With only sparse mentions of education in last month’s Queen’s Speech, institutes of technology (IoTs) were among the few flagship policies laid out as a priority during the current Parliament.

They will, according to the Conservative government, “enable more young people to take advanced technical qualifications and become key institutions for the development of the skills required by local, national and regional industry”.

But, other than the fact that Prime Minister Theresa May has pledged £170 million to fund the establishment of the “prestigious” new institutes, details remain sketchy. When asked by Tes this week for details about expressions of interest and what form the new IoTs will take, the Department for Education refused to provide any information, simply saying that more details will be published “in due course”.

A few more particulars are emerging through other channels, however. A DfE job advert for a senior executive officer for IoT delivery reveals significantly more information than previously released into the public domain.

This includes the fact that the department plans to “establish around 10-15 IoTs by the end of the current Parliament”. The application process will consist of two stages: initially, “consortia of employers and education providers” will be asked to come up with “a strategic case justifying clearly the market need and demand with robust evidence and a plan for delivery”. Then the DfE will ask for a full business case, with due diligence to be undertaken by “the end of the year”.

But, owing to the slow drip feed of information on IoTs over the past two years - some of it apparently contradictory - interested parties have been left with more questions than answers.

The first mention of IoTs was made in the government’s 2015 productivity plan (see timeline, below). In January 2016, the former Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Bis) told Tes that officials were planning to test a variety of “different institutional and governance models”; and two months later, the department confirmed that “around 25” organisations had been in touch to express their interest in the programme.

At the invitation of Bis officials, sector organisations such as the Association of Colleges and the Collab Group also made their representations, calling for the institutes to be based within existing colleges structures.

After a further nine months with no announcements, in October 2016, Robert Halfon, then skills and apprenticeships minister, told Tes that the “idea” for IoTs was still being developed. This was soon confirmed: in January, May pledged £170 million to fund the new “prestigious” institutes.

According to the industrial strategy, they would “increase the provision of higher-level technical education, which only exists on a limited scale in the UK today, to ensure that it is available in all areas”.

Manifesto bombshell

The institutes would, the document explained, “specialise in technical disciplines aligned to technical routes, offer high-quality provision at levels 3, 4 and 5 and have a local focus to deliver qualifications of value that meet the skills needs of local employers”. The expectation, the plan confirmed, was that most IoTs would “grow out of [existing FE] high-quality provision”.

But the assumption that the IoT agenda would be spearheaded by existing colleges was abruptly shattered by the publication of the Conservative Party’s general election manifesto in May. Colleges were conspicuous by their absence; instead, the document proclaimed that IoTs would be “backed by leading employers and linked to leading universities” - and would be created in “every major city in England”. Rather than specialising in higher-level technical qualifications, the manifesto revealed that they were now expected to provide courses “at degree level and above, specialising in technical disciplines, such as Stem, while also providing higher-level apprenticeships and bespoke courses for employers”.

The institutes would, according to the document, “enjoy the freedoms that make our universities great, including eligibility for public funding for productivity and skills research, and access to loans and grants for their students”. They would even be eligible for the trappings of academia, not least Royal Charter status and Regius professorships.

So will IoTs reside in the world of further or higher education? Mick Fletcher, FE policy researcher and member of the Policy Consortium, believes ministers are “really confused” about the issue, owing to the difference between “technical” - a specific set of subject areas, including Stem - and “technician” - a level of training below a professional, but above a school leaver. Focusing IoTs on the former, he says, would place them “firmly in FE”.

According to David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, the make-up of learners likely to be interested in IoTs makes it “very obvious” that colleges should be the driving force behind them. “They are the organisations that have the experience and that most of those young people are coming from, and they have the employer relationships,” he says. “We got to a good understanding with the DfE that most, if not all, of the IoTs were building on what is already there.”

But the apparent repositioning of IoTs in the realm of HE, in the Tory manifesto, was “a surprise to everyone”, Hughes says, adding that he is confident work is currently ongoing behind the scenes at the department to reconcile the manifesto vision of an institute with the preparation work that has been developed over the past two years.

Ian Pretty, chief executive of the Collab Group, says the manifesto “almost felt like it came from somewhere else” than the earlier iterations. However, he adds that the suggestions in the Queen’s Speech seem to be closer to what was originally proposed: “If that is what we are going back to, we are very supportive of that,” he says.

One key issue still to be addressed, for Pretty, is that of the scale and ambition of the IoT movement: “In five years, is 10 to 15 IoTs really ambitious? You have colleges keen to do this, linked in with universities - are we really being ambitious enough?”

@JBelgutay