Athletes have the Olympics. Tennis players have Wimbledon. Footballers have the FA Cup final. But what’s the blue-riband event in the world of FE?

Why, it’s the annual conference of the Association of Colleges (AoC), of course. And what a treat it is to spend time in Broad Street - Birmingham’s answer to Broadway (think less Hamilton, more hen dos). Given the liver-pickling quantities of booze knocked back at the conference each year, it’s as much a feat of endurance as anything that the world of sports has to offer.

FErret loves nothing more than strolling around Birmingham’s cavernous International Convention Centre (ICC) - and keeping a beady eye out for the casualties in the small hours after the gala dinner. Or, indeed, the excruciatingly named FiEsta (what sort of buffoon would capitalise the letters F and E to tenuously link a completely unrelated word to further education?), the second-string offering introduced last year for those C-listers unworthy of a place at the main event.

And if you’ve not been chucked out of the Hyatt bar at closing time at least once, frankly you’re an FE amateur.

Party poopers

But, sadly, FErret can report that the three-day FE extravaganza is being scaled down to, well, a two-day FE extravaganza. AoC chief executive David Hughes tells us that, despite a stellar line-up at the event last November - including Justine Greening, the first education secretary to actually show up since David Blunkett some 16 years previously - the number of attendees was slightly down on the previous year. Hughes points out that many attendees opt to only come for two of the three days, as they can find it difficult to spend any more time away from their college.

With the number of colleges dwindling in the face of the relentless march of area reviews, mergers and sixth-form college academy conversions, attracting attendees is only going to become trickier in the years to come. And hiring the ICC doesn’t come cheap.

“We’ve listened to feedback from members, who think that two days seems appropriate,” Hughes explains. “We’ll still have a high-quality range of speakers and networking opportunities.”

Sounds fair enough. If nothing else, that’s one fewer night FErret will have to spend in a Birmingham Travelodge in November - and he’ll save a few quid by not buying so many Jägerbombs in the Hyatt bar.

Share your gossip, scandal and intrigue with FErret by emailing ferret@tesglobal.com