From Competition to Coordination: Rethinking Post-16 Education and Training in the UK

A new report released today [15 April] by The University of Oxford Centre on Skills, Knowledge, and Organisational Performance (SKOPE) has revealed a deeply fragmented post-16 Education and Training (E&T) sector. The report describes E&T as ‘stretched at best and broken at worst’ and emphasises a need for ‘strategic post-16 E&T reform’ and a shift from market-led competition to the government taking a much more active role in coordinating the sector, particularly in England.

The report is part of a project funded by the Nuffield Foundation, Comparing inequality and outcomes across post-16 E&T in the UK, as a collaboration between SKOPE and EPI.

Through case studies of six key industries across the UK – gaming, cybersecurity, fashion, food, automotive, and construction – the report reveals that post-16 E&T in the UK is beset by funding challenges, policy churn, and recruitment and retention issues. 60 interviews with employers, E&T providers, and young people across the case study industries show that post-16 E&T, particularly in England, is struggling to meet the needs of employers, young people, and the broader economy.

The key findings show that:

• employers described facing challenges recruiting employees who are ready for work, with appropriate technical and transferable skills. They were frustrated at perceived misalignment between E&T provision and the needs of their industries, and argued that E&T should be more responsive to changing labour market needs. The majority of employer participants in the study felt excluded from E&T provision and that current policy structures limited their involvement in a coherent way, leading to skills gaps and shortages. They called for the state to take a greater role in coordinating post-16 E&T and managing skills provision in a more strategic and joined up manner;
• E&T providers emphasised the damage caused by competition between FE colleges and between FE and HE, highlighting that it stretches the sector, is part of a policy structure that limits meaningful employer engagement with the sector, restricts the range of courses on offer, and sidelines vocational pathways. These issues are viewed as exacerbated by staff shortages, high staff turnover, low morale, and poor pay and conditions across the FE sector;
• young people described difficulty in navigating a fragmented E&T system, highlighting inadequate career guidance and bias against vocational pathways in their earlier school experiences. The young people in this study in England expressed frustration with their E&T options and particularly emphasised difficulty in finding and gaining apprenticeships. These young people described a sense that they were excluded from advanced vocational opportunities which were being taken by older people already in employment or by graduates with degrees.

Professor James Robson, Director of SKOPE and lead author, said:

“This report serves as a wake-up call for policymakers, industry leaders, and educators to come together and create a sustainable, future-focused E&T system that works for everyone. The findings underscore the need for urgent policy action. Employers, education and training providers, and young people all recognise that post-16 E&T isn’t working.

“We need a bold, new strategic vision for the sector that shifts the underpinning policy architecture from competition to coordination in all UK countries. At the heart of this should be a better role for employers in the process of E&T, long-term workforce development, and a focus on fairness so that all young people can access the right pathways to fulfil their career aspirations.

“Current policy structures, constant policy churn, chronic underfunding, and competition have catastrophically weakened the sector. This has alienated employers from the process of E&T, positioning them as skills customers rather than engaged stakeholders. This has limited the ability of E&T to respond to changing skills demands in an agile manner and reduced options for meaningful work-based vocational learning.

“Employers and educators alike are therefore calling for the state to take a greater role in coordinating post-16 E&T rather than attempting to rely simply on market forces to meet skills needs and improve quality of provision. There is a real appetite from all stakeholders to see a more joined-up, tertiary policy approach in the UK that brings together FE, HE and employers in a coherent and collaborative manner. In England this means a fundamental shift from competition to coordination; in the other devolved nations this involves a continuation of the policy trajectory towards a joined-up tertiary system.”

Dr Emily Tanner, Programme Head at the Nuffield Foundation said: “This report underscores the importance of effective education and training policy for balancing the career interests of young people with the skills needs of employers. With the recent establishment of Medr in Wales, the publication of the Tertiary Pathfinder Pilots in Scotland, and the development of the skills strategy in England, the UK-wide focus of this report and broader project is timely for supporting a shift towards greater coordination.”

The report proposes a series of actionable recommendations to address these systemic issues. These are particularly relevant to Westminster as the English government continues to develop its post-16 E&T strategy, but some recommendations will also be relevant to Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, particularly as they move forward in their tertiary agendas.

Recommendation 1: Move from competition to coordination
There is a clear trajectory towards holistic, tertiary education-based policymaking in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as signals of interest from the English Government in a tertiary framing. This should involve an overt shift from market logic to systems thinking and a move from competition to coordination as the mechanism for driving quality, ensuring economic needs are met, and supporting individual career aspirations.

Recommendation 2: Introduce a national tertiary framework for place-based implementation
Coordination should not involve centralisation. E&T is most effective when it is rooted in regional economic and social needs and fosters local collaborations between employers and providers. Therefore, a shift to coordination should involve the development of a regional framework that can be operationalised in a way that takes into account place-based needs, contextual factors, geographies, and existing relationships.

Recommendation 3: Develop better mechanisms for supporting meaningful employer engagement in E&T

• Drive discursive shifts: change the expectations placed upon employers to move them from consumers of the skills system to engaged stakeholders with rights and responsibilities through funding levers and incentives
• Reform local structures: reform Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs) and local mechanisms that encourage collaboration between employers and E&T ensuring both stakeholders can engage in a meaningful way.
• Invest in capacity: provide funding to support dedicated staff, particularly in FE colleges, to develop local and sustained relationships with employers, building on existing best practice in some parts of the sector.

Recommendation 4: Undertake an urgent review of pay and conditions for FE college staff
There is a clear, urgent need to review pay and conditions for FE staff. There is a significant disparity between FE staff and school teachers and poor comparison with industry salaries.  This has resulted in long-standing issues with recruitment and retention in the FE workforce.

Recommendation 5: Explicitly build employability skills into post-16 curricula as part of the Curriculum and Assessment Review
Ironically, transferable employability skills appear to be overlooked in vocational E&T. They should be included in post-16 curricula, and work should be undertaken to build evidence from FE on the best pedagogic approaches to ensure employability skills formation effectively takes place.

Recommendation 6: Develop stronger guidance tools for young people to find good E&T opportunities, particularly apprenticeships and transitions into vocational pathways from school
Young people have clearly described the challenge of navigating post-16 E&T, finding opportunities, particularly apprenticeships, and transitioning into vocational pathways, with limited support from school. There is therefore an urgent need to improve career guidance, to improve the technical systems that enable young people to find opportunities, to develop clearer signposting for existing tools, and to create better support mechanisms for transition.

Recommendation 7: Conduct an urgent review of apprenticeship participation and introduce regulatory mechanisms to support fair access to apprenticeships
There is a clear danger that inequalities are increasingly embedded in post-16 E&T. There is therefore a need to review how inequalities are being shaped, and introduce regulatory mechanisms that support fair access to all E&T opportunities, particularly apprenticeships. This raises the question of whether a body like Skills England should have responsibility for fair vocational access.