FE colleges do not have a strong enough “brand identity, according to Sir Frank McLoughlin, former principal of London’s City and Islington College.

Sir Frank, who is now associate director for leadership at the Education and Training Foundation, told delegates at the Association of Colleges’ annual conference in Birmingham today that people have asked him “countless times” what FE colleges are, and that the sector needs to work to improve colleges’ identities.

“Countless times people say to me: ‘What is an FE college?’” Sir Frank said. “And then if you go back and say ‘You remember this tech college?’ [they say] ‘Oh, I remember the tech colleges. My dad, brother, uncle, aunt, [and] sister went to the tech college and they did an HND’…So I think, I hate to say it, but there is something about brand for our sector and what the term ‘FE college’ means.”

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