![]() ![]() A country about the size of Sweden has moved here since 2003. Since 2008, in the UK, we’ve been arguing about sharing out a fixed size of the pie which has then to feed more people. The paradox is that if policymakers had focused less on a zero sum game and grew the economy through better productivity (output per hour worked), then the total public service investment would be able to increase, because the economic pie would automatically get bigger. Colleges and private training providers are invisible from an electoral point of view. ![]() Not once has the plight of FE ever been raised on the doorstep with me. I’ve stood for Parliament (unsuccessfully). I’ve worked on many MP’s election campaigns over the past 30 years. Because when push comes to shove, FE is really not that important to them. Not because politicians are shy about how much they love FE colleges, including all the tweets offering their support (just as they did during the last comprehensive spending review round). FE sector leaders – as much as I am at pains to say it – should abandon any attempt to simply call for more government moneyįor at least the next decade that is not going to happen. The sheer ineptitude has resulted in misery for the bright sparks at the Treasury who are tasked with controlling public expenditure. A slogan that has disappeared down the plug hole, almost as fast as Larry the Cat, chasing a fox out of Downing Street recently. To think, public spending per head, in these parts of the United Kingdom, is already about 20 per higher than in England. ![]() What about the nurses, police, fire-fighters and so on…Īnd while this may seem like an England only bun fight, the so-called Barnett consequential formulas will mean that in places like Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, they will automatically benefit from any future public investment uplift for FE in England. Perhaps unsurprisingly, because of much bigger macroeconomic events – including a £2 trillion national debt – party spin doctors are nervous about promising additional cash handouts to the post-18 sector. They are tinkering at the edges while Rome burns The depressing truth is that both Conservative and Labour – currently at any rate – have no real answers for the stagnating wages, high-inflation and Britain’s yawning productivity gap. He chided the minister for even daring to suggest that devolution of the adult skills budget would go no further on her watch. The list of top-down Whitehall driven enterprises became so exhaustive at one point that the Tory mayor for the West Midlands, Andy Street, had to threaten a complaint to the chief whip. ![]() Was the Bruges group even aware that the Education Skills Funding Agency – the public body Jenkyns now sponsors – is the biggest quango in Europe? They included state owned T levels state funded boot-camps a new freedom of speech czar – paid for by the taxpayer – to tackle campus cancel culture. How ironic then that in the speech, Jenkyns rattled off a string of Big State initiatives that her department was leading on. People who attend these events are the kind of low tax Tories who would portray the chancellor’s screeching U-turn on the 45 pence tax rate for high-earners, as a complete capitulation to socialism. Privatisation of public services is certainly not a dirty word among this crowd. One of the aims of the Bruges group is to massively reduce the size of the state Meanwhile, the current skills minister, Andrea Jenkyns MP, told a Thatcherite fringe group – the Bruges group to be precise – that today’s educators are more interested in “Harry Potter studies” than training the next generation of construction apprentices. But that he couldn’t guarantee whether there would be more investment in FE if the party wins the next general election. In another broadcast, the shadow minister, Toby Perkins MP, said he hoped to be the actual skills minister in a future Labour government. The Conservative councillor John Cope started one of our recordings in Birmingham with: “I’d struggle to know what to say on the doorstep when it comes to the party’s offer on education”, he said. The programme’s presenter and FAB chief executive, Tom Bewick, provides a personal reflection on what he feels both parties and FE needs to address if they want things to be better in future. Skills World Live hit the road recently, recording engaging podcasts at both major political party conferences. ![]()
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