The current scale and pace of change in the UK is immense. Changes in technology, political priorities and demographics, combined with a challenging economic climate, provide a dynamic context in which all organisations have to operate. Simultaneously, this is both a risk and an opportunity. The risk for the UK is that in failing to either lead or adapt to these changes, we fall behind international competitors. The opportunity is that the majority of developed economies are facing the same threats and adapt better and faster to current and emerging needs.
These have brought to the fore the role of education and skills development and its contribution to our national ability to respond positively to such changes. The role of the Further º£½ÇÉçÇø (FE) and Skills sector is critical to both leading and responding to the changes and, by extension, the economic, commercial and social future of the UK.
It is with this in mind that in 2022/23, the º£½ÇÉçÇø and Training Foundation (ETF) and Saïd Business School, University of Oxford (Oxford Saïd) set out to explore the challenges and opportunities facing the FE and Skills sector. The challenges are both perennial and new, strategic and operational. The opportunity is for the system in which FE and Skills operates to become sustainably self-improving. We worked with sector leaders and policy makers with an interest in system renewal, and in particular, how ongoing renewal could be made sustainable for all those who work in the sector; simply asking people to ‘do more’, was not an option. Its purpose is to encourage conversations about what needs to change, including the existing approaches to change, to achieve excellence, improvement, innovation and resilience across the whole sector.
