‘Be confident, bold and optimistic about colleges’

Colleges are for people, productivity and place – and we need to unlock this potential across the UK, says Lewis Cooper
20th July 2020, 5:13pm

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‘Be confident, bold and optimistic about colleges’

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/be-confident-bold-and-optimistic-about-colleges
Coronavirus: How Colleges Can Help The Country Recover From This Crisis

When we launched the Independent Commission on the College of the Future last spring, we started with the challenges that we face, across the four nations of the UK and internationally.

What issues are top of the agenda of politicians and senior officials? And what role can colleges play in addressing them? It seems obvious, I am sure, to Tes readers that colleges have a critical role to play in delivering industrial strategy, public health, community cohesion, the green agenda and now, of course, our response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet we know that not everyone sees it so clearly.

Looking across the four nations of the UK, the picture differs considerably - and we continue to learn a great deal from the different systems, approaches and reform agendas. But we are clear that there is a common need for colleges to play a more central role on some of the biggest challenges we face, and a common need for renewal to realise their full potential as part of education and skills systems. Crucially, there is a common opportunity for taking this forward, as we see affirmed in the political prominence that colleges are currently receiving in every nation of the UK.


Background: Commission on the ‘college of the future’ unveiled

More: It’s 2030: what does the world of FE look like?

News: Colleges to receive £96m for coronavirus catch-up


Later this week, we will be very pleased to publish the next stage of our work, setting out our overarching vision for the college of the future. We are clear that, fundamentally, colleges are about, and for, people, productivity and place.

Coronavirus: Why colleges are critical for economic recovery

For people, colleges must be at the centre of lifetime learning, as a touchpoint available to us all throughout our lives. This requires colleges to have a clear and confident place working collaboratively within the wider education and skills ecosystem. This means much better articulation and progression across the education and skills system, with funding and finance that supports an accessible, modularised approach with credit accumulation. The demands on blended learning opportunities will require serious, coordinated investment in digital infrastructure, resources and staff capacity, as will the expansion of opportunities to study, train and access resources and support flexibly, outside of traditional hours.

For productivity, colleges must have an explicit, funded role to play in innovation and knowledge transfer - stimulating and responding to employer demand, and with closer, more strategic alignment with universities and other parts of the education system. This needs to be a central element of what colleges do, driving deeper systemic collaboration, offering opportunities for staff development and, indeed, new strategic teaching leadership positions.

And for place, colleges have always been, at their heart, community anchor institutions. They play a central role with other civic partners, including local government, schools, universities and the NHS, in driving healthy, connected and sustainable communities. To realise this to its fullest potential in the future, colleges have to be empowered with the capacity and resources. It can’t be solely based on voluntarism or a sense of it being the right thing. Nor can it be done without a culture of trust across partners, locally and nationally - with a sharing of resources, infrastructure and ideas for a common purpose.

This will all sound extremely familiar to all of us that are in the college sector. And that’s no accident. These three themes reflect what thousands of people have told us colleges are about over the past year.

The civic role of colleges

But it really isn’t as obvious to everyone else. Across the four nations of the UK, we have a massive task in selling the scale of what colleges do as a sector - and, more crucially still, making the case for the more expansive role they can play for people, productivity and place. This is, of course, about our response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and it is central to any hope we have of building back better.

Colleges can achieve this only as part of a thriving wider education and skills ecosystem. And so, on Wednesday we are pleased to be launching our vision alongside a publication which explores the fundamentally civic role that colleges play across the UK, within the broader education and skills system - and the opportunities that exist for building a more collaborative, coherent and connected approach. 

Across the four nations of the UK, colleges are having a moment. Now really is the time to be confident, bold and optimistic about the role colleges can and must play, for people, productivity and place. We have to be assertive about the whole-systems approach this requires and how colleges will work in new ways with the world around them.

We have a critical few months ahead. If colleges are for people, productivity and place, the second, bigger question is how we can unlock this potential, across each of the four nations. As a commission, we are excited to keep working with so many across the UK and beyond, as we work towards our final report to be published this autumn. 

Lewis Cooper is the director the Independent Commission on the College of the Future

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