Written Evidence by Education and Training Foundation (ETF) (FES0043)

Education Committee

Further Education and Skills

1.           Executive Summary

1.1.      The Education and Training Foundation (ETF) welcomes this timely inquiry. Our response focuses on three key recommendations where we believe improvements can be made to champion teaching excellence and improve outcomes for students:

• Driving better standards in further education: the introduction of a kitemarking system for providers of initial teacher training to raise the quality of teaching and improve student outcomes
• Workforce pressures: a national workforce development strategy to help recruit, retain and develop those who work in FE and Skills
• Skills and apprenticeships: Government to devolve further funding to regional bodies to invest in tailored solutions to meet local growth and skills needs.

2.           About Us

2.1.      Founded in 2013, with an official purpose to drive professionalism and improve teaching and learning, the ETF is the professional body and membership organisation for the whole FE and Skills sector. We set the quality standards for teaching and leadership, deliver Continuous Professional Development (CPD) and manage the Qualified Teacher Learning and Skills Status (QTLS) and Advanced Teacher Status (ATS). ETF has more than twelve years of experience as a trusted strategic partner of the Department for Education, which has included assessing workforce needs and designing national development programmes that improve the quality of teaching, build leadership and governance capacity in the FE and Skills system and raise the quality of learning outcomes.

3.           Introduction and Context

3.1.      The Further Education (FE) and Skills sector is at the heart of the UK’s economic growth and skills agenda. Its main function is to provide technical and vocational skills to the nation’s workforce to improve business capability. For every £1 invested in FE and Skills teaching, there is a return of £20 in increased productivity and employment outcomes (BIS, 2015). The sector is also a main driver of social mobility and community cohesion (Lisauskaite et al., 2021; Learning and Skills Council, 2007). The Office for National Statistics (2025) recently reported that 13.4% of 16-24s were not in employment, education and training (NEET) in 2024 (Oct-Dec), up by 110,000 from 2023, which directly impacts on productivity and people’s life chances. The FE and Skills sector, which has experience in ‘back-to-work' programmes, is uniquely placed to improve this level of economic inactivity.

3.2.      However, there are serious challenges affecting the skills landscape. Three -quarters of surveyed business leaders state that a lack of essential skills is a barrier to productivity (Grant Thornton, 2024). Teacher shortages between 2017 and 2022 have also doubled, putting strain on existing resourcing (Edge Foundation, 2024). In addition, staff morale, heavy workloads and a lack of training opportunities are continuing to put off talented professionals from entering the sector (Augur, 2019; DfE, 2020). These challenges require an organised and sustained strategy to supporting the FE and Skills workforce.

3.3.      Unfortunately, there is no such strategy for training and upskilling this workforce, which is having an adverse effect on the sector’s impact and means the sector’s ability to deliver on regional skills needs tends to be ad hoc and incomplete (Edge Foundation, 2024). This leads to mismatches between workforce capabilities and occupational demand (NFER, 2024), as well as high rates of staff churn inside FE and Skills institutions, as local decisions around curriculum and staffing revolve around short-term funding targets rather than long-term skills planning (Augur, 2019).

3.4.      In recognition of this context, and drawing on our extensive experience of leading initiatives to improve teaching quality and increase leadership and governance capacity in the FE and Skills sector, we make three recommendations:

1. A kitemarking system for Initial Teacher Education (ITE) providers to ensure that teacher training programmes adhere to rigorous standards, deliver value and improved outcomes for students
2. A national targeted workforce strategy to help recruit, retain and develop those who work in FE and Skills
3. Government to devolve further funding to regional bodies to invest in tailored solutions to local growth and skills needs

4.           Driving better standards in further education

4.1.      Ensuring high quality teacher training through kitemarking

4.2.      For learners and employers, who the FE and Skills sector serves, the highest priority is to ensure that standards of teaching and learning continue to improve. One of the barriers to this aim is the variation in quality of Initial Teacher Education (ITE). ETF echo the Department for Education’s position:

“Excellent teachers in the FE sector are crucial to deliver an agenda of skills reform, and to secure the best outcomes for learners. Raising the quality of ITE is vital to drive up standards across FE teaching.” (DfE, 2025).

4.3.      Improving the quality of teaching also improves the economic prospects of learners who go through the FE and Skills system. Research by Frontier Economics (2023) suggests that actions to develop and improve teacher expertise may add £2.6bn to the UK workforce’s annual earnings within a decade, doubling within two decades.

4.4.      Government has raised concerns that increases in the number of private training providers entering the ITE market has impacted negatively on the quality of government-funded ITE programmes (DfE, 2023). This lack of consistency has implications for the workforce’s future capability:

• Teachers enter the profession without a clear understanding of the professional standards governing their work (Allison, 2023)
• Pedagogical approaches are inconsistent or lack impact, leading to ineffective teaching and poor student outcomes (Ofsted, 2023)

• Teachers experience difficulties in embedding digital (Coleman, 2021), numeracy (Noyes and Dalby, 2020) and employability skills (Allison, 2023) into the curriculum which are vital for economic growth

• Teachers feel unsupported and leave the profession prematurely, causing disruption to the student experience (Edge Foundation, 2024). 

4.5.      Focusing on improving the quality of teacher training will help to address these issues.

4.6.      ETF’s first recommendation is to develop a kitemarking system for ITE providers to ensure that teacher training programmes adhere to rigorous standards, deliver value and improve outcomes for students.

4.7.      This kitemark would be a beacon of excellence that underpins the sector’s drive to improving teaching standards. An ITE kitemark would:

• Provide a register of high-quality providers who are authorised to offer government-funded teacher training courses
• Ensure rigour in curriculum design and a focus on evidence-based pedagogy that relates to different FE and Skills contexts
• Ensure ITE educators follow a programme of continuing professional development that is mapped to the sector’s professional standards
• Drive up standards of teaching for all qualifying ITE trainees, which will impact positively on student outcomes across the sector
• Provide value-for-money for government-funded ITE provision.

4.8.      While Ofsted already inspects ITE provision, it only inspects a small proportion of providers each year, with some providers waiting several years to be inspected. An ITE kitemark would endorse ITE provision that meets professional standards, ensuring appropriate curriculum design and high- quality teaching from the outset, ahead of a provider’s first Ofsted inspection. It would function similarly to Professional Statutory Regulatory Body (PSRB) accreditation that other industries (including higher education) adopt to ensure the quality of training and programmes (HESA, 2012).

4.9.      We believe the sector is well placed to adopt this approach, and ETF are willing to take the first steps to introduce a kitemarking system:

• ETF as the sector’s professional body is the leading FE and Skills stakeholder in teacher education working across the sector and is the primary author of the new ITE curriculum, working with its awarding body partners as the Chair of the ITE Forum
• ETF is the custodian of the professional standards for teachers and leaders which drive effective practice in the FE and Skills sector
• ETF owns and oversees Qualified Teacher Learning and Skills (QTLS) and Advanced Teacher Status (ATS), the main professional status programmes for the sector that focus on improving outcomes for practitioners, the latter leading to Chartered Teacher status (offered in collaboration with the Chartered College of Teachers). 27,500 FE and Skills practitioners have been awarded QTLS and 250 have achieved ATS. In 2023/24, 100% of professionals who achieved ATS said that it has had a positive impact on their practice, learners and colleagues. 99% of professionals who achieved QTLS said that it has had a positive impact on their teaching practice.
• Since it was handed over by ETF’s predecessor organisation, the Institute for Learning, ETF has maintained a register of over 22,000 practitioners, including those who have achieved QTLS.

5.           Delivering further education: Workforce pressures

5.1.      A systematic plan for workforce development

5.2.      Unlike other sectors, such as healthcare or schools (NHS, 2024; DfE, 2024a), the FE and Skills sector does not have the benefit of a systematic mechanism for workforce planning and there is no overarching structure for tracking and forecasting teaching capacity. Whilst a Further Education Workforce Strategy was developed in 2014 (BIS, 2014), this is over a decade old, and we need a revised strategy that is far more developmental and supportive of the current needs of the sector. The lack of a coordinated approach means the sector may not possess the necessary expertise to identify and address current skills shortages, resulting in:

• Ineffective and disjointed approaches to professional development leading to inconsistencies in teaching quality (Ofsted 2023)
• Variations in learner attendance, attainment and progression (Ofsted, 2023)

• Gaps in specialist subject areas critical to economic growth, such as digital, maths and green skills (Edge Foundation, 2024)

• Teacher recruitment and retention challenges, with high teacher vacancy rates in the subjects of environmental science (22.5%), construction (9.6%), agriculture (9.4%) and engineering (8.9%) (DfE, 2024b; Smith and Husband, 2024)
• Persistent high levels of staff attrition that is double the rate of schools (Edge Foundation, 2024)

5.3.      The Recruitment and Employment Federation (2022) estimates that the costs of failing to address the UK skills shortages will be £39bn every year between 2024 and 2027, equivalent to a 1.2% fall in GDP. Research also shows that an effective workforce strategy could reduce teacher attrition by 25%, saving an estimated £300 million annually in recruitment and retraining costs (Education Policy Institute, 2020).

5.4.      Unlike schools, the FE and Skills sector is highly diverse, ranging from large general further education colleges to small independent training providers. It is home to a multiplicity of roles, from teachers and trainers, to leaders, technicians and learning support staff. This complexity necessitates a bespoke workforce strategy that recognises the sector’s unique contribution to public life (Hodgson and Spours, 2015), for example, its role in championing inclusion and opportunity for historically disadvantaged learners.

5.5.      ETF’s second recommendation is that a national workforce strategy for the sector is needed to improve the skills of the FE and Skills workforce, drive up teacher quality and student outcomes, and ensure regional workforce priorities for growth are achieved.

5.6.      Augmenting Skills England’s National Strategy, a comprehensive sector workforce strategy can:

• Make accurate forecasts about evolving skills needs and gaps at regional and sub-regional level so that teacher recruitment strategies can be aligned with local priorities
• Enhance the relevance and impact of sector-wide professional development which will drive up the quality of teaching and leadership
• Pinpoint deficits in workforce literacy, numeracy and ‘green’ skills, and suggest interventions for improving these
• Increase the workforce’s digital capabilities, where 1 in 3 employees lack the essential digital skills for work (Chartered Institute for IT, 2025)
• Support practitioners in addressing the needs of historically disadvantaged groups, including learners with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), who make up 1 in 5 learners in FE and Skills institutions (Natspec, 2022)
• Strengthen the perception that FE and Skills is a career of choice for talented professionals and graduates.

5.7.      ETF is an independent charity with a remit covering the whole of the FE and Skills sector, including convening stakeholders to work on system-wide issues that impede high-quality teaching - see our Changing Systems of Change Report (Maylor et al., 2024). ETF has significant experience in developing workforce plans and delivering national professional development programmes on behalf of government, for example:

1. Supplying government departments and stakeholders with intelligence and insights around workforce development, skills gaps and regional capacity. ETF has extensive experience of providing rich insights on these topics. For example, between 2014 and 2020, ETF was the government’s official body for reporting on the workforce’s demographics and development needs using Staff Individualised Records
2. Carrying out national training needs analysis and upskilling aligned to nationally defined priorities. ETF already conducts needs analyses against the sector’s professional standards. In 2023/24, over 6,800 FE teachers completed ETF’s Professional Standards self-assessment tool, helping them to understand which aspects of their practice they need to develop, and then supporting them on their professional development journey.
3. Developing national CPD programmes that improve professional practice and learner outcomes. ETF has a track record of success in delivering national CPD programmes. For example, in 2023/24:
1. 95% of leaders said they are more knowledgeable and better equipped to meet the responsibilities of their role after taking part in a leadership programme
2. 92% of FE professionals said taking part in ETF’s maths, English and ESOL CPD will have a positive impact on their professional practice
3. 96% of those who attended ETF’s SEND professional development activity said it will have a positive impact on their professional practice

5.8.      Ofsted produces reports and intelligence on provider strengths and weaknesses, which enables the sharing of good practice across geographical boundaries. However, our sector-facing teams consistently advise us that more could be done to support providers. We recognise that Ofsted itself cannot assume a greater development focus without compromising its independence of judgement - in other words, it cannot be seen to be ‘marking its own homework’. ETF could support Ofsted by using provider performance data to create workforce development plans and training that address the findings of inspection.

6.           Skills and apprenticeships: The role of devolution in addressing regional skills needs

6.1.      Investing in skills at a regional level

6.2.      Within and alongside national workforce planning, it is important to consider skills needs at a regional and local level. Highly productive regions of the UK out-perform less productive regions on skills levels, workforce health, employment and environmental quality (Industrial Strategy Council, 2021). A focus on regional skills is pertinent as the UK has larger gaps in workforce skills between different parts of the country than most other nations (Learning and Work Institute 2025). Sector leaders engaged by ETF agree that solutions to regional skills disparities should be at the forefront of economic development and future skills policy (Smith and Rowland, 2024).

6.3.      ETF’s third recommendation is that government devolves further funding to combined authorities and regional partnerships to invest in tailored solutions to local workforce development priorities and skills needs.

6.4.      It is critical that any regional workforce development programme is based upon local intelligence and evidence and able to respond to regional employer and industry skills needs. With a team of expert regional development leads (RDLs), who co-ordinate engagement with local providers and employers, ETF is well placed to provide intelligence about local workforce pressures and regional skills needs. RDLs work with sector leaders to plan and deliver professional development activities that achieve institutional goals, focusing on building training around our professional standards and developing new capacity through networking, resource creation and industry placements that improve teachers’ technical knowledge. ETF uses intelligence to drive its local CPD solutions, for example, ETF recently conducted a regional analysis of the changing skills needs across the Solent and EM3 (Surrey) Learning and Skills Improve Plan (LSIP) areas on behalf of the ALPS Partnership Ltd. We compared the changing technical skills profiles over five years for both areas against wider regional and national forecasts. Our work revealed that Solent has a strong need for ‘blue’ skills in marine and coastal industries. ETF’s role in supplying region-based intelligence in this way can be scaled up and produced for stakeholders and government departments who are developing skills plans to meet local workforce priorities.

7.           Conclusion

7.1.      High-quality skills are instrumental to economic growth and it is the task of the FE and Skills sector to deliver this. If the sector cannot perform that role effectively, skills shortages will widen and growth will be harder to achieve. ETF’s focus on workforce development in this call for evidence is designed to ensure several things: that FE and Skills professionals have the right skills to teach effectively, that learners achieve better outcomes, that regions are better placed to resolve mismatches in workforce capability and employer demand, and that investment in skills will trigger a step-change in business productivity, employer confidence and local growth.

7.2.      ETF has identified three recommendations that will make the greatest difference to the skills landscape. Recommendation 1 endorses a kitemarking system for initial teacher education to ensure provision is always high-quality and is aimed at driving up standards of teaching across the sector which in turn leads to improved student outcomes. Recommendation 2 proposes a workforce strategy that will systematically analyse skills needs and generate comprehensive professional development solutions for the whole sector that will raise student outcomes. Recommendation 3 suggests that greater devolution of funds to combined authorities and local consortia could accelerate regional skills planning and the development of tailored solutions to local skills needs. These recommendations are aimed at improving staff knowledge and skills, and through this, drive up levels of learner achievement and employer capability. ETF welcomes the opportunity to support this transformation, ensuring that the FE and Skills sector fulfils its critical role in the UK economy.

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March 2025