transfer between higher education providers so so so some some some real issues for us collectively to to Grapple with I I suspect we we agree with W with some of those policy worries

And we’ll we’ll have more to say about our thinking in those areas as we move through into into 2024 the the final thing I wanted to to talk about today and again that that’s been touched on already this morning is the complexity in in the Regulatory and funding landscape for technical higher

Education and and as I go around the the country visiting institutions and and talking to colleagues delivering these courses this is one of the things I I often hear in in in in those conversations that that the landscape is complex and of course they’re they’re right about that there are lots of

Organizations working in this area ifate ofstead off quall esfa ofs the the collection of of of acronyms we all have different roles and different expertise and and knowledge and that means it’s particularly important for us all to work closely together but both to make sure that that we’re regulating

Effectively across the whole to pull that expertise and and that knowledge so that we can mobilize it for for the for the greater good we we’re doing that in in practice so so at the offs we draw on ofstead reports about the quality of the courses that that they inspect and we’ve

Also worked with ifate colleagues to make sure that they can rely on our regulatory judgments when they do that process of of approving htq and we’re keen to do more here and also to to hear from universities and colleges about where they see unnecessary duplication that that could

Be tackled because we do understand how frustrating that that duplication can be and we don’t want it to get in the way of delivering for for students to to to wrap up then the the work that the sector does on technical higher education really matters the introduction and expansion of of new

Qualifications and and the development of the lle are bringing important opportunities for for institutions right across England and important opportunities for for students too at the offs we we’re keen to to continue to work with the wide range of stakeholders in this area to build the sector’s capacity to address skill shortages to

Drive social mobility and and to improve local and National Prosperity the conversation we’re all having today is is part of that work and I’m very keen and interested to hear from our our range of speakers and indeed from from colleagues in the audience on these important issues so so look forward to

The debate once again thank you for for for joining us today it’s good to see you all and I think I’m handing back to [Applause] John uh thank you very much Susan um so we’re now moving forward with our first panel discussion uh on what are the challenges and opportunities for the

Delivery of high quality technical higher education uh this panel will be chaired by um our office for students uh student experience board member and chair of our student panel Caleb Stevens so I invite Caleb uh to to the stage and give him the clicker of power and he can

Introduce the panel so thank you very [Applause] much thank you everyone and thank you for the warm welcome um today we’re here to discuss our first conversation around what are the challenges and opportunities for the deliver dely of high quality technical higher education and I’m delighted to invite the

Following panel members to help facilitate this conversation if I ask one at a time if I could ask Professor Edward peek from the the vice Chancellor and president at noston Trent University Nikki Davis principal and CEO at lead’s College of building Nathan mold student representative at Newcastle College University Center and finally

Charlie B head of labor market intelligence at J thank you for joining so what we’ll do is is we’ll go um one at a time and you’ll have two minutes to answer the first question uh before we open up to uh questions both in person and online

Um I think I’ll if I start from over there if that’s okay um so I’ll start with Nikki Davis and I’ll um just repeat the questions so what are the challenges and opportunities for the delivery of high quality technical higher education thank you C yes I wanted to um sort of

Endorse really the opportunities that technical education provides um and I’ll put it into the context of of our my institution so leads College of building we’re um a general further education college but all we focus on his construction and the built environment and we have about four and a half

Thousand students in leads um the vast majority of those are apprentices um and we have a um a range of um apprentices at all levels we have about 800 higher in degree apprentices as well and the the opportunities that technical education gives to our students are significant we have uh 41% of our

Students in our full-time programs come from the lowest death s of deprivation in the city um and our average salary for our apprentices when they leave is 30,000 um so those students who can access the opportunities all the way through the construction um as that’s what we do uh the opportunities are

Really significant to uh life be life changing for some students and we see students become the first in their families to go on to get degree apprentices um and then progress into construction which is obviously a very well-paid and productive um career um with lots of skill shortages so lots of

Opportunities at the moment um the biggest challenge for us um is that we don’t have the staff to deliver it uh we aren’t funded enough uh to be able to meet uh demand and the um competition for recruitment of those um qualified people to deliver um is is vast we’re not only competing

With fellow colleges but universities but also employment um if I look at our quantity surveying uh degree apprentiship at the moment we started with a pilot of um nine that went to 100 in its second year so the demand for those roles is significant but we can’t recruit a quantity surveyor because

Their salary is so in excess of what we can get close to um by significant amounts uh and when the demand for um those roles is that um fce in the industry um coming into teaching um is not an option um particularly in a cost of living crisis um and I think some

People see teaching as um the easier option and it very much isn’t it’s a profession on its own um and we want the best staff to deliver um and because we want those really good outcomes for our students but we can only do that with um the proper funding um for Fe colleges

Thank you you Professor Edward PE thank you so I want to talk about demand and the lifelong learning entitlement um and of course people often talk about the lle as though it’s just about modular provision of course it’s about all funding of all students our education let’s just think about this modular

Approach and the demand opportunity as I see it and give a practical example of how I think it’s going to work out and it’s based in Mansfield which actually picks up Robert’s point that it has one of the highest percentages of people in the country country whose highest qualification is a level three

Qualification and it’s done in partnership with Vision West knots college and the key part about that partnership is that we we do all level four and above and they draw level three and below and that’s how the division of labor is is carved up in Mansfield so we

Have four engineering courses uh hncs H&S we have 59 students this year 38 are mature and one came in with a levels the rest come with a whole range of qualifications and some come in with recognized work experience which tells you something about the mix of students

On that course 17 are apprentices who come to us through the Vision West knots College friendship scheme but we teach them in the classroom uh we have other students who are accessing slle funding some uh employers are paying the costs and for some they sell funds so a real

Mix of students already on these hnc hnds CED locally on the college site which is really important one or two days a week depending on part-time or full-time students and of course they have been designed in collaboration with local employers not exactly the sorts of jobs these people going to go into when

They get their hnc or hnd and we use those titles because engineering companies know what an hnc and H&D is they remember them from the old days they really like the qualifications now very shortly those courses will become htq eligible for Le lle funding and we’re going to design

And deliver them on a modular basis in fact that already based on modules and because we have so many students already in play modularly taught the transition costs to the LA are actually very low because in a way all we’re going to do is have a new funding route and we’ve

Agreed with Pearsons that we’re going to have a license to design and accredit those modules in the way that we wish to locally rather than go through a national scheme which is really really important so we anticipate lots of demand for modular lle funded provision but we can’t guarantee it but in sense

We’re not concerned about that because we have this pipeline of skills education already in play and we think that some employers will switch away from apprenticeships and put more of their employees through the SLS uh um LL or they might fund themselves some of the sell funders might actually access L

And we think there’s a whole load of folk who’ve got level three qualifications or great experience who will come through and just do individual modules they can see the employment route at a local level so for us that’s a practical example of how you get the

Lle on a modular level going we know the demand’s there we can see the opportunity and we’re just going to build on it and I hope that gives you a practical example of how this is going to work when we get to 2025 thank you and Nathan Mo um just so

Give you a bit of a background of my education um I initially went through quite a traditional route uh through education doing my a levels and then going on to study math and physics at Uni with looking to go into engineering um and I just found a it wasn’t the

Right thing for me and ended up leaving and then went back into education uh at Newcastle College um doing my my mechanical engineering uh level five and now my level six um I think the major challenge for delivering high quality higher technical education uh for me has been that high

Quality means different things to different people I think for me University didn’t feel like a high quality uh education because wasn’t the right thing for me even though I know it was high quality education for for many of the people that were on the course with me I think

Um going to Newcastle College I feel like I’ve had a really high quality education there because it was the right type of education for me and that’s helped me prosper and um and go on and do some some great things uh I think that really comes down to the awareness

Um of it I think when I was going going through my a levels didn’t have any real awareness that there was the opportunities for really good high quality technical education out there um I I wasn’t to the point where I I really didn’t even know anything about it um I

Think that also comes down to exposure as well I think there’s a lot of opportunities for exposing students to higher technical education while they’re in high school and while they’re in their a levels just to show them what what it can whether what that it can be the right type of

Education for them um I think there some really good opportunities now because the views on technical education are changing I think people are seeing it on the same level as going to un um with the government introducing the tea levels as well that’s given um people more exposure to it an earlier earlier

Level so they can get a a feel for it and find out if it’s the right type of education for them um I also think with the being a massive skills grapp in industry and then pouring more money into it that is that’s creating a big pull uh into

Higher technical education which is which is uh creating some great opportunities as well um I think yeah all in all there’s some amazing opportunities out there for for getting more people into the high quality technical education that is already out there and I’m I’m really optimistic about that thank you and Charlie B

Well um I’m your du duly designated labor market nerd so rather than do practical examples I’m going to give you abstract stats but I’m going to try to ground that in in um the lived experiences of people in individuals and of Institutions the demand is clearly here and the opportunities are immense the

Unit for future skills uh estimates that we’re going to need about 1.9 million stem professionals extra stem professionals by 2035 or to put it in realistic terms 190,000 people year ony year entering the stem labor market last year just to put on B into perspective we fell short

Even though the labor market was in um pretty decent situation um and we had widespread occupational shortages we we added about 175,000 people to those occupations so we need to do more to bring people into these roles but there are a lot of barriers in place

One of the most crucial is as Nicki as Nicki mentioned um is we simply don’t have the staff to do the training um it’s interesting that she mentioned quantity surveying the gold standard um piece of work for examining skills and occupational shortages is the department for education’s a employer skills survey

Unfortunately that was suspended during covid it normally happens every two years um we’ve recently received our first ESS for five years um at the end of October more data will be available um in January but every year or every every iteration of the ESS shows single

Most in demand or most uh uh most serious shortage role in the UK is quantity surveying we we train about the third the number of quantity surveyors um every year in the UK that we need and we have done for many years it’s a well-known shortage we’ve known all

About it for a long time and very little has been done to address it and fundamentally these and and the issues are because we’ve got such short of quantity surveyors qualified quantity surveyors can earn a lot of money quantity surveying and not training people to do Quant surveying and so it’s

Very difficult particularly for colleges um to find people who can do that training it’s a problem across the whole of technical education particularly in engineering particularly in it and so we need it’s not just a question of parity of esteem between Technical and academic routes there’s needs to be a parity of

Esteem between training between people offering training and people entering industry and that parity of esteem can only really in a cost of living crisis be expressed in terms of salary there is no easy way around this that needs to be a lot more money injected into the system for colleges for institutions for

Universities you can find me a UK University that has enough engineering profession engineering professors um I will shake your hand and say Well done um because there are not very many of them well Pop I mean we don’t all have we don’t all have the pull that Edward

Has um and the and the charm and ability to bring bringing bring people in but I’m sure I’m sure you wouldn’t mind a few more applicant okay but but in general um we’re short of people who are able to train the other side from the point of view of of

The data is it’s clear that we have substantial demand but sometimes the data is quite difficult to pass sometimes the supply side um those of us who rep uh represent the supply side and those of us who um those people who work on the demand side of of of things speak

Somewhat different languages we have different understanding of of what skills mean and what qualified means um and so it can sometimes be difficult um my original background is in the hard Sciences my doctorate is in analytical chemistry for seor Tandem mass spectrometry of cycle in the gas phase

Thank you for asking um and so it makes it quite and and and from that side of things and having worked for a long long time from the demand side in Sciences sometimes we’re quite imprecise in what we say um yes there is demand for stem professionals but not all stem

Qualifications are in demand at the moment I’m not going to go down the invidious Ro is saying we’ve got rather more XY Zs than we need and not enough of ABCs I’m an analytical chemist we don’t have enough analytical Chemists in the UK um but our historic strength our

Links to the pharmaceutical industry for example mean that we produce a large number of worldclass synthetic organic chemists we don’t don’t need all those synthetic organic Chemists in the UK need a lot of other chemists and when we say we need stem professionals sometimes we mislead young

People and and older workers who might be training into thinking that all of these qualifications no matter how good are in equal demand we need to be much clearer when we say actually you know sometimes and in some parts of the country we’re going to need more electrical engineers down in the Sou

Southwest with the defense industry for example we may need more mechanical or even Naval Engineers we may need more people in particular forms of it in different parts of the country in the shadbolt review in 2017 found that some of the imprecision of language in terms

Of the way that we phrase demand means that people are taking qualifications and not necessarily ideal for them and and so we want to be a lot more careful in the way that we phrase no of demand for technical education yes we have a demand in bulk for it but

Sometimes in some areas some things are more demand than others thank you thank you to our panel uh members for um answering the question um and we’re going to open up now to um people for questions both in person and hybrid and I’ve we’ve got a colleague

Who’ll be also reading out those who are going to be asking virtually um we have a a mic that’s going to be wandering around for anyone who has any questions so I will now open up to the floor um is there anybody who has any questions please thank you very much that was

Really helpful um answers uh to your to the question posed I’ve got a question for Edward PE if that’s okay um feel like you you similar I I work from an academy a Fashion retail Academy and um I’m just at the moment looking to redevelop and redesign our curriculum

Provision and wise to get ready really for lle I was wondering what size credits you work on and what because I think officially has been told I have heard the word 30 credits but I’d like to know as a wisdom now to get ready for

That yeah it’s a good question so um we have to work on 30 credits for the lle and in fact our regular design as an institution tends to use 30 credits we are looking at micr credentials though and how we accredit those and how we

Bundle them together to get up to 30 if they’re 310 to access lle funding that’s our starting position um one thing just come back to Charlie’s um bit um we’re very specific actually what we need in Mansfield some of the things I don’t know what they are fin finite element

Analysis and programmable logic controllers don’t know what they are but I’m absolutely clear that’s what these modules will be about they’re absolutely tuned in to the local employers requests which why they’re so specific and of course one of my slightly unpopular views is I think higher education is University

Business and one of the things we’ve done with Vision West knots college is when we took over all the level four we chupid their staff across to the university on different terms and conditions and it’s me we can actually recruit and retain people who want to teach these very specific uh engineering

And it type programs I think there are many reasons why um Fe colleges FAL level three and around and univers level four and above and that’s just one of them and I and I think it I believe it quite strongly the other thing I’d say is that local um skills Improvement um

Uh plans have somehow got completely focused on level three and below and of of course in our part of the world that’s not the problem we’ve got lots of people level three we need the elip to do with level four and above and that’s rather got lost and I think that would

Be really helpful to get more pressure I think into the system fundamentally we have to sort out our relationship with Fe as universities now whether it’s relationship we have with with Vision West not it won’t work for everyone but you’ve got to know what the pipeline is and what the opportunity to share

Funding and share students looks like to make some of this provision really viable particularly in the early stages thank you any more questions in person thank you and yes fascinating from all the panel what I want to ask is a gentleman in the middle that you

Talked about in your your talk about how when you were at school you didn’t necessarily get all the information that you needed to make the right choices for you what does the panel think about how we make sure that schools and colleges get high quality iag about degree apprenticeships about demand the the

Right on that students should be applying for and who’s responsible for this thank you I’ll open up well my role is very specifically to support careers professionals um and the there are a a group of issues here firstly the uh outside of H fragmentation there’s a significant fragmentation um of careers

Provision um and most people working with school school age um Learners do feel that there are difficulties and barriers to providing good quality um careers um and and uh and and guidance um part of the issue is that um the information available is quite opaque and changes quite

Rapidly um it’s quite hard to uh resource um proper information advice and guidance um and many schools have to rely on external providers or external Partners in order to deliver that um who do their best but are sometimes Not always completely of with the individual specifics of

Um of an individual institution and I go into work with schools quite a bit one of the counterintuitive things about um talking to young people about the kind of routes that Nathan has taken um is that sometimes you need to reassure them that going down a particular route will

Not log them into that for the for the rest of their lives so for example I I work quite a bit in the black country um in in wolver Hampton and wara with schools in there and their legacy is of heavy industry um which has largely left so when I first started

Doing this I got told very explicitly don’t tell these kids that they should study engineering college and university because their their dads usually their dads did they lost their jobs and you have to you have to bring them into these areas these these areas and these ideas gently and the way to do

It is to say actually if you go to college and study an engineering course technical engineering course you don’t have to do that the rest of your life it’ll provide you with sweeter tools that allows you to go into those areas but also if you choose or if that job

Falls away or if the opportunity ities change you will be able to adapt and this is the sort of message that we need to get across to young people and to people like Nathan to say actually there are a suite of opportunities available to University might be one college might

Be another but they don’t lock you into a particular pathway permanently um you and one of the strengths one of the international strengths of the UK education system is that we’ve got um a system that allows you to vary a little bit and obviously if you’re employer funded they would

Quite like you to do the thing they funded you to do the dirty secret is you don’t actually have to and that can be a message that can be actually quite powerful to young people making choices at the start of their lives that they are not locking themselves and

Committing themselves to a pathway forever thank you I’d like to pass to Nikki please yeah I think uh you know careers education is um fundamental part the biggest driver of careers education is parents and the L Cape is very confusing for parents um and every parent wants their young person to go

Into a well-paid career um they want to know that that job’s there for um however many years they may be in employment and it’s recognized in that point that actually you don’t go into a job for life anymore that’s a security blanket that you have but it’s um it’s those transferable

Skills that are needed to to progress through so I think um making the the education and careers landscape easier to navigate for parents is is fundamental part we seem to be lacking a um a career strategy um nationally um and locally everybody is trying to do

Their their best uh but they’re doing it in um in silos um so in West yorshire we now have the combined Authority who are pulling careers education together um so that there is um that Clarity that goes to parents and to and to young people because the the vast array of careers

Out there are significant you’re not going to understand all of the roles that that were talked about how could you um but it has to be seen in a much wider context as well because the uh GCSE curriculum is extremely academic um and it drives students in a certain

Certain way um so if we’re serious about opening up techn technical education yes you have to have careers education but you actually have to have the the the keystage uh three and four curriculum that leads up to it as well um that shares it I’m also going to take the

Opportunity to go back against what Edward said because it would be remiss of me not to um so and and as as Nathan has said as well the you know University is not for everyone but it is it absolutely has a role to play um and by saying that col um university businesses

Level four five6 that to me sounds like it’s okay to wonder fund Fe um and to have the salary dispense you know the difference between the two institutions in our bill in our College you can go from an entry level um qualification in plumbing through to a BSE degree apprenticeship uh Building Services

Engineering apprenticeship um and that’s um life-changing for for some people um and we have you know the benefit of technical expertise every one of our tutors is an expert in their subject as I’m sure they are in universities um and we have the ability to um to teach

Students in much smaller groups um and have the benefits of direct employer engagement that has um you know through the apprenticeship route you know the the social Mobility angle of it is significant um I absolutely think that universities and Fe colleges need to collaborate more uh to make the

Landscape easier um but absolutely it’s our business as well thank you before I pass through the next question I’m just going to just check if any of other panel members would like to just contribute this bit Yeah I was actually going to say um I I agree with Nikki

What Nikki said about high school kind of not having anything to prepare you for technical educ no real experience of technical education and not and the little that it does have it doesn’t it’s not encouraged I mean um resistant materials which was about as close as we

Got to engineering at High School uh when my sister tried to go into it she was actually discouraged from doing it um she was actually told it was for lower academically achieving students which I mean is a real shame and luckily she went on to do it anyway but

Um but she but it it was a bit I it was really shocking to hear that and then it just kind of gives the impression that it’s not as it’s not on the same level as universities it’s that I think it’s important to get it in teachers Minds as well as um parents

Minds is to just that is on an equal footing and and it it really um can give you uh the same opportunities for for progressing thank you can can I just make one very quick point there I mean fundamentally schools of information advice and guidance shouldn’t be um left

To teachers who have their own extremely challenging roles to cover and often let’s be honest a lot of teachers have come straight from University or college or training and into um into schools um and schools should have access to properly trained career Specialists um it is a it is a trained profession

Um it is a is a proper occupation it should be treated more seriously and as Nikki says we really could do with a national career strategy thank you I think we have one final question in person and then we’ll go online thanks very much Johnny Rich from the engineering Professor Council and

Among other places um I’m I’m nervous about sounding unnecessarily cynical here because genuinely I think we all would applaud the efforts to address the supply side of um uh higher technical qualifications and um and filling the skills needs from the supply side but it I’m not seeing in engineering a massive

Number of students wanting to do engineering who are not able to get places on a course somewhere albe it not a um a level six degree and um so what about what about anything that’s changing will address the student demand need why will a student suddenly want to

Do the courses that not even Edward pek knows what they mean I mean and if he doesn’t know then no one does I’m not an engineer I if how picking up on the careers I a point how are people supposed to know that these courses exist how are they

Supposed to want to do them because you know you know they’re not falling over themselves to become quantity surveyors or Engineers or to F fill many of these other skills needs thank you who’ like to uh start it’s people it’s people seeing where the jobs are and I assume

That being a finite element analys an analyst or a programable logic controller means it has something to do with the fact that Mansfield’s on the M1 it has DHL it has Amazon these are things to do with how you run an automated Distribution Center and what the companies want is people

Who could know how to fix the line when it goes down I assume that’s what this is about it’s more sophisticating that but fundamentally it’s that and they can’t get them and so what people will see either because they work for those companies already or because they start

To see the opportunities hang on a minute they they can’t recruit those people they’ll start to be working somewhere else they’ll start to take these modules because the skills absolutely connect with the jobs they’re seeing advertised in the local papers because their vacancies are there and

They’re there now my my other example is green retrofit construction workers we launched the course quite speculatively level four uh hnc in in green retrofit thinking well just see see what happens again modular two days a week you can do work around your other job we got about

30 students in the first intake from a standing start because people recognize There’s jobs and their employers who need green retrofit skills there ain’t no point talking about changing all your boilers from gas to whatever else you might want to put in if no one can do it

So I think people are actually quite smart and employers are quite smart seeing gaps in the market and they want the provision and I think much of this will be Supply Le and it has to be really local so I’m talking about a population of about quarter a million uh

In Mansfield and Ashfield it’s that local and if it’s that local it’s in the local College it’s place they’re used to going they know it they’re going to go they’ll feel comfortable there it’s going to work so I may disagree with I think Nikki about some of the ways you

Do this but the Fe relationship has got to be sorted out it’s got to be where the people want to go be pointless trying to run that in Nottingham on our City Campus because people wouldn’t come thank you um well now can I absolutely I would never never miss the

Opportunity to answer one of Johnny’s questions um fundamentally the issue is that we simply don’t have enough people studying engineering and we haven’t for many years um and actually uh we’re far from the only Advanced economy that doesn’t have enough people studying engineering so you know you’re

Absolutely right from the demand side we are not short of places for students we’re sort of students who want to study engineering and and to be honest we all have a job to sell engineering as a career from my point of view as a labor market specialist you know I I look at

Engineering I think well this is an in demand secure well-paid job what a nightmare of course people don’t want to do that but actually when you when you talk to students they see it as difficult technically demanding often a little bit dull sorry Johnny but sometimes a little

Bit dull so I think we all need to do a job to explain to people um how these roles are important necessary vital and interesting but Johnny I think we’re looking the wrong place 38 of the people on those hncs H&S are mature I suspect a large majority never went to University

Yeah at 18 and what the lle will do is redefine what it means to go to university well we’ve also got the issue as as I mentioned from working with students in in in the Midlands is is that some people from from non-traditional H backgrounds associate engineering with industries that have

Gone and with and with um jooss my my family a lot of my family are from um Mid chesher from crew in particular which used to be the center of heavy engineering it’s all gone now um my my family you go you go way back they work

For foden the big big manufacturers out there um and in lots of parts of the country engineering is associated with industrial decline um and we have to make it clear that engineering is a job for the future not a legacy job that’s something that

We used to do and used to do well um but now uh you know large parts of the West Midlands and my my home areas of the Northwest um uh and and Scotland and South Wales um associate it with doesn’t necessarily have the best image and so

We do need to do some work on that kind of that kind of image particularly for the sorts of students that Edward deals with thank you we’re now going to pass on to the uh our virtual members is there any questions um that anyone’s posed Al yes yes there there are thank

You um first of all question directly to you Nathan um you changed your direction for higher education um what can the sector do to make your more young people aware of the choices available to them especially higher technical education um if there was a magic wand what would you do with

It in terms of making I think it really does come down to making people more aware of it um and I think that what the the issue was I just didn’t feel like there was any other path it was very single track um there was everyone was doing their uast applications and you

Just you you kind of get almost like carried along with the flow of it I think exposure to it early on and given people like uh Nikki was saying a bit more of experience of it during the time at high school is would really give people the opportunity to

See the values in it I think it would also increase the amount of people who are coming into engineering because you’d end up giving them that exposure to it early on so that they can see if it’s the right thing for them whereas I think when people don’t have that

Exposure to it they’re not seeing it uh as an opportunity they’re also seeing that um going to UNI is going to give them the best opportunities for income and earnings whereas the there’s a lot of opportunity for uh progressing in engineering to to to get wherever you

Want to be really so I think giving them the the exposure to it and and putting it on the the pedestal really deserves and showing people what what you can actually achieve in engineering is is is really important thank you thank you Nathan um another question as mentioned the landscape of education is

Increasingly complex whil it opens more options to Learners what would you consider to be the draw towards classroom based higher technical education like htq as opposed to an apprenticeship route which provides a wage while studying thank you Professor P yeah so I I think there were some issues about um

Completion rates aren’t there around apprenticeships which often I don’t think get quite enough attention and some of that’s about their sheer length of time it takes to fulfill them uh also sometimes people don’t do the endpoint assessment I think they’re going to tighten up the rules around that which

They need to because otherwise completion rates if we had those in higher education I think Susan had something to say about it um and I think some employers will start to move away as will their employees from that set piece maybe three five year apprenticeship towards a more flexible

Way of uh learning where you can do module provision which let’s face it will be you know not always but largely classroom based and you can take an extended period of time to do it while you’re working uh in the company which employs you so I think there be much

More of a view of well does it have to be an apprenticeship or could it be done through an htq on a modular basis over a period of time so I think that’s where some of the demand will come from and I’ve heard some major employers like

Transport for London I talk about that to me and say this is where we’re going to go with this when when we can uh really open up I think opportunities for a lot more people to change what they want to do to go from being a an train

Driver to being an HR specialist it’s that kind of thing I think will start happen much more um commonly thank you Al I think we have time for just one more question continuing on the theme of the lle um demand for the cost and modular study could be a challenge does the

Panel think modular courses will be popular and if so does the panel think they’ll be more expensive to run than a traditional program thank you I think I’ll pass to Nikki first yeah um I I do think there will be demand for for the modular approach because people’s lives

Are complicated um and it that ability to um to access provision when you want it and where you want it I think will be really important to people and um you know you use the example of retrofit um if you look at um the workforce for retrofitting this country’s housing

Stock it’s already out there it isn’t new people um so those um people who are in the workforce need to access the the right training at the right at the right place I do think there’s an issue still around um you know people managing full-time jobs and studies and the cost

Um sometimes and and a lack of willingness to take loans um for that education but I think that’s um something that can be overcome um but I do think it’s um you know as you say apprenticeships are are quite long um in duration and some of the issues around endpoint assessments are

Systemic um they aren’t um you know it’s in the design of the system um and I think LIF the the L will give people that flexibility of choice and particularly employers as well to access access um provision thank you Charlie one one of the things that um modular provision and micr credentialing also

Allow is um employees to really tweak um their provision to to fill Specialists and Niche roles um such as the ones that that Edward cited and and I’m I’m someone who actually works on the occupational classification system I I don’t know what those jobs are either um

So it is quite diff it is quite difficult but but um you know when you when you’re in a a large technical organization say a big it firm you will have a lot of very specialist subtly different roles that you will need filling and so the opportunity to offer

Modular training um and modular modular um skills provision in those areas will help to tweak some of those issues that we have um with the more Niche demand for skills um and I think they will become quite popular and I think they they’re particularly well suited to

Adult learning um and and for existing workers and for people with experience to to help um modify and build upon their own experiences to reach um those specialist roles that will be that that that exist now and will be available in the future they also allow a certain amount of

Flexibility um to anticipate future demand in things like for example the green Industries where we know there are likely to be emerging Technologies or um uh areas to do with AI for example where we know jobs will become available um and and to use the cliche which um which

Which I first heard oh many years ago you know for those jobs that we we don’t have names for yet um these these this form of provision will help to um root demand in that direction yeah just going just picking back up on the original question as well

The the complexity um and the um efficiency and being able to offer these qualifications is going to be very tricky because of that issue of not knowing what the demand is going to be so capacity building in the system is going to be really important so you know

The funding that’s that’s almost there to um you know to stimulate demand and to make sure that it can be accessed because what we don’t want is um providers not being able to offer um the the L you know in the areas that people want um in the first few years as it

Develops I guess that’s my point Nikki if you’re starting from from scratch you probably shouldn’t do it haven’t already got a pipeline of of employers and Learners through other routes then just offering an lle as a as a standing module will probably fail yeah that’s right and the administrative and

Regulatory regulative costs are going to be quite High um and and in particular if you haven’t got a a good well established record system um um and an administrative system it’s going to be pretty hard to to develop one from a standing start yeah well the efsa teach you that don’t they yes

Yeah thank you you thank you to our panel members um I’m just going to summarize um following and I tried my best to capture as as much as I can I think there’s um it’s been quite insightful to hear the different aspects with regards to our question from both

The funding of um employers trying to find staff to teach um these courses but also looking at the different definitions of what high quality means to different organizations and institutions I think that we’ve heard as well about what aspect is around that accessibility of knowledge both for primary caregivers um for their children

Who might be accessing in the future technical higher education but also the relationship between further education col um colleges but also across the education sector including um secondary education we’ve looked we’ve heard about some ideas around the need for National career strategy and looking at a way in

Which we can communicate all of this um so that local demand but also from from a national perspective that the right courses are being um taught and at a high quality level um and also looking at within both local and National that legacies whether it’s engineering or

Other different areas are not um are not restricted in getting future students to be studying I’d like to thank the panel members for joining us um Nikki Davis the principal and CEO at Leeds College of building we have Professor Edward peek Vice Chancellor and president of noan Trent University Nathan mold

Student representative at Newcastle College University Center and Charlie B head of Labor Market intelligence at JIS if you please put our hands together to thank our pan members thank you all I’ll now be passing back to John yes you don’t have to wait on the stage okay good

Thank you very much thank you to everyone and uh particular thanks to Edward for it’s very rare to be the regulator at a conference with your regulares where someone else says something that makes them the most unpopular person in the room so that’s that’s really handy thanks very

Much um I think before uh include that I think I just uh just as uh it would it would always be remiss to get a speech from Robert Halen in which uh he doesn’t mention the words degree apprenticeship so I would think it’ be remiss of me to

Miss any opportunity to talk about crossphase working and the importance of schools because I think what came through really powerfully there is uh that this is not a problem that can be solved in h alone or indeed in Fe Alone um uh and particularly uh Charlie talked

About par of esteem and the way in which that’s manifested if I had uh I’ve been involved in education policy for for 15 years and if I had a pound for every time the word parity of esteem had been used very casually I’d have I was going

To say better suit I’d have a suit to be wearing um here today um because it’s not a thing that’s in our rhetorical gift people will assert it and they will say we will have parity of esteem but it does often come back to for other people’s children and I think what’s so

Powerful about where we are the moment is that we’re talking about what that means in in real terms and I think particularly the importance of um genuinely strong professional outcomes for people from that work um but I think also what came through is that in order

To build the agency for young people to make those choices we need a much greater focus on work Discovery much younger it is simply the case as Nikki says that the the the job market if it was ever simple enough to understand in one uh afternoon being told it by your um

Your uh your form tutor certainly isn’t anymore and we need people to be out there understanding what’s involved in that and as someone who used to be in the I used to be the teacher responsible for doing work experience often children want on work experience for two weeks

And what they learned was that it’s very very boring working in a shop um which may or may not be a very useful thing to learn at some point in your life it doesn’t really tell you very much about what your options are um as you go into

The future so I think that that the point and power of doing that um I would say though and I think this is where it’s a really fascinating balance about how HF and schools talk about this is that um although there must be scope for those conversations in schools the

Fundamental um transferable skills are literacy and numeracy and I think one of the greatest barriers to engineering is not simply the reputation of engineering it’s it’s the quality of mathematics that students get and I think the most devastating thing we heard in that panel was Nathan’s comment that students were

Being told that things that were with your hands were to be done by those who were academically less successful um and fundamentally the the work that I’ve put in since I I joined the offs on encouraging um higher education to work with not work at or to uh schools is to

Ensure that the the quality of um learning across the curriculum um is stronger fundamentally we will never solve the equality barriers we face in h if we don’t see greater knowledge and skill development for all students particularly the most disadvantaged in in early years and I I do think that’s

Absolutely essential um but it can’t teach us can’t do that alone as Charlie says teachers don’t know the market when I was a teacher some asked me how they got a job with Goldman Sachs I I don’t know I’d apply if I were you was probably not what they were looking for

In terms of help um yeah yes I mean uh I I please don’t comment further on potentially liess comments about go gold s um thank you and uh the final point I make is that this is um the honest truth is that this country has never had this conversation particularly successfully we’ve never

Developed the skills um strategy across many decades that we wanted but I do feel that we are closer now and these conversations are being had between the sectors with a far greater openness and sense of transparency and that sense of the importance of of the demand of of

Technical skills across the economy is really important I think one of my um favorite visits that I’ve been on so far um uh was to the academy of live technology in which um students are are are being trained how to to do all of the many technical things that we can

See around us today um and the the the the essential point of understanding that there is a breadth of of jobs out there um that are not just traditional engineering jobs but are across the economy indeed in the um creative uh world as well I was also shown the thing

Where uh you can get a thing called toaster which makes you jump out of the stage and appear there and I did ask for it for today but I was told we were not allowed to have that so I am slightly disappointed um right uh it’s break time now uh which

You’ll be delighted about um so thank you all very much SE far for your uh insightful discussion and uh your questions we’re going to have a 20-minute break it’s 220 minutes you can find tea and coffee uh on the lower ground floor uh and I look forward to

Seeing everyone for the second half of our day in 20 minutes thank you very [Applause] much so uh we are uh we are back thank you very much uh very efficient uh uh timing so um we heard from our earlier panel about where uh technical higher

Education could take us uh and we wanted to spend our uh second panel discussion looking at how we establish the environment to uh take us there we know that there are a lot of different regulators and funders that work in this space as um Susan referenced earlier a

Cloud of U of acronyms um but if you can get an eight little word out of it you get a whole 50 extra points um so we want to use it thank you John so laugh there um we want to use our time now uh now to think about how we can develop

The system for providers and students so that it works for them uh and as Susan mentioned in Her speech the different players do bring different uh skills and experience to bear in this area uh and the decisions on how that framework is established are are quite rightly ones for

Government um but we are interested in how we at the offs shape our approach uh to ensure that we deliver the environment in which excellent technical higher education can flourish so let me uh I can look over there I so uh how do we create an enabling environment

Support technical uh higher education um so joining us uh for this uh panel um uh are uh to my left leis Cooper the director uh of the independent Commission on the College of the future uh John cope uh the executive director of strategy uh for uh ukas um ukas does

It doesn’t stand for anything anymore it’s just UK now are you University College mission service it is still that you’re not just you’re not just like a single word anymore um uh and then uh but also of course uh the doorway for increasing applications for apprenticeships um Jack Smith who is uh

Off’s head of Pathways and uh funding policy um uh Dr Mandy Crawford Lee the CEO of the University vacational Awards Council um and uh online I think I hope it is uh uh Kiara uh Cavalia um a research Economist from the London School of Economics um so I’m going to ask each uh

Panelist uh in turn to respond to the formative questions uh um I’m going to ask you to take about two minutes in uh in your initial responses and then we will take questions from the audience here um and online so um I’m going to start in the order I have here uh which

Starts with uh Kiara if that’s all right Kiara yeah okay yes thank you and sorry for not being there um I just just said that in my two minute talk I will mainly focus on degree apprenticeships or higher level apprenti ships because because this is basically the focus of my research and I

Should say that degree apprenticeships are becoming quite popular and quite appealing to students so a a big issues in terms of participation is actually the fact that there are not enough places for students and this and the other is main issu is that access is not equal so these um apprenticeships are

Quite uh competitive and um at least between 2015 and 2020 which is the period that we that we were looking at that we were researching on um degree apprentices were mainly 25 years old of older there were mainly people living in the richest areas and there were mainly

People with an academic background and mainly students with a very top um prior attainment which is M basically one what one could think when if one thinks about access to University but not necessarily what one would think of an apprenticeship which should be or could be a tool to promote social mobility and

To reduce inequality so uh I think that um there could be things that could be make done to increase a more and to to promote a more kind of equal access at at the school level so at the Learners level for example there might be as it

Was also mentioned in the panel this morning um higher exposion or better advice career guidance but also like direct help for example in the application process or um mock session in interview process because um access to this type of apprenti is actually very different from um the selection process is very different from

The selection process from a university but there should also be or there could also be um intervention targeting firms so that they are actually open to um hire um different type of apprentices so one possibility could be uh I don’t know grants or tax tax reliefs if The

Hired apprentices are younger people or people from disadvantage backgrounds or even uh focusing on Levy payers um conent do I don’t know regulate such that part of the levy fund is basically um used to for these type of apprentices which I mean I’m not sure whether employers

Would be happy about but um it would be good if uh apprenticeship could actually be a tool to give opportunities also to those who are less academically able but who can be great employees to kind of reach higher places in their career and their labor market

Outcomes and I stop here I i’ have other things to say but I stopped here because I think I’ve already passed my two minutes thank you very much Kiara um John thank you very much um so I I want to add to the alphabet spaghetti uh for

A moment in that I’m also board member uh of the institute for friendships um which is the offs is of Sister Sister regulator in the skills and friendship system so I would start by um saying thank you for the good relationship uh between the offs and Institute for

Friendships and I think that’s one of the really important bits actually of answering this question is that this The Regulators and the system talks to each other and we don’t end up in silos because for me you Fe he apprenticeships you know they’re all trying to in many

Ways achieve exactly the same thing they try to give people the best start in life the best career the best outcomes uh and it’s just a different route to it so having that collaboration is is brilliant um the three points I would like to make I suppose but in order to

Answer this question is first around careers advice um second around quality uh and third around Fair access so on careers obviously the big thing what ucast does is careers advice um and we’ve been working with universities colleges independent uh training providers over the last few years to try and really properly integrate higher

Technical qualifications apprenticeship undergraduate part-time International students all of it in one place Place uh and try to make it as joined up and as efficient as possible both the provider of but also the recipient of and we did a huge amount of work in in in merging

Careers advice because we know that even though there’s a really good news story that about 50% of people who come to ukat are interested in doing an apprenticeship or technical education people aren’t necessarily seeing as prestigious or as easy to get to it so by merging that careers advice and

Making sure that people do have all of the options in front of them from the age of 13 14 15 onwards is absolutely absolutely vital um the second point about quality um I think this is the the most tangible change that I’ve seen over the last s 10 years uh in the system

That you know university has always been seen undergraduate has always been seen is just the gold standard we are blessed with world-class universities and too often the apprenticeship side of it has been seen as something else something almost like sort of commiseration prize for people who haven’t quite done well enough and I

Think fundamentally that has shifted in the last 10 years and seeing so more parents so many young people so many adults seeing apprenticeships as a really prestigious route and actually some of our best universities embracing apprenti ships in just the same way I think has really fundamentally had a

Massive cultural change but in order to answer this question create the right environment maintaining that focus on quality is is really really important and if all of that good stuff I’ve just spoken about is there the the bad side is the Dropout rates in apprenticeships and Technical education are still too

High you know you look at the undergraduate routs dropouts are you know still too big but but very very small in some friendchips you know the Dropout is approaching 50% so there there is an area there of quality and finally just on fairness um that the sudden trust did an amazing piece of

Research um with UK and and the social ability Commissioners done the same bit of research that because appren ships often unless unless they’re within the university and you know 80% of apprenti ships are done roughly in in an independent training provider if they are in that kind of scenario there

Aren’t all the fair access plans that John so expertly puts together you know there is not all of the same mechanisms there to make sure access is fair and the social ability uh commission research and sust Trust research has found that some really prestigious apprenti ships especially at degree

Level are now harder to get into and more privileged than Oxbridge can be so there is an element there the system just needs to mature and it needs to build up to the same that universities and the fair access plans have um the other bit of fair access um to

Apprentiship I would talk about um is the it’s where I started you know the good news story at ucast is that 50% of people are interested in doing friendships that’s four 500,000 people a year we aggregate appren ships from all four nations from the government systems from the employers we talk to

Universities and colleges and we still only have about 5,000 apprenti ships on ucast at one time or another so there is a massive Mi mismatch between the demand which is dramatically increased and actual Supply and the apprentiship levy has done a very good job in doubling the amount of uh funding for apprenticeships

But it’s just nowhere near enough so for me there is a big question is what I would like to to end on is how do we get more money into apprenti ships more money into the technical education because and that is for me and and and

Ucast the biggest blocker um in order to make the system um as Fair as quality and as easy to access as possible thank you John Mandy thanks John uh good good morning everybody um just to remind you who juac is really so juac has been around for almost 25 years and we have

Been championing higher level technical learning and to support higher education institutions to deliver uh those skills programs that the economy needs for for some time so I’m absolutely on the right p panel uh sitting in the right chair um and I’m going to pretend that you are

The new government sorry Robert but I’m going to be addressing you as the new skills minister in terms of what yac would say as being the nine asks of a new government to enable that environment to support technical higher education and the first really is to do a better job actually identifying the

Skills gaps and short that are holding uh UK PLC back and I think a clearer National picture is need to the skills UK will require and I think the if8 another eony as as John has said I think is in a probably a very good position to

Do just that given that they do manage the development of those occupational standards um for over 690 occupations from level two to level s and they underpin our technical uh education system I think something which we didn’t we kind of hinted at in this morning’s uh earlier panel which is around

Actually investment so I think there needs to be some debate around increasing the collective government individual and employer investment in Technical and professional Education and Training and I think actually government should facilitate a national debate on how to increase overall investment in skills programs to raise productivity if

That is the purpose of our skill system um and I think the debate should really focus on the relative role of responsibilities of the state individual employer in paying for vocational education and training if you think about the lifel learning entit entitlement Ed talked about the greater need by certainly employers to have

Individuals and to take those shorter courses those more modularized sort of programs well actually that falls on the individual to meet the cost of so what is the skill in the game for those employees who want to have those skills actually delivered in their workplace thirdly I think we need to look about

Supporting the development of skills provision that reflects the needs of the economy and the public sector and the priority should be given to those Provisions that actually meet skills gaps and shortages and that are more closely aligned the current and future skills needs the economy and public

Sector and I think the role of the offs as regulator alongside the education skills funding agency DF and Ed should be to focus on how skills provision deliver delivered reflects those skills needs a lot of what we’re talking about is around language and the development

Of a of a culture I think I think fostering the development of a culture of lifelong learning that values learning at all levels and all ages is still really important and I hate to say about Kiara you kind of fell into the same trap of talking about too often uh

The skills debate focusing on the needs prioritized provision for young people rather than the older Workforce or focusing on those entering the uh the workforce newly from schools and colleges rather than having a focus on existing Workforce lower level skills needs uh rather than uh looking at sort

Of higher level skills needs I think all individuals can develop the skills needed at all levels needed to raise performance and productivity and attitudes to a management provision for example typifies the current culture it’s one of our biggest determinants of low productivity and yet we still have government insisting that we have too

Much uh management leadership provision particularly in apprenticeships I think uh a really important point to make actually is that we still don’t get the recognition for the role that universities play in delivering skills provision so getting that recognition and acceptance that actually we have uh a very different

Skills system too often skills policy programs and provision are seen as synonimous with further education and I think John’s mention of the change perception of the role of H in the delivery of apprenticeships is really meaningful as part of that debate clearly we’ve talked about inclusivity and access absolutely those

Skills programs should actually uh support social Mobility social justice and enhance Workforce diversity insufficient focus is currently placed on social Mobility that happens over the age of 24 again back to K’s points greater emphasis is needed on family background and progression uh to a profession or graduate occupation we

Have too much emphasis actually on what an apprenticeship and a skill system system should be because they’re most overly concerned with young people’s opportunities I think my final point would be that to ensure that all funds raised through the apprentiship levy are spent on apprentiship and that any

Surplus are retained with spent on future apprenticeships or related High technical uh training programs we need to support greater flexibility in h provision and delivery clearly the lle and the the htq developments represent a significant and welcome uh development new approaches to develop shorter credit bearing provision needs to be developed

Absolutely as to approaches to credit transfer and recognition and I think we need a national debate around the role of credit uh in our skills our future skills system and I think finally uh my plea would be to focus on Evolution and not Revolution I think technical education professional education skills

Has been plagued by short termism uh continual change and a lack of stability I like the fact that actually under this government we have had some some settlement around the value particularly of highend degree apprenticeships but actually new governments tend to make wholesale replacement changes so I would

Caution against doing that so I think my final plea would be that actually to secure the future for higher technical education delivered by universities and H we need to get the language right we don’t need to bipoc the system as a as as being academic over here Technical

And Vocational over here or that we’ve got academic or vocational Learners look at what we’ve done in apprenticeships they’re not technical or academic they’re both they are required they are requirement at every level for a greater level of knowledge and underpinning of of knowledge and behaviors so we’ve raised the expectations around what

Achievement looks like in Technical vocational professional education skills thank you very much Mandy L thanks very much um and great to be here and um so I’m director of The Independent Commission on the College of the future we a uk-wide um commission looking at the role of colleges working with

Universities and others in meeting the big challenges that we face um and I’m also director of public affairs and campaigns at the association of colleges representing colleges in England um I want to make three um simple points um the first point is we know very well um

That we have a big gap in terms of higher technical provision um in England and a whole raft of of of reports and reviews have made this case very clearly I was rereading um the Aur um chapter on it that Edward and Allison who’s going

To be speaking in a bit made an very very clear case that we’ve got a gap here that we need to address go back to Dearing we had a very clear recognition that there’s a massive Gap so and we compare very poorly to other similar Nations when it comes to this and that’s

Only going to accelerate with changes in the world and work so this is a big gap that we need to address first point second point is we have a failure of the market addressing this Gap and we have a an example of market market failure that we need to address um and the

Market failure is on the demand side and the supply side and that came out in the earlier session um we need to support employers to understand the need to look at higher technical um degrees uh qualifications rather than necessarily degrees so there’s supporting there and there’s a huge piece of work that the

Panel have been talking about in terms of driving up demand from people to look at these qualifications so a challenge there but also on the supply sides um highly competitive and that only is it risks only accelerating and I’ll talk about that a bit more system just isn’t delivering

Locally um so colleges who traditionally have delivered a huge amount of this provision and commonly do so in other systems so in Scotland 30% of H delivered in colleges and that’s that’s very much um their space in Canada similarly in lots of other successful systems colleges just don’t have the

Conf the investment um the um to to make the long-term um uh scaling up that’s going to be required in high technical provision um so the market isn’t delivering um for anyone um at a local level so final point is we need um Market intervention to look at this and

I want to draw out just five very brief examples where I think we need to be much more assertive about how we address that firstly um and it’s a point we commonly make we have no National Education and skill strategy so we don’t set out any where what we need from the

Education and skills system um and we have no body looking across government across the whole raft of different public policy challenges we Face to say this is what we need and if we did have one top of the list or very high up the

List would be that we have a big gap in higher technical provision that we need to address and much more assertive about what we need institutions to do to address that second point then is around local skills and Edward talked about that we’ve got local skills Improvement

Plans a lot of energy gone into making them work we really need to look at how we um have a better balance of voices um as part of local skills Improvement plan so that we’re challenging employers to think about um things that might not be on their immediate list of priorities

But they need to be thinking about longer term High higher technical skills will be very much there and we need to think about how we have local skills and Improvement plans as a much stronger partnership between colleges universities um and others um and at the

Moment there there’s a lot of work to do um on that third point and this is where you get into really thinking about how the market operates at a local level I think we really need to be much clearer about the expectations of colleges and universities working together and we had

A really good discussion on that earlier I thought um I think we should be looking at much more robust expectations on collaboration um and as an example in emergency services the policing and crime act in 2017 set a duty on Emergency Services to collaborate where it drives up quality efficiency and

Effectiveness of the service um and just when you look at that there were lots of areas where um for example mental health support was an issue that was affecting all of the different emergency services but it was nobody’s obvious Core Business and what what’s happened in lots of local places is people saying

Here’s a gap that we need to address how can we invest together in this how do we drive demand how do we um develop more coherent Services who’s leading on what and that I think is the kind of mature conversation that we need to be having locally and regionally and indeed

Nationally to think about the respective complementary roles of providers to drive up what is as I say a market failure at the moment um so I think we really do need to get that into that and I think that does involve the conversation that Edward picked up on

Thinking about the taxonomy of who’s doing what um I think colleges have a n natural um leadership role here working with universities and I think there has to be local specificity and context applied there um fourth point is addressing that um learner um and employer demand so we do need to look at

The careers information device and guidance um system um and how that’s much more coherent locally and nationally but also supporting join up with other services um and we do need to look at um investing in um supporting employers um to understand what they need from the from the skill system um

And the fifth point is then of course we’re at an offs um conference thinking about the regulatory environment so how do we make sure that the regulatory environment in which colleges and smaller providers operate doesn’t um impede um or undermine um engagement with the H um side of their work so I

Suppose those are five five areas where I need to think about concluding point would be none of this is going to be easy so thinking about Partnerships thinking about doing things differently is hard in any in any context thinking about the system good alongside your institutional hat is hard in any context

Partnership is hard it’s even harder in a context where you’ve had 13 years of funding cuts for the further education sector and and real pressures on the University sector in terms of funding too so there’s a real risk in in all of this that we do have a survival of the

Fittest FN fight I think we there’s a real risk we see that with the lle and I think we do really need to rise above that and think about how can we work much um have these difficult conversations about partnership and think how we can come together much more

Coherently and that that’s going to be the only way actually that we make a compelling case to any future Chancellor um for investment in the whole of the ter C system because we’ve really got our act together in terms of how we’re going to work together and address all

Of these big challenges that I’ve spoken to so I’ll stop there and thanks very much no thank you thank you very much for this um so Jack uh you’ve heard uh all of the problems how is offs going to solve all of them thanks joh ever ever

The easy intro yeah um so we have been thinking about uh our role in this technical education space and I would start and I think beautiful Segway from Lewis uh because it’s really helpful that whenever you talk about growth in technical education a major feature of providers responses is about regulation it’s about

Regulation and overlap and it’s about the clarity and transparency that that providers have and with our other haton at the offs it’s also about funding and those those same features of clity and transparency and predictability are there so so when we think about the work

That the offs needs to do we think about both regulation and funding and we think about Clarity and predictability so we expect that our job over the next 5 to 10 years is enabling those decision makers in colleges in universities in private providers to understand what it means to start delivering more technical

Education so how do you get more Supply you get those decision makers to say yes I’m going to invest my time and energy in delivering a different kind of program than the ones that I’m delivering now so in regulatory terms um you can see that we’re starting to have

Those conversations with the sector on lle through our call for student outcomes we’re talking about how we’re going to regulate hdqs through our student outcome regulation measures and the idea is that we set that out in advance that colleges universities private providers can all see that’s what’s going to happen if I deliver

These courses and they can be certain of the way in which we’ll regulate and then the same thing applies to our funding how do you know that it’s worth investing your time and energy in developing these courses and I would say that um Andy mentioned changes in

Government I think this is an area where you’ve probably all got pilot fatigue the idea that the solution to this problem is another 10 million pounds applied in a very particular way over a short period of time so one of the things that we’re focusing on as we look

At our funding Arrangements is trying to provide as much kind of foresight of where the funding Arrangement is going to go some of that isn’t in our gift some of that is B we get an annual settlement from government so there there is obviously some unpredictability

There but you can see in our latest degree appren ship fund that we’ve done what we can to set out actually two years worth of funding rather than one year and we know that we need to go further and we’ll do what we can but the aim of that is to give predictability

And certainty as we come to look our funding methodologies in the future whether whether it’s right that you use kind of those accelerator programs or whether you need to build in kinds of course-based uh supplements that we have in other areas the questions we want to ask ourselves and in coming to

Conclusions around how we regulate those things and how we fund those things we know it’s really important that we listen to the sector’s views on how that happens so that collection of uh agencies who are working in the space we see it as our job to talk with them so

We regularly speak with ifate and ofstead and esfa and offall and all the others but also to talk to you about what that means for you so if you’re starting down the path of doing degree apprenticeships and you offset are coming to inspect you what does that

Mean for your ofs regulation and being really clear about what that what that will mean for you going forward so so those features of clarity and predictability are what we seeking to do to contribute towards the conducive environment for enabling technical education and the same thing sits in

Funding we’re not sitting here with all of the levers in our control but we are committed to the offs to do what we can in this space to be as clear and predictable as possible thank you very much Jack um so you’ve heard our uh opening set of contributions I’d now

Like to open the floor for questions uh or try and take uh questions in uh Bunches of three maybe take two from the room and then one online uh so if Al’s ready for that at the back should say in my thing it it says Al as though it’s AI

Which made me think that we were going to get AI question apparently we’re not doing that for for very sensible reasons um so if we can start here if you could just say your name and institution uh as you start thank you panel um I’m Jenny pagee from the Gatsby charitable

Foundation and I thought I’d say a couple of positive things I think we’ve had a bit of U negativity in terms of of Partnerships um we have been working closely with the Institutes of Technology who you will know are Partnerships between eff colleges universities and employers um there are

A relatively new range of Partnerships focusing on stem higher technical education um and there’s a lot of potential um within that group going forward um career guidance um the Gatsby benchmarks uh for career guidance um we’ve just been um reviewing we’ve had them for nearly 10 years um reviewing

And looking at the next 10 and we’ve got a huge amount of positivity from schools and colleges about the impact of those benchmarks I thought I’d bring a bit of positivity to the room um my question and I think it’s been touched on a number of times particularly by Lewis is

About uh Regional um issues um I’m wondering um what um additional money or powers that you would give to leps or combined authorities um to support technical higher education in the regions better thank you very much another question please uh one from this side of the room sorry

Sean thank you um Joy Elliot Bowman from independent higher education um I’ve I’ve going to pick up um quickly on John’s point about 50% of apprenticeships um not not apprentices not completing their courses and and this is part of my you what I think I’m wondering how we do to create that

Environment for technical higher education we asked our members about this dropout rate the the number one reason was actually the evolution of work it was that students are starting an apprenticeship and Midway through that apprenticeship they’re changing job and the original apprenticeship is no longer applicable and the work that it

Takes to switch to a new apprenticeship is so challenging um that they leave the apprenticeship but continue um that new job they switch employees and again this changing nature of work it’s more common for people to switch Employers in that early career stage whether they’re shifting careers or starting a new one

So in terms of supporting technical higher education what I wanted to know from the panel is what are the things that need to change what are the barriers to actually supporting um more flexibility and more transfer between the various models of technical higher education because I I agree that we we

Call it academic sometimes when actually it’s just as technical as it would be in htq it just happens to fall under a degree model um so we’ve got apprenticeships we’ve got these higher technical qualifications we’ve got qualifications on level four and five of the rqf we have um level four five and

Six on the fheq including degrees Foundation degrees as well how do we make it so that students can switch between these models if they leave a job that has an apprenticeships they can switch into an htq or a technical qualification and take something with them how do we make it what are the

Barriers what do we need to change to create create flexibility between all of these different types of technical higher education that allows students to complete the qualification they need and want as their job and their career changes Pace thanks very much joy and Al

Do you want to give us one from the back thank you panel has made lots of suggestions about creating an enable environment but if you could make just one change to the regulatory or funding environment to support growth in higher technical education what would it be thank you very much so we’ve got

Questions about the the powers that various Regional entities might have um consideration of how um higher Technical vocational training um matches to the increasing Flex of the labor market and what regulatory change we would most make I’ll go backwards through the panel in the order they came so um Jack what

Regulatory change would you make to the regulator that we both work for and and and indeed any other part of those questions so let’s go outside of the one that we work for and then and then internally um so I think that um so Joy you talked about the

Overlapping regimes and one of the the great beauties of English higher education is its diversity you solve the problem you described by having a national curriculum for H and the I don’t that is not the thing that we want so what I think that you need to move towards

Is the sector having that conversation in ways that make sense for it so and what I mean by that and Mandy and I were having this conversation L uh discussion the other day actually if a student takes a modular a 30 credit module in an environment where they’re encouraged to credit

Transfer actually they need to know that they can take that and go somewhere else and it’s and that’s true for all of those qualifications actually at this point in time I don’t think that you would be guaranteed of being able to do that and colleagues in colleges would

Tell you that their students would find it quite hard to go into University sometimes and vice versa but actually the connections that need to be made between institutions in London look very different to the connections that need to be made in Cumbria and and trying to apply a national piece of Regulation to

Resolve those issues I think is difficult um and that’s why I think it’s really important to connect to the point that was made about that JY made about leps that we need to as far as we can provide flexibility for GE graphical regions that make sense in themselves to resolve

Some of those issues because I don’t think you’re going to have a national higher education credit transfer system in time for the launch of La in 2025 um but actually I do think and I’m certain that Edward tell you in Nottingham that there’s sensible conversations to be had

At city and Regional basis about how those things operate in your areas and it’s those conversations that are critically important so I would in terms of a a regulatory change I think that a a a way of enabling or requiring depending on your persuasion um cooperation at that Regional level is

Really important um I’m old enough to remember working with people who worked in government offices in education departments and they weren’t brilliant all of the time but actually one of the things that they did do was bring those people together in the right place thank you thank you Jack all three questions

Answered seamlessly there there’s some topnotch paneling there so uh High bar for everyone else uh Lewis thanks well I’ll try similarly starting with joy joy um sorry the point the point at the back so what what one ask um would I do and then I turn I I think Matt Weston at

Your conference two weeks ago I think made the point um argued that um uh if in government he do a review of the approach of um regulation and funding across the tertiary system and I think that would be an eminently sensible thing to do to look at coherence um coherence across the system

And I think in terms of the question at the back then that’s what that’s the one change is moving to towards a much more joined up systemic approach I think that has to start with some national body and I think that has to start with a national strategy

Um on jinny’s point then you then think about what does that look like at a regional level and you’re absolutely right to say um there are real successes with iots they have really strengthened um really good local Partnerships between institutions in exactly the train that we want to be the evolution

Of them has to be how do you embed that into the wider system um so are iots really embedded into what’s happening with elips definitely not are they really embedded into coherent strategies that happening at MTA level definitely not so I think it’s that join up and

That bedding in that has to be part of the um part of the picture which then then speaks to the point and we we we are um we’ll have a report out in the new year making the case for evolution of elips and that has to be um about it

Being one plan not one of many I think you do need kind of um bringing it all together um it doesn’t make sense for Andy Burnham to have a plan here and the elip to have another plan there at all one plan embedded into the Devolution

Agenda and it has to involve a duty and that’s why I said that duty to collaborate a duty on providers in a mature way to come together and saying what are we doing collectively to respond to this and who’s doing what and where are the areas where we need to

Take some risk and who’s going to lead on that because if we all if if if we leave it to the market there either nobody will take the risk or we’ll be will continue to compete in a very unproductive way so I think much more pressure um on that um and and similarly

Echo the point then in terms of Joy Joy’s question then um trying to have a really coherent approach to transfer at National level you know not possible but looking at the Scottish model articulation agreements at a regional level can work really well and I I’d absolutely be doing that um local

Regional within the context of an elip um geography I think thanks leis um Mandy oh thanks John I was going to say come to me last um I’ll start with the uh the last question actually around one small change to higher technical education because it does speak to I think what we

Do need which is a a national debate around a national mechanism for the recognition of credit translation and transfer because it’s not enough to have an inconsistent approach by Provider by provider and in apprenticeships of course there is a more consistent approach because the funding rules require every institution to take into

Consider prior learning or experience so I think we do need I think that National debate if not that National change and yac in its consultation response to the early consultation on the L said why are we not having more of a discussion about it I think if I was going to tag

Anything else onto that which would be my point around actually a more healthy discussion about who contributes to the cost of training and I think that again those two conversations do need to happen Jean your question about you know what what further monies or Powers we could devolve I’m not sure actually

Whether or not I could answer that easily um I I think potentially have we exhaust the evolution debate you know um you know I I think the regional aspect is absolutely critical but let’s not forget about National skills short and the requirements to plan more effectively at a national level I think

Actually it’s about whether or not those combined authorities those local plans can actually you know have more effect when it comes to accountability because if you think about the combination of providers in any locality it’s a very different picture it’s not about just localism your universities have an international profile as do increasingly

Uh independent training providers have a much more National profile as do fa colleges if you think about the way in which they’re they’re now grouped but I think actually you know as as I’ve been a national skills commissioner before looking at a skills blueprint I think it

Is about actually getting a better sense of the change that’s happened all all too often and and I’ve said it again and again we still talk about our system that’s almost like going back to the 1970s and I think we just need a reconceptualization about what we’re wanting from our combination of

Universities and colleges and every other type of deliverer including employer providers so let’s just recalibrate even in the early design of the advanced British standard we’ve got the IFA talking about academic Pathways and vacational Pathways okay and I think well we’re talking about choices here how did I go

From being a history graduate being the chief exective most authoritative voice on higher and degree apprenticeships it wasn’t a linear process big chunking government I would say but actually we just need to be a little bit more outward thinking and open-minded Joy your question around the

Inc you know the the the race at which we don’t have completions in apprenticeships massive program issue few of than one and two complete their apprenti ship lots of reasons and there are some positive reasons within that who talked about the evolution of the workplace the fact that some of our

Apprentiship programs are six years long for example rapid change in that in that period is likely to happen it speaks again to how we do recognize those stepping off points the design principle for the appren reforms was it’s all about the completion of the apprenticeship the apprenticeship is

What we’re looking to gain esteem around this is not about actually getting a a level five or a level four qualification because you decided to step away from your training program but maybe there is something there that actually talks about the flexibility so I think actually some of that transfer that

Recognition of the value of what’s being gained through a work-based training program I think is where again speaks to how we look at credit and how we translate the value of that learning thanks very much Mandy although of course the correct answer to your question is that it’s because history

Graduates are are awesome and better than other people um uh John thank you John um so uh first Just A J’s uh question thank you so much for everything the Gatsby Foundation does um the Gatsby Bene marks have been transformative um and I think they’ve had enormous impact uh on careers advice

Um to the point where we have aligned a lot of our careers advice to them so thank you so much um for that on the on the regionalism question it’s a really difficult one because you don’t want to create a postcode Lottery and you don’t want to create

Fragmentation um and I you know I was brought up in Grimsby um and too you John exactly put aside history graduates it’s it’s people from grimsy that really make this run um but um you know the the the problem with that uh when it comes to technical apprenticeships um is that

The local labor market decides your opportunities not in the way that higher education tends not to uh and therefore if I wanted to stay in Grimsby and I want to do an apprenticeship of technical education I’d have to to look at the local labor market and try and

Find something and now if fishing was what I wanted to do in my career I’m in luck if it if it isn’t then I’m not in luck so there is an issue with Technical and apprenticeships that the local labor market could be quite constricting not

So when you’re in a big city where there is a really diverse lab Market but when you’re in more rural areas so my my my um encouragement I suppose on on the regionalism agenda is that I I worry about Mayors and combined authorities um creating fragmentation try to their own

Qualifications their own systems their own stuff because it drives employers mad it drives applicants mad and actually a lot more energy focused on helping um gaps filling gaps in certain subjects helping smmes which most struggle with a lot of this system for me feels like the most sort of value ad

In the region agenda um thank you Joy um for for your question and of course all your members IV think they some of the most in Innovative and exciting uh members in the system so a lot of all the good ideas that we’re talking about today often come from them so thank you

So much um for that um on the Dropout rates you’re absolutely right that a lot of the reasons for those Dropout rates are incredibly legitimate um and at The Institute for appren ships we have t- Lev uh students and apprentices coming into every single board meeting and we

Talk to them we ask about their experience and so many of those Dropout rates are because um they are offered a job the employee says I want to employ you and they go well I’ve be mad to say no to that so they they fall out of their friendship because they’ve got

What they want or their family circumstances change or they want to shift or whatever so there are some really legitimate reasons for Dropout rates but there is a problem in the system that too many people still are turning up to do apprenticeships um and not realizing that they’re an apprentice

And it’s been mold to them and that they get there and the experience is much more different than they’re expecting um or they don’t see the value in that endpoint assessment in that qualification and that’s where at ucast we do a huge amount of work of having City Guides employer profiles employer

Guides employers are now at our physical events and things like that so that people can actually meet the employer understand what experience they’re going to have so when they turn up it’s not a surprise and lots of bad reasons for dropouts are are addressed and then finally on the last question and I’m

Going to take John’s uh challenge about topnotch paneling and I’m going to C create um some disagreement on the panel um I’m not sure we want a top-down government strategy for skills I don’t think we want more government money put into programs with lots of bureaucracy

Around it I don’t we want a big debate another review I I just simply don’t think we we want that I think we want to unleash the system you know that there needs to be proper standards in place proper quality controls and the RFS regulating insute for pen regulating we

Need more money in the hands of employers so they could put on more provision um so actually I don’t think we want a top- down approach to this and my answer to the final question about how do you achieve that um the chancellor in the Autumn statement announced full expensing for capital investment

I think there is a potential there to apply this the skills agenda the idea that um if you if you spend all of your apprentiship Levy um you have access to skills tax credits tax skills full expensing whatever you want to call it and employers if they spend more than

Their Levy they can deduct that skills expenditure from their corporation tax or whatever tax you want to do it so what you create there is an incentive in the system for employers to spend spend spend which then allows colleges and universities to do what they do well put

On really good provision and attract that funding thank you very much John disagreement and a solid policy proposal as well very exciting Kiara can I ask uh you to come back to on the questions yeah yes so um so the on the question about what would be kind of a big uh the

The one ask to to support the to enable the the environment for technical education so it would be I mean although things have have improved a lot and there have been a lot of uh I mean in the last 10 years there have been a lot of kind of policy changes that have

Increase and improve the quality of appren ships it would be uh I mean if I could ask something would be to to to do in sort that uh there are um even more quality checks especially in apprenti ships where 80% of basically of the course of the curriculum is done on the

Job there might a lot of heterogeneity in the in the experience of different Learners and this might also contribute to the basically I mean to the stigma that in some kind vocational education as versus academic education so if it could I mean if quality checks could be

Improved and if there was a way to um uh make sure that there is a minimum level of quality throughout all different level of employers so from um bigger firms where the they which have a better infrastructure monitor uh mon mentoring systems put on to to smaller firms I think that would be

Um a great a great a a great advancement also for how people uh see vocational education technical education um then um yes in terms of exactly the question about dropouts as someone was also yeah mentioning the the it it’s I mean it is um dropouts I think are a major issues

Especially for progression in the sense that if one does not achieve a given level for example of apprenticeships then they cannot I mean progress to to to the next level and this might be uh I mean this is an issue and there I mean it’s someone was suggesting before

Um um transferability or recognizability of credits so for example uh in other countries um like Switzerland it is possible to change um uh employers but to remain on the same appr type of apprenticeships of apprenticeship and I think that as someone um was also mentioning dropouts

Are not necessarily all the time kind of negative in the sense that um I remember um a research done in Scotland where they were suggesting that there are so dropouts are much are higher in some specific type of apprenticeships and which are the apprenticeships like in the sector for example of hospitality or

Apprenticeships that where people um would learn the basic skills and then they would be offered the job and um I think as well that a possible issues or a possible difference when we compare it to the to other countries is due to the fact that so in other

Countries like I’m think thinking about Germany Switzerland apprenticeships are seen as a training so are seen as an education uh tool whereas um in England it’s yes they are a training tool but they are also considered as an employment so I mean in this um set of thinking this way of thinking obviously

Uh if I’m in if I’m getting a proper offer of employment then I I would stop my apprenticeship to get the job so it is also I think a different way of considering the apprenticeship with with respect to different to other countries that might actually also lead to these

Higher Dropout rates which I I think are mainly an issue if we want to H to to see apprenticeships as a way to progress in your career from one level to another and to be able to get to higher level places um yes in uh the the last question was uh I think

About um Regional um level so uh whether to uh basically um increase um Devolution or to increase the powers of local um areas in in terms of this kind of policies and uh I mean as someone mention in in as someone mentioned uh as well um the fact

That with the labor local labor market are very um obviously might be very diverse may be very erogeneous across the country um creates the fact that the regional entities on one side might be um more able to respond to the need to the local needs although

Although this is I mean for example we had um we had a study on the effect um of the effect of devolving uh the apprenticeship um grant for employers um on the number of starts of apprenti ships so basically the effect of devolution of the apprenti of that

Part of the apprenticeship budget and that um I mean the study suggested that there was no um for example impact on the number it didn’t increase the number of start of apprenticeships and the the I mean the disadvantage I mean the disadvantage or the negative side to um

Devolving if I could say is that there would be we would add again um an an additional layer that would could make it more difficult again to create a um a similar level of quality of the provisions for everyone okay I’m going to draw you CL

Because we are I’m afraid uh actually at time um so thank you all very much and I know there are more questions in the audience um and I’m sure uh you consider see the panelist don’t let them leave until you’ve asked them uh any questions

You want over over T but thank you all very much um uh for joining us today I think uh I I’ve been asked to sum up and I don’t want to take up too much time to do it but I just think what strikes me here is that we are uh my predecessor

Chris Milwood recently brought out a um the results of a panel discussion over the potential emergence of a tertiary system in the English education system and I think what’s clear here is that uh we’re not heading towards a tertiary system we are in a tertiary system the

Question now is what we do with it and how we manage it and how we structure it um uh but I think as as K pointed out there there’s also genuine barriers to to how we balance that um the the needs of of a regional uh

Focus and of a divers of a devolved Focus um with that sort of consistent quality uh uh work and of course the offs is that that’s our business and we will um continue to engage in this conversation into the future so thank you all very

Much to our panel um thank you very much like the usual way uh so we uh move now to our um final keynote uh and I’m uh delighted to Welcome to the stage um baroness wolf of uh uh D to talk to us uh she she comes

Um I think particularly not simply for her extraordinary expertise in this area um but also uh one of the things that I have spent a lot of time doing in my role as director for fair access is talking to um the higher education sector we regulate is a knowledge creating curating and communicating

Sector and one of the things that’s unusual I think about the equality work is that um too often the sector hasn’t turned its powers of um anal Anis um and uh innovation in enough to to do the evaluation work that it needs to do to drive its quality strongly enough um but

It’s also I think the case that that that sometimes too often the sector doesn’t turn outward enough and share its expertise and Brilliance um uh with uh The Wider political and policy world and and certainly no one can say that uh of Allison she’s been a lych pin of of

These discussions uh over over many years and I think is uh as well as her own expertise is an excellent example of uh the power and importance uh of the higher education sector to our wider National political and economic discussions and I’m delighted to welcome her today thank you [Applause]

Alison thank you very much Don well it’s not quite the graveyard shift because it’s only lunchtime but um I am very conscious that um I’m coming in at the end of a of a long morning where I have not heard everything and therefore obviously risk repeating or contradicting something on which

Everybody has reached agreement but I thought it might be worth finishing the session by going back to the overall title you know why are we here why do we actually think we need to worry about technical higher education so not just the details of how we should do it but

But you know why do we think that there is something that needs to be fixed something that is worth worrying away at and so I want to to say a little bit about that and then maybe add a couple of things hopefully to to what you’re likely to have heard already um there

Are sort of three things I think which keep coming up in the worlds that that that I live in first of all there is this we’ve got to do something not enough people are doing level four and five got to have more four and five um a second thing is we’ve got concrete

Shortages there are too few of this too few of that too few of something else subtext technical higher education is the answer the third thing and the third reason we do come back to this is one which I think people are a little nervous of expressing very

Clearly although I would agree with what for example the previous panelist said about this um in terms of of local labor markets which is bluntly apprenticeships are not delivering and in the short term it’s not clear to me that apprenticeships can or will deliver all that we need on higher technical in 2021

To 2022 for example only 20% of apprenticeship starts and 20% of completions which is obviously much lower number were in occupations which were skilled worker shortages and in terms of numbers and and you just think of the number of people there are in the in the higher

Education system or the size of the workforce what you were actually getting was about 24,000 completions in areas which were identified as shortage skilled workers so those are the three things that sort of float around and and feed into each other but I think it’s worth unpacking

Them a little bit and asking if they really justify going we’ve got to get more higher technical in into higher education we’ve got to we’ve got to we’ve got to I mean I I believe we should but I think it’s also very valuable to ask ask you know is that

Just because I’m somebody who’s been bashing away at this for so long that I’ve been institutionalized so the first is no fours and fives well I agree this is a real signal that something is happening not just because we have lower levels of four and five qualifications people following

Those sorts of courses in higher education but also because we can see that there’s been a longstanding Ing and continuing Decline and we also understand a little bit about this and about the fact that it has happened not be much less because of Labor Market signals and much more because of funding

Systems which give institutions a strong incentive to steer people towards degrees and have up till now also given individual students a very strong incentive to go towards three or even foure degrees so clearly there is something going on on and that to few four and five thing is a danger signal

But maybe we should count it as a blessing in disguise and and maybe moving to a situation in which we substitute graduates full graduates from more General degrees for things which are more highly technical would be would be a good idea I mean that’s in practice

What we have been doing in this country we’ve been substituting graduates more or less effectively um the second thing we talk about is concrete shortages well I think that stands as a real reason to worry the policy response has been will import that’s less and less feasible or

Desirable it was never very desirable but that I think I would take as a real sign that higher technical is is an issue to think about the the third thing is apprenticeship and whether or not that can be the solution and obviously some appr apprenticeship is called degree apprenticeships but but but more

Generally if you are doing apprenticeships which are at the higher technical end people who are doing them have to be trained they have to have off the- job training they have to have specialist training and the place for that in our system is alas but I think

For the foreseeable future not going to be in specialist vocational schools not going to be in RF colleges is going to have to be on our universities now up to now I we this has been dominated this conversation has been dominated by degree apprenticeships which are not delivering what most of us

Describe or or think of as higher technical for example in um the level sevens the overwhelming proportion are not just senior leadership but business admin law same at level six it’s when this is not a high growth area for anything that I think we would describe

As as as higher technical but even aside from that if we are going to grow higher technical education whether it’s through direct study in universities or whether it’s through apprenticeships universities have got to play a role and apprenticeship is not on its own going to deliver the the skills that we need

So if we accept that there are concrete shortages then I think we also have to accept cep that we have to find a way to make it easier and more attractive for companies to come to universities for training and for universities to get more involved in that type of

Education and as I said I do not see this changing I don’t see alas any immediate change to the CH chronic underfunding of further education after several years in and out of government we’re entering a phase where basically the only way you get money for something

Is by taking it from something else when it comes to the hard decisions at the beginning of a spending round there is you know there is not going to be a sea change which means the treasury suddenly goes oh forget I know you’re screaming about schools and I know you’re

Screaming about child care and I know you’re screaming about universities but we are going to fund further education no they’re not so universities have actually you got to step up that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be also doing something about further education but it’s not suddenly going to come out of

Left field and and take this over but I also think it’s worth looking at it slightly differently not just the concrete shortages but also the future because actually we are right to worry about higher technical education because in fact we have an interesting and growing body of of knowledge which

In a way fits with our intuitions having technicians having highly qualified staff in companies is good for productivity the best research on this actually uses French data sets which are fantastically detailed and what they show is that there is a really quite remarkable almost certainly causal relationship between companies employing

A significant number of technically qualified staff and their future productivity growth and it’s not just a correlation which says oh well they’re productive companies so they employ technicians it’s that companies that employ technicians and that includes very much ICT it’s not just engineering are far more likely than those which

Employ fewer or none to have high productivity growth over the next decade so hunch that graduates will do in the the the the idea that we could just go on substituting with graduates at one end and other people just leaving with a level three at best and that’s their

Their lot this is this is not a good strategy it’s absolutely not a good strategy for this country and we should recognize that one really important reason to take High technical education seriously is that if we are serious about growth and without growth we can’t do anything important we have got to

Think seriously about productivity and technical skills and technician employees are fundamental to that and I repeat this is not just in manufacturing so I think the underlying Arguments for taking this seriously are actually stronger than we sometimes realize and that we don’t make them always in the right way partly because

We don’t we tend to go oh there are level fours in Germany and that’s all very well but economy is very different or we basically duck the apprenticeship dilemma and don’t recognize that certainly for the foreseeable future it is not going to deliver all the technical skills that we

Need to the degree that it does it’s got to make it easier for universities to get involved but that also as I think one of the John’s said the the the the local labor market is not just automatically going to generate for everybody the training that is required

And no SM small no can create a complex apprentiship program for itself so that’s where I think we should hold on to this this this really matters and we have to not just ask how do we tweak the existing programs we need to think harder about how to do it so what are

Our priorities I think there are three things that one has to worry about Finance incentiv IES and quality the the the the the LL provides us potentially with a financial underpinning for some of this for a lot of it it doesn’t do it all on its own

But it makes it possible in a way that it wasn’t before and I think that for it to to do that you don’t need lots lots lots more changes you certainly don’t need to set up some Universal Credit transfer framework I mean honestly um that’s you know the number of

Individuals who are going to want to do 30 credits in Cumbria followed by 60 credits in exitor followed by another 60 in I don’t know solar Hull I mean no let’s have growth From Below which is actually how the United States works too um but we do need to realize that on its

Own it won’t necessarily transform things we need incentives for both supply and demand I am quite optimistic about the demand prospects in Singapore they recently gave everybody um basically some some cash and entitlement to go and do additional training and what is interesting is that a third of the

Population have taken advantage of this so I think if it’s simple and if the supply is there people will demand it and so then the question becomes how do we incentivize institutions to supply it and that I think is something which is not something I’m going to take care of in

Half a minute up here but I think that is going to be one of the major challenges how many institutions will feel it’s worth doing this how many institutions will feel it’s worth putting in the investment and taking the risks and how many people will go you

Know what even at the current rate I’d do better recruiting people to a foundation year it’s an open question however I do think that there is a a third thing which is about quality and this is where I actually do want to make a very clear recommendation I think that the quality

Has to be about a quality Mark for institutions I think there is a real danger that we will go down the track of having topdown overcontrolled growth in regulation related to a move towards a more flexible delivery system I think it’s a real real danger and it will do very

Little for high quality technical education the department for Education loves to loves developing qualifications tea levels are its latest triumphant um attempt and I think there is a a real risk of this high quality technical education is flexible it’s responsive to local labor markets it recognizes changes that means it cannot be

Something which is slow cumbersome and where the quality depends on the belief in whiteall that describing and defining a qualification delivers quality it doesn’t the institution must be the quality Mark and if that means that there are new forms of quality that that ofs whoever starts to look at well and

Good but I do think that the higher education system is absolutely fundamental here because it can be responsive it’s in its DNA to be responsive it is of course internationally looking as well but higher education institutions are also local institutions they respond to their local labor markets and we’re actually

Pretty good at putting on programs and then closing them down if it turns out that nobody wants them so I think that we should not as a higher education sector be apologetic about this we should be very clear that quality has to be be demonstrated but it has to be

Demonstrated institutional level we should be very clear that higher education is absolutely Central to higher technical education should be absolutely clear that that is true for high level apprenticeships as well as for freestanding degree courses and the major challenge it seems to me is actually to the

Sector will it think it is worth it and what would it do what would it take to make the sector as a whole take this seriously and help to create the demand which I’m pretty confident is there thank [Applause] you I I think I pass back to me now if

That’s all right thank you Alice um I’ve well I’ll just come and sit up here and I’ve written down I’ve written down several times in caus your speech of the word bracing yeah so people up morning was probably yeah I think I think I think I’m going I’m

Going to use my exciting thing here um uh see I think that’s that’s yes I think bracing is probably where I’m going to go with that and I think what struck me out of that I think was uh was two things that I think are really interesting one is that the

The scale of the problem is absolutely real um and that level four five piece is is there so we’re not wrong think about it but that that um sometimes there’s a desire in the education system to go policy shopping and you know pick up things from other nations as though

That’s going to provide the answer and actually the systems we have are the systems we have to use to do this and I don’t think that means that we accept that we can’t change them and influence them and obviously we are going to try and do that but actually a lot of the

Discussion today has been really powerfully about starting from where we are and how we move move forward in that I think that’s really important um and I think that’s really useful segue into my final comments here which is that that’s I think part of our role as the offs is

To help build the framework in the system by which the higher education sector broadly defined and that of course includes those parts of Fe that provide H um Can undertake to tackle the challenges that Allison has laid out um and uh that that we’re not driving it

Through an assumption that there is a single correct answer that we somehow have access to and are just waiting for everyone else to to to follow into but that we are uh realistic and um open about an ongoing conversation um with those we regulate

About how best to do this how we do our part how they do theirs where we need to incentivize where we need to um compel um and where we need to accept that some of the activities have either worked or not worked and and treat those things as

Learning activities so I think that all feels very much of a part with and it’s a very positive conclusion for us in the sense of I think where we want to be now uh as a regulator who who does hold our sector accountable um who does provide

The challenge to that sector um to do the work that needs to be done in students interest but also does that um in a way in which there is a rich fruitful and transparent engagement between us and those who regulate so those online those here please do look

Out for announcements about the first round of the outcomes from our degree apprenticeship funding program in January which will be part of that conversation um and then uh later the work that Jack spoke to uh earlier about um what we’re already thinking about with the lle so there’s there’s plenty

More practical conversations that we’re going to be having the coming years uh or the coming year um but I also think part of this wider conversation of just being aware of the scale of the challenge um but also that that we have tools to hand um that can help us solve

That and that will do if we if we move forward together in a in an open transparent and and discursive way so thank you again to all our panelists um thank you to all the ofs colleagues who’ve organized our event today and thanks to everyone online and indeed in

The room for their contributions um thank you very much and that’s the [Applause] close

Insight event: Delivering excellent technical higher education

Van Life UK – Working At A Festival & Living In My Van

The Truth About Running Fast with a Low Heart Rate

Redway Cycling

Insight event: Delivering excellent technical higher education

Related

Van Life UK – Working At A Festival & Living In My Van

The Truth About Running Fast with a Low Heart Rate

Redway Cycling