Skills Issue: right issue, wrong solution?

Posted on November 14, 2025 by John Howson

A study also backed by former Tory education secretary Gillian Keegan and Liberal Democrat education spokesman Lord Storey has called for an expansion of University Technical Colleges (UTCs), which are schools where local employers often help deliver lessons to ensure children are trained for available jobs.

They supported a study by Policy Exchange, the think tank, which also called for University Technical College departments to be added to existing secondary schools. The report from Policy Exchange is called From School to the Skilled Workforce. Policy Exchange – From School To The Skilled Workforce

In a joint foreword to the report, the three politicians said: “Businesses consistently report that a lack of access to skilled labour is impeding their growth, with the shortages particularly acute in sectors including construction, technology and healthcare.

Let employers help run schools to end youth unemployment crisis, says David Blunkett

Now I agree with the premiss behind this report: a need for many more technicians to support our industrial and commercial base to the economy. However, I am dubious about the recommended way forward.

Kenneth Baker created City Technology Colleges when he was Secretary of State in the 1980s, and supported the creation of the present University Technology Colleges. These colleges have had a chequered history, not least because they were only open to pupils from Year 10 onwards. All too often that allowed existing schools to move pupils sideways, and schools rarely suggest that pupils doing well change school at the end of Key State 3.

This new report overcomes that difficulty by suggesting ‘sleeve schools’ within existing schools -effectively a technology pathway. Now, I really don’t believe that a conservative leaning think tank really wants to create 4,000 new headteacher posts to run these sleeve schools – think of the cost and bureaucracy involved – not to mention the need to sack teachers to employ those with the right skills to teach.

Fortunately, the report has a solution to both of these issues. A pilot of 10 sleeve schools, and give QTS to those in senior positions with relevant industrial experience. Not a surprising idea when you notice that the author spent two years in the classroom on the Teach First programme. He should know that teaching is not just about subject knowledge alone.

My advice is readers is to read to page 10 of the report in order to understand the issue that after all isn’t new. After all, as far back as the 1960s, The Dainton Report Dainton Report – Wikipedia worried about encouraging science and engineering as a career for those interested in going to university and both the Crowther and Newsom Reports were concerned about the futures of the upper age groups in education.

My view is that the, much neglected, Further Education sector, removed from local authorities and many links to local labour market needs in the 1990s, should be a more effective route to solving the skills gap. There would also need to be better career advice in schools that encouraged consideration of the value of training for these areas of skill shortages. This is especially the case as the Policy Exchange report has little to say about whether the expansion of the UTC concept should be for pupils across the whole ability range or just not likely to be on pathways leading to higher education.

Why ’V’ Levels are important for Labour

Posted on October 20, 2025 by John Howson

Alongside her campaign to become deputy leader of the Labour Party, the Secretary of State for Education has found time today to announce a new post-16 set of qualifications, called ‘V’ Levels, presumably to bring order to the landscape of such qualifications that she sees as confusing.

As I write this blog, the exact details of the new qualification to sit alongside ‘A’ & ‘T’ Levels has not yet been announced to the House of Commons, so we don’t yet know about the nature and format of ‘V’ Levels in detail.

However, as the following table shows, they may be important to many Labour Party members fighting non-metropolitan seats in the north of England, The Midlands and the South West region.

Region	Number of pupils completing key stage 4	Sustained education, employment & apprenticeships	Sustained education destination	Sustained apprenticeships	Sustained employment destination
North East	26,931	91.5	81.7	4.6	5.2
South West	53,111	93.9	84.1	4.7	5.0
Yorkshire and The Humber	58,918	92.0	82.8	4.3	4.9
North West	79,550	92.1	83.3	4.1	4.7
East Midlands	50,002	92.6	84.2	4.2	4.2
East of England	64,445	94.2	87.4	2.7	4.1
West Midlands	64,565	92.4	85.2	3.2	4.0
South East	90,649	94.3	87.7	2.6	4.0
London	84,427	94.6	92.0	0.9	1.7
Outer London	55,921	94.8	92.0	1.0	1.7
Inner London	28,506	94.1	91.9	0.6	1.5

The data is for 2023 and was published last week by the DfE as Destinations of key stage 4 and 5 students: 2024 – GOV.UK although it doesn’t seem to contain the 2024 data yet.

London students, and especially those in inner London Key Stage providers seem overwhelmingly to remain in a sustained education institution, albeit not necessarily the institution where they undertook their Key Stage 4 courses. Less than 1% of inner London students proceeded to a sustained apprenticeship. Obviously, there is more room for such apprenticeships to be offered to these pupils. By contrast, the further away from London the region, the more likely that over 4% of students will proceed to apprenticeships.

The pattern for employment, not regarded by previous government as a key option after the raising unofficially of the learning leaving age to eighteen, mirrors that of apprenticeships, with higher rates the further away from London students are located. Indeed, London is something of an outlier in respect of employment rates for this group, following the pattern expected after the raising f the school leaving age.

Missing for the table are the NEETS – those not in any category in the table. Will ‘V’ Level qualifications help reduce this number, and might it help if such qualifications started at 14, the age when many NEETS fall out of interest in schooling? I was going to write, ‘fall out of love’, but many, I suspect, were never actually in love with schooling.

Anyway, I will be interesting to see whether the announcement helps the Secretary of State’s own election campaign and, if so, whether she will be in place to take the initiative forward?

Does where you study make a difference to ‘A’ Level outcomes?

Posted on August 15, 2025 by John Howson

Next week, pupils will receive their GCSE results and will then have to decide where to continue their studies. If they are intending to take ‘A’ levels, then the options may be between staying on at the same school or transferring either to another school or to an institution run under further education rules such as either a general further education college or a Sixth Form College, where they exist.

As the tables for this years’ results by type of institution shows, there are different percentage in terms of outcomes.

Centre type	Year	Percentage of results at grade A and above	Percentage of results at grade C and above
Independent school including city training colleges (CTCs)	2025	48.40%	89.70%
Secondary selective school	2025	43.70%	88.20%
Free schools	2025	31.30%	80.60%
All state-funded	2025	25.20%	76.30%
Sixth form college	2025	24.00%	76.20%
Academies	2025	23.10%	75.00%
Secondary comprehensive or middle school	2025	22.60%	75.20%
Other	2025	16.40%	55.80%
Secondary modern school/high school	2025	16.30%	64.80%
Further education establishment	2025	14.40%	66.30%

Young people across England celebrate exam results – GOV.UK

I don’t think anyone would be surprised to see independent schools with the highest percentage of results at A*-A. But it is important to understand what the policy about entering candidates for the examination is when considering outcomes. Is anyone taking the subject entered or is there a bar to be achieved at ‘mock’ exam time to be allowed to enter.

These results also cannot identify any time candidates spent either on tutoring during the course or cramming during the Easer break before the actual examinations.

I am not sure whether the institutions classified as ‘City Training Colleges’ are actually ‘City Technology Colleges’. If so, it is not clear where UTCs and Studio Schools have been located? Possibly, along with the academies group or do they make up the ‘other group’ and does ‘other’ include special schools. Why Free Schools merit a separate line under a Labour government is an interesting question.

It is also not clear whether the further education establishments (not Sixth Form Colleges) include entries from adults as well as those that would be in Year 13 if at a school? Certainly, anyone thinking of doing ‘A’ levels at a college might want to ask about the grades achieved by students at the college. The eight per cent gap to a comprehensive school for those gaining the top grades in a further education establishment and the nearly nine per cent gap for Grade C and above merits questions if faced with the choice. However, an earlier post noted, there are differences in the percentage of candidates achieving top grades between different subjects, and that may well be a factor in the outcomes.

This year, boys outperformed girls for the first time since 2018. There have also been different rates of improvement when comparing percentages achieving the top grades by type of institution. Without knowing what types of institution are classified as ‘other’ it is difficult to account for the decline in outcomes for the top grades for these schools.

Provider	% difference 2025 on 2023
Free schools	4
Secondary modern school/high school	2.7
Secondary selective school	2.3
Independent school including city training colleges (CTCs)	1.9
All state-funded	1.7
Academies	1.6
Sixth form college	1.5
Secondary comprehensive	1.3
Further education establishment	0.7
Other	-2.3

It would also be integrating to compare the different types of intuitions by their outcomes by region.

More thoughts on funding schools, ahead of the spending Review

Posted on June 2, 2025 by John Howson

Yesterday, I published a post about my initial thoughts on the forthcoming spending review, due next week, and how saving might be made in the education sector. For a more detailed analysis at the macro level there is also the Institute for Fiscal Studies review Schools and colleges in the 2025 Spending Review | Institute for Fiscal Studies that lays out the options for the government against the background of falling rolls and the challenging economic situation, and now The Defence Review, and all that entails for government spending priorities.

My guess is that the government will direct any extra funding in education to skills and the college sector, especially where it is related to spending on training for employment, and let the schools sector sort out its own future. One exception to this general thesis is SEND, where the government will have to take some action. Sadly, without yet a Report from the Select Committee that has been looking at SEND for the past sixth months.

The nuclear option on spending open to the government, and one that local authorities might have used in the past when they controlled the financing of the schools’ sector, would be to top slice the Schools Block and transfer that funding to the High Needs Block, used to fund special needs, and leave the schools sector to sort out the consequences.

Afterall, education is low down in the polling pecking order for national elections. This also makes sense with the supposed reorganisation of local authorities making the issue of the SEND balances and off-balance sheet deficits being carried by local authorities more of a challenge to fund in the future. However, my bet is that local government reorganisation will be off the agenda while Reform is riding high in the opinion polls. As a result, a top slice this year could be an option.

The Secretary of State has also solved the issue of how to deal with the underachievement of poor White families, by setting up an inquiry. In my view that approach is just kicking the can down the road to avoid taking difficult decisions in the Spending Review. Everyone in education knows the issues, and probably the answers as well: bring back Sure Start or something like it for the under-5s, and focus on making the secondary school curriculum more meaningful for those pupils not heading for higher education at eighteen, and who will probably leave school for college at sixteen.

The Spending Review also needs to come clean on what the pledge around the 6,500 extra teachers means, and how they will be paid for? The IFS makes the point that the college sector needs more than 6,500 extra lecturers to cope with the fact that rolls there won’t be falling over the next few years, and any added working in adult learning will put up the demand for lecturers even more. Switching funds to the college sector solves the issue of how to pay for these extra staff, but will leave the secondary sector with a pupil-teacher ratio in many areas little different to what it was 50 years ago. Hard times for schools ahead?

FE sector and Physics: sparse provision?

Posted on September 6, 2023 by John Howson

The DfE has recently published some data on the workforce in the further Education sector following a survey of institutions. Further education workforce in England – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) the data was based on the 2020/21 college year.

The majority of those institutions surveyed were either general FE colleges or sixth from colleges. The latter were transferred many years ago from the school sector, but are mainly still offering a school sixth form curriculum that is more biased towards ‘academic’ subjects than the curriculum found in general FE colleges.

Regular monitoring of teacher preparation numbers over the course of the past decade – see frequent posts on this blog – has identified physics as a subject where trainee numbers for the school sector have regularly failed to meet the target set by government through the DfE’s Teacher Supply Model and subsequent allocations to ITT providers. This has produced a teacher shortage in the subject.

In the FE sector, physics accounted for 0.3% of the teaching [sic] workforce, compared with 0.3% lecturing in chemistry and 0.6% in biology. Because of the presence of vocational subjects, staffing percentages for academic subjects would be lower in the FE sector than in the school sector. As this level, physics is ranked alongside philosophy and just above politics and classical studies in the table of staffing percentages. Even just looking at staffing of academic subjects, physics only accounts for 1.5% of staff teaching academic subjects in the FE sector.

Overall, staff with physics lecturing as their main subject, based on the data from this survey, would seem to mean that there were only around 250 lecturers across the whole of England in the FE sector in 2020/21. A significant minority are likely to be found in the 44 Sixth Form Colleges, with the remainder spread between the 187 general FE colleges. If spread out evenly, this would mean every college would have one lead specialist in physics. I assume the remainder of any teaching of physics is carried out either by part-timers or by those with qualifications that contain elements of the subject.

There does seem to be a question about the teaching of physics in the FE sector.

Cumulative percentage outcomes by centre type – grade A and above

Level 5 qualifications

Centre type – Physics	% achieving grade in 2019	% achieving grade in 2023	Difference 2019 and 2023
Other	19.4%	25.2%	5.80%
Further education establishment	18.4%	17.2%	-1.20%
Independent school including city training colleges (CTCs)	42.4%	47.2%	4.80%
Secondary comprehensive or middle school	21.7%	25.6%	3.90%
Secondary selective school	25.8%	29.2%	3.40%
Free schools	27.8%	31.2%	3.40%
Sixth form college	24.3%	27.0%	2.70%
Academies	21.1%	22.6%	1.50%
Secondary modern school/high school	37.4%	37.0%	-0.40%

Ofqual data by Centre

FE establishments, along with secondary modern schools, both saw smaller percentages of grade A and above in 2023 than in 2019. Could this be down to staffing issues or is it a change in the mix of students enrolled or were their students learning more affected by covid?

The workforce data for the FE sector has provided a source of information that leads to many more possible questions about learning and outcomes in the FE sector.

Which one is Physics

Posted on September 6, 2023 by John Howson

Ofqual have helpfully provided some data on the 2023 Level 5 results that came out today. Congratulations to all candidates on their achievements, even if they are tempered by the type of referencing system employed to suit the demands of the system.

In the past, I have looked at the A and A* percentages in Physics and Media/Film/TV Studies as an interesting contrast. This year it is also possible to look at the percentages of such grades in both 2019 (the last pre-pandemic year) and 2023. Outcomes by centre type (ofqual.gov.uk)

Cumulative percentage outcomes by centre type – grade A and above

Level 5 qualifications

Centre type – Physics	% achieving grade in 2019	% achieving grade in 2023	Difference 2019 and 2023
Other	19.4%	25.2%	5.80%
Further education establishment	18.4%	17.2%	-1.20%
Independent school including city training colleges (CTCs)	42.4%	47.2%	4.80%
Secondary comprehensive or middle school	21.7%	25.6%	3.90%
Secondary selective school	25.8%	29.2%	3.40%
Free schools	27.8%	31.2%	3.40%
Sixth form college	24.3%	27.0%	2.70%
Academies	21.1%	22.6%	1.50%
Secondary modern school/high school	37.4%	37.0%	-0.40%

https://analytics.ofqual.gov.uk/apps/Alevel/CentreType/

Normally, I would ask you to work out which table was the Physics and which Media/Fil/TV Studies, but this year have added the subject titles because not all centres are represented in the Media/Film/TV Studies subject group table by the types of centres.

Centre type – Media/Film/TV Studies	% achieving grade in 2019	% achieving grade in 2023	Difference 2019 and 2023
Independent school including city training colleges (CTCs)	27.7%	26.8%	-0.9%
Further education establishment	10.0%	9.4%	-0.6%
Academies	11.6%	12.6%	1.0%
Sixth form college	11.7%	13.3%	1.6%
Secondary comprehensive or middle school	9.7%	12.2%	2.5%
Secondary selective school	21.7%	30.4%	8.7%

Source ofqual data

Generally, despite the shortage of teachers of physics, the percentage of grades A and above is higher than in Media/Film/TV Studies (MFTVS) and often higher in 2023 than in 2019 except in the FE sector and secondary modern schools. This highlights the risk of using data in an uncontextualized manner.

My suspicion is that in physics it is only those likely to do well that are entered, whereas the entry policy for MFTVS may be wider, and hence there are more lower grades.

It will be necessary to investigate candidate numbers to see whether the increase in A and above grades in MFTVS in the selective schools is down to either a more selective entry policy or some other factor?

I find some of the groupings a bit odd as well. Should ‘city training colleges’ actually be ‘city technology colleges’ and why are ‘high schools’ included with secondary modern as a group when they could be any type of school? The inclusion of ‘middle schools’ in Level 5 qualifications for physics is even more odd.

So, an interesting set of statistics that not a great deal can be read into, except that there are generally more higher grades in physics than in MFTVS. Is the shortage of teachers of physics having an effect, especially in the FE sector? I cannot be sure, but as further education colleges have a lower percentage in 2023 than in 2019, there might be a case to answer, especially as the recent DfE workforce in further education study suggests that there might be fewer than 250 leading physics lecturers across the whole of the FE sector.

But perhaps outcomes might just be down to who is enrolled?

(an earlier version of this post contained a mistake in the table and the post has been corrected and updated)

Making money from Education

Posted on December 21, 2022 by John Howson

At this time of year, the DfE publishes data about the success of the education sector in generating income from exports. The income can be as a result of students from overseas – traditionally excluding EU students – coming to study in schools; colleges; universities or language schools. Set alongside that is the physical export of goods and services to customers in the education sector overseas. The latest data release covers 2020 and must, therefore, be considered an abnormal year because for much of that year the covid pandemic severely affected opportunities for income generation. UK revenue from education related exports and TNE activity 2020 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The recorded income for education exports in 2020 was some £25.6 billion pounds; up from £25.4 billion in 2019. To put those figures in some form of context, it was estimated that the Track and trace system for tracking covid possibly cost the government and taxpayers more than £30 billion over two years according to many reports on the web.

Higher education was the largest earners, responsible for £19.5 billion of export revenue. In comparison, Further Education, which consists of non-EU students only, accounted for £0.2 billion. The flow of overseas students into the further education sector these days probably doesn’t even warrant being called a trickle.

The income generated from Education Products and Services and Trans National Export activity was broadly similar, at around £2.1 billion and £2.3 billion worth of revenue generated, respectively. English Language Training and Independent Schools generated £0.5 billionand £1.0 billion, respectively. While the contribution from language training has been either static or declining in recent years, down from £2.23 billion in 2010 at current prices, income across the private school sector dipped from it record level of £1.05 billion in 2019, to £1.01 billion in 2020, presumably because of covid affecting the number of new registrations. On the other hand, TNE activity continued to increase, from £2.19 billion in 2019 to £2.28 billion in 2020.

Over the period between 2010 to 2020, the share of Higher Education to the total revenue from UK education related exports and TNE activity has increased by 16.3 percentage points from 60.0%to76.3%.

UK TNE activity increased by 2.2 percentage points over the same period from 6.7% to 8.9%. The share of English Language Training (ELT) and Further Education (non-EU students only) have both fallen by 12.2 and 5.2 percentage points, respectively: the ELT share dropping from 14.0% to 1.8% and the Further Education share dropping from 5.8% to 0.6%.

In 2020, international (EU and non-EU) Higher Education students at UK universities generated an estimated £18.0 billion in exports through living expenditure and tuition fees (£15.9 billion in 2019), which accounts for around 70.2% of the total value of education exports and TNE activity (62.6% in 2019). Overseas students are now clearly a vital part of the income stream for UK higher education institutions and have helped to cross-subsidise home students where fee levels have not kept pace with increases in costs.

The remaining £1.5 billion of exports revenue generated from Higher Education is made of research contracts and other exports income.

With the development of national programmes, such as the new Oak Academy, there must be scope to increase ethe income from experts within the education sector. Should overseas students decide to seek university places in other English-speaking countries and avoid UK universities, this might be of great concern to that sector and its funding.

Sorry to read this

Posted on August 7, 2021 by John Howson

https://www.tes.com/news/statement-future-fe-coverage-tes So the tes – once The Times Educational Supplement – is now focusing on schools and ending its coverage of the Further Education sector. I imagine that there will be staff in the sector that will still follow the tes because their work is similar to that of their colleagues in schools. But, they will no longer have a dedicated focus on their varied and interesting sector.

I wonder where this leaves the main publication. Looking at the accounts submitted for the year to last August by the American owners – available for all to see on the companies’ house website – recruitment advertising still plays a very large part in the tes’s revenue stream.

At this time of year, schools are reviewing their subscriptions to the tes. Most of the tes income on recruitment comes from subscriptions these days, rather than placed advertisements for specific posts. As TeachVac steadily increases its teacher base, and thus both ‘hits’ and matches. More than 6.7 million of the former in the past twelve months and more than a million matches made so far in 2021, schools might want to evaluate TeachVac more closely. After all, cash is tight for many, if not most, schools and funding won’t become any more generous with a funding formula linked so closely to pupil numbers.

In the past falling pupil numbers had less effect of school incomes. Now there is a direct relationship between funding and pupil numbers it can make sense to take our unnecessary costs. Comparing TeachVac with the hopeless DfE vacancy site is a no-brainer, especially when TeachVac has more than four times the number of teaching posts this week than are listed on the DfE site. To allow users to compare the site, TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk now has a live jobs counter on its front page.

As tes owners finalise their accounts for the 2020-21 financial year that ends at the end of August their first priority must be to ensure sufficient income to pay their bondholders. That’s why recruitment subscriptions for schools in England are so important. We won’t see these accounts until perhaps May of 2022, but those running the company already know what is happening to their income stream.

The ending of a FE offering by tes must tell watchers something. A concentration of effort on the core school sector or a need to further prune peripheral activities that don’t pay their way.

With fewer pupils in schools in England, demand for teachers is likely to fall unless more teachers can either be enticed to work abroad in the international schools or quit teaching for other professions. Either way, jobs in key subjects are down so far in 2021 in the lucrative secondary school market, but up in the primary sector where tes traditionally had more competition, not least from local authority job boards.

The next twelve months are going to be an interesting time in the teacher recruitment market. As its Chair, I look forward to the par that TeachVac will play in shaping future trends.

Miss a year or repeat a year?

Posted on January 30, 2021 by John Howson

Schooling in England has always been about pupils progressing in age-related cohorts based around an August/September birthday cut-off point. The exception was in those independent schools, celebrated in literature such as Tom Brown’s Schooldays, where a ‘remove’ form operated for those so far behind they couldn’t really move forward with their peers.

The issue of how to deal with lost learning as a result of the covid pandemic and school closures has started to revolve around the debate about either missing a year or repeating a year. Both have resource implications, as well as an impact on learners

By chance, I have experience of both approaches. The north London selective secondary school I attended in the late 1950s and early 1960s with my twin brother had a policy whereby the top form – of four – missed out the third year (Year 9) and progressed to complete a full set of ‘O’ levels in four rather than five years. Those pupils also studied Latin rather than taking woodwork or domestic science (food technology within design and technology for those not familiar with historical education terminology). The aim was to allow time for a third year in the sixth form to prepare for Oxbridge entrance examinations for those deemed bright enough to take that route.

These pupils subject to accelerated progression certainly lost some learning in all subjects, but the curriculum in subjects where there is a clearly defined path to examination success were not allowed to suffer.

As the twin, that took the usual five years to progress through the system to examinations at sixteen, I benefitted from having my other twin forge a path. When we were both in the sixth form this meant that by choosing the same three subjects for ‘A’ level I had a ready-made set of notes to use.

As a result of the happenstance of our parents taking a civil service post in Africa, and the problem of needing to pass ‘O’ level English Language, I repeated the final year of the sixth form, spending three years in the sixth rather than the more usual two, and thus experiencing some of the issues around repeating a year.

There are pros and cons to both approaches, but what might determine the outcome is resources. Do schools have the staff and space to allow a whole year group to repeat a year? For secondary schools, so long as they don’t have an intake, it might be feasible, but that would put pressure on primary schools to accommodate an extra year group. Where rolls are falling, this might be possible, but in some areas there won’t be the space, although finding the staff should be less of an issue.

Higher Education and further education would lose an intake, and the funds associated with these students. The government would need to compensate these institutions for lost revenue or risk financial pressure sending some institutions into real financial trouble.

A whole cohort missing a year might require a rethink of the examination syllabuses, but there are plenty of examples of children that prospered despite having missed education for health reasons. Indeed, I missed quite a lot of Year 8 due to having two operations. Perhaps that is why I struggled with the English Language examination.

A decision will need to be made soon, especially if the government wants to spend more cash on a catch-up scheme. This is not a decision that can be left to the market to solve fairly for all pupils.

DfE announces a bit of history

Posted on December 22, 2020 by John Howson

Last week, the DfE published the annual results of revenue related exports and transactional education activity in 2018. That now seems like a different world. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-revenue-from-education-related-exports-and-transnational-education-activity-2018

Still, 2018 was a good year for education experts, with even the Further Education sector reversing the downturn of previous years and experiencing upturns in both fee income and income from living costs: albeit only by small amounts. Still, this was the first upturn in FE exports since 2010, the year when I think the data for the time series was first established.

Overall, across all areas, there was a 10% increase in export activity and a slight fall of 0.8% in transactional education activity in 2018

Higher Education once again earned the lion’s share of the income, accounting for 69% of all exports and transactional education activity in2018. This was higher education’s largest percentage share, and some 9% more than their share in2010.

Further Education and English Language Training have been the main losers of market share since 2010, although both recorded upturns is 2018. ELT increased its market share by one percent to eight per cent. However, FE still saw its market share remain at one percent in 2018.

Independent schools market share reduced from five to four per cent at the end of 2018, back to their share in 2010. However, this was largely due to the strong showing from the higher education sector during 2018.

Transactional education activity, where the exports are delivered overseas through ventures such as satellite campuses and overseas consultancy lost ground in 2018, falling back to only 9% of total activity.

Among sub-sectors, equipment sales were strong in 2018, but educational publishing failed to maintain the growth witnessed in 2017. Most of the higher education student growth was, perhaps not surprisingly, in the non-EU student sector of the market. The latter remained stable. What will happen to this income stream in 2021 and future years will be interesting to observe, but it might be 2025 before data are published that reveal any trend post Brexit.

These figures may well be the penultimate in a run of good years for exports. There is little reason to believe that 2019 will not have produced further growth, although EU higher education income might have slowed down. Come the 2020 data, the results might be different. Will new income from distance learning have been sufficient to offset losses elsewhere resulting for the covid pandemic affecting the second half of the year?

Perhaps now is the time to remove overseas students from the immigration statistics, at least for those on first degree courses, even if not for sub-degree and postgraduate level courses where monitoring might be more challenging?

Still, let’s congratulate a successful export drive in 2018, and hope that covid and Brexit between them create new opportunities rather than decimate an otherwise successful sector of the British economy, since these are UK numbers and not just for England.

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Tag Archives: further education