Abstract:

There is an increasing trend across a wide range international contexts to frame post-16 education and training policy through the lens of ‘tertiary education’. This often means a shift from a market-based approach, where skills alignment and quality of provision is viewed as being driven by competition, to the state playing a more active role in coordinating a system rooted in collaboration between institutions and vocational and academic pathways. In many ways the new Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper (DfE, 2025) represents an attempt to make this paradigm shift to a more coordinated and collaborative tertiary system. However, questions remain over the extent to which the white paper represents real change in the underpinning political philosophy of the government’s post-16 education and training policy approach and how some of the embedded aspirations in the paper might actually occur in practical terms. In this seminar I will discuss these issues, analysing how system-level governance is conceptualised in the white paper, and, more broadly, discussing what post-marketisation might mean for English tertiary education.

Dr James Robson is Director of the Oxford University Centre for Skills, Knowledge, and Organisational Performance (SKOPE), Director of Research at Oxford University Department of Education, Associate Professor of Tertiary Education Systems, and Chief Scientific Advisor for Inclusive Innovation, Fair Work, and a Skilled Workforce for the Oxfordshire Region through the Oxford Local Policy Lab. His research focuses on the intersection of education and training and work, looking across a range of issues related to the political economy of education and training, policy approaches, skills supply and demand, research and innovation, productivity, individual labour market outcomes, social justice, and equity.

Register for other seminars of the SKOPE Seminar Series on England’s progress towards a tertiary education system here. Download the seminar series poster (SKOPE Seminar Series – Tertiary Education in England (HT 2026).