Regulation, higher education, and further education colleges

Good morning, it’s great to be joining you today.

I’d like to thank the Association of Colleges for their kind invitation to speak today, and I’m grateful for this opportunity to pause and reflect with you all. As you’ll be aware, we are all in a period of challenge and change for the education and skills system, of which higher and especially further education is such an essential part. And as the sector changes, we as its regulator need to adapt also.

Last year, Sir David Behan published his public bodies review programme report on the OfS and joined us as interim chair to support us through the implementation of its recommendations and subsequent transformation activity.

Our next organisational strategy for 2025–30 will begin later this spring. This has been developed through engagement with a range of important stakeholders including, of course, further education colleges. In particular, we held an open session for further education colleges, a targeted discussion with the AoC, and spoke with several member colleges.

From this activity, you shared the following key themes and priorities with us:

1. That we should not apply a university lens to the whole higher education sector, and instead always consider the specific context of further education.
2. A desire from colleges of all sizes to collaborate with us on the development of the integrated quality model.
3. There are particular things you want to continue seeing from us as a regulator, such as minimising duplication and proportionality.
4. And a welcoming of our strengthened focus on student insight and engagement.

Finally, we heard clearly the importance of the OfS recognising the immense value and contribution that colleges make to the national growth mission. Over the next 20 minutes, it’s this in particular that I’d like to talk to as well as what we are doing to work more effectively with you and how we might do this in future.

Contribution of further education colleges to diverse and flexible pathways

Fair choice for students is a priority for a healthy tertiary education system, and we are committed to ensure that students from all backgrounds benefit from high quality higher education, delivered by a diverse, sustainable sector that continues to improve. We recognise the significant role that further education colleges play in this – and I’ll share a few numbers with you to illustrate the point.

We see the pivotal role that colleges play in addressing skills needs and fostering economic growth. You are experts in equipping students with the skills required for the labour market. The diversity of provision in England’s 218 colleges is apparent – from foundation degrees, HNCs and HNDs, higher and degree-level apprenticeships to adult education as well as undergraduate degrees.

There is also diversity in terms of the college student demographic. We know that the average age of college students is 28, with almost 60% of the 1.6 million learners in colleges classed as an adult learner (AOC, 2024). We recognise the importance of lifelong learning, and the opportunities that the Lifelong Learning Entitlement may bring for colleges delivering vocational and technical education to those wanting to upskill. I’ll return to this opportunity later.

Colleges are plugged into their local economies, engaging with employers and collaborating with businesses to offer the training required to meet specific regional needs. This partnership ethos is to be applauded and encouraged, especially when you consider the context of a challenging financial landscape.

When we consider college-based higher education, 149 of England’s 218 colleges are on our register of higher education providers. College education provides an important route into higher education, with one third of English students aged 19 and under entering higher education through UCAS having studied at a college (AOC, 2024). Over 25s are the largest group by age studying higher education in college – this illustrates the demand for local and accessible higher education provision that is closer to home. Students come from a wide range of circumstances and backgrounds, and the flexibility and diversity of college-based higher education is essential to us having a more representative student population.

This brings me on to equality of opportunity which is integral to our work at the OfS. Colleges represent a significant piece of the puzzle here.

Just over a third of all disadvantaged young people who progress into higher education have studied at a college (AOC, 2024). In the current round of access and participation plans, 62 out of the 138 providers who have had their plans approved are colleges. These colleges are referring to the Equality of Opportunity Risk Register in their access and participation plans, with mental health, cost pressures and information & guidance the most common risks identified. This shows the extent to which colleges are in tune with the challenges holding students back from entering higher education.

If we then look at students who study a Level 4 or 5 qualification at college, we also know that they eventually earn more than students who study a qualification of the same level at a university by a significant margin. To give you an example, a recent TASO report (2024) shows that 16 years after key stage 4, average earnings for students who studied a Level 4 qualification at a college was £25,396, and for Level 5 qualifications, £30,993. This compares to £21,909 for a university student with the equivalent qualification. This illustrates the economic benefit of college-based higher education, particularly for Level 4 and 5 provision which is currently being championed in the government’s skills agenda.

In 2023-24, we provided £4.8 million of recurrent funding to colleges to support Level 4 and 5 provision. Take the example of New College Durham, as one recipient, who used this to support a certificate and diploma in housing, and a foundation degree accredited by the Chartered Institute of Housing. These qualifications are designed to ensure social housing managers possess the required skills and knowledge to effectively oversee housing provision and support residents. They’re also consistent with the college’s broader mission to meet industry needs and support regional growth. New College Durham are one of several colleges who have used funding to meet local employer needs, and it’s these stories that we should shout about from the rooftops to ensure that the excellent work of colleges is properly recognised.

We have also distributed over £2 million of funding to 17 colleges since January 2023 to support the development of degree apprenticeships. Bridgwater and Taunton College, who are here today and delivering a session later on this subject, were successful in securing funding across all three waves of this competition and have developed apprenticeship standards across a wide range of areas including nursing, nuclear science, and social work. The diversity of standards that have been developed through this funding in general has been outstanding, from aerospace engineers to product design and development, environmental practitioners to laboratory scientists – these are the key areas where higher education in colleges are supporting local and national skills needs and will continue contributing to economic growth.

And last month we had the pleasure of announcing the successful bids for our Equality in Higher Education Innovation Fund. This will provide £2 million to support 11 projects bringing together 52 universities, colleges, and third sector organisations. Each will be focused on addressing one or more risks identified in the Equality of Opportunity Risk Register. I’m pleased to say that colleges will be important partners in some of the successful projects. For example, a collaboration between the University of Bristol, City of Bristol College and Weston College will explore how new flexible forms of higher education can be created with communities ultimately to help increase their participation in higher education.

I did promise you a few numbers. But hopefully I’ve made a strong case for the significant contribution that you make on several fronts, and the innovative ways you’re using funding to support growth and widen participation.

Our position in an evolving area of work

At the beginning of this speech, I referenced the desire you shared through your feedback for the OfS to always consider the specific circumstances of further education colleges in our work. As a consequence, we are doing the following:

• We’re shifting our thinking to better reflect the work of colleges and college-based higher education provision.
• We’re considering how best to engage with the sector and other stakeholders to develop how we regulate amid a changing higher education landscape.
• And we’ve been carefully considering the language we use so that it appropriately reflects the pluralism of the higher education sector.

To ensure we recognise the role of colleges in higher education, and the many options and opportunities across the sector to support student choice, we’re proposing a clear distinction between diverse pathways and diverse provision.

We see diverse pathways as any route taken through higher education that is not a three year, full-time undergraduate degree programme. This is about study mode and intensity, for example studying part-time, distance learning, modular learning, and hybrid learning.

We see diverse provision as any provision that isn’t an undergraduate degree award. This instead is about the qualification specifically and includes things such as courses leading to higher technical qualifications (for example, HNCs and HNDs), degree or higher apprenticeships, standalone modules, and certificates and diplomas of higher education. We know that colleges are central to the delivery of both diverse pathways and diverse provision, and improving access to higher education generally. We believe that these definitions will help to better explain what we mean by diverse  pathways and diverse provision in a complex sector.

Next, we will continue our evaluation work, sharing valuable insight with the sector that can also inform best practice. I’ll share two examples:

• We’ve recently published an interim evaluation of the first wave of our degree apprenticeship funding competition. One of its findings was the important contribution of designated staff roles and targeted outreach initiatives – specifically where these challenged assumptions about higher education and certain industries to increase awareness and demand for Level 6 degree apprenticeships from underrepresented groups.
• Three years ago, we commissioned the Open University to offer validation services to support the delivery of high quality vocational and technical (Level 4 and 5) courses. Nine partner colleges have been involved since, and we’ve now commissioned Ecorys UK to evaluate this project. Their findings will help us understand more about how to successfully commission validation arrangements, if the project removed barriers to offering innovative and flexible higher education provision in colleges.

We’ve already spoken about how much of what colleges do links directly to economic growth and their local communities. The OfS also has a supporting role to play here. While our primary aim is to ensure that higher education providers meet certain standards in terms of quality, and equality of opportunity to protect the interests of students, our new strategy sets out how we will help the sector deliver the diverse and far-reaching benefits of high quality higher education.

Of course, we’re all now looking ahead to the development of Skills England.

While much of the detailed work still lies before us, we look forward to working closely with Skills England so that they can fulfil their key functions, one of which is to ensure national and regional systems are meeting skills needs. This will involve developing a partnership where, together, we can identify important barriers and challenges, share information and, if necessary, intervene on matters relating to skills and growth where these are informed by evidence. As colleges are pivotal to addressing skills gaps in key economic areas, and creating a highly-skilled workforce, we’ll continue to engage with the AoC and other sector organisations so that your voices are represented.

We’ll also be supporting the implementation of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement from January 2027. This will provide colleges with exciting opportunities to reconsider their styles of delivery and provide shorter chunks of learning for upskilling purposes. The Lifelong Learning Entitlement will have a bearing on our regulation, and it’s this I’ll turn to finally.

The future of regulation

As we look to the future, we know that colleges feel they haven’t always been sufficiently heard by the OfS. I hope that what I’ve shared today shows that we recognise the high quality of this sector, we want to develop our engagement with colleges, and we are here to listen.

I fully appreciate that it’s a complex regulatory landscape out there as colleges have to work with Ofsted, the ESFA and the OfS, and we hear concerns that this can be a barrier to colleges diversifying their provision and offering higher-level courses. We’ll therefore continue to work with other agencies in this space to better define roles and responsibilities. This way we can explore opportunities to potentially reduce duplication and burden, particularly taking the further education sector into consideration.

We will also continue to work with you to understand the impact of our regulation and where we may seek to make changes. We've already taken steps such as ensuring that each provider has a named head of regulation at the OfS.

And finally, we’re continuing to consider the way we regulate further education colleges and if this can be streamlined, in part to reflect the introduction of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement. As I’ve just mentioned, this will allow us to bring innovation into the delivery of shorter chunks of learning that is supported by a credit-based funding system. This will require a change in approach to how we regulate and, as such, we’d want to continue talking with you about this.

Conclusion

To close, I want my abiding message today to be that we recognise colleges as an essential part of the higher education landscape in England. We see and celebrate the valuable contribution that you make in widening access, supporting growth, and providing diverse and flexible provision and pathways into and through higher education.