Powering Industries: the potential of specialist education

The current government has long promised the reform of technical education. Addressing skills shortages, creating parity with academic routes, and developing high-quality technical qualifications is a refrain we are now familiar with. 

We are, however, still to see these promises come to fruition. The result is that employers are still reporting a shortage of highly skilled workers, with the talent pipeline they are seeking still constrained by limited access to future-facing, industry-embedded and flexible qualification routes. 

The providers we represent at IHE are ready and willing to be the solution to this problem. Delivering innovative, high-quality technical training is at the heart of their offer. From the creative arts, through to science and engineering, and in allied health; our members have been working with employers since they opened their doors to create technical training that meets current and future industry needs. They are also primed to turn the vision of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) into a reality, with flexible delivery models designed to reach diverse learners – including those already in work needing to upskill, or reskill, as industries evolve.    

The current system should be optimising this potential, but it is holding independent providers back. The system for gaining recognition for qualifications (and crucially access to student funding) is rigid, bureaucratic, and inaccessible for providers without Degree Awarding Powers. The grant funding that is available disadvantages small and specialist institutions, and there are currently no targeted efforts to support the development of new industry-specific provision in cold spots. 

To tackle this, we are calling for two things from the next Government: 

1. Technical Education Awarding Powers 

When it comes to creating new technical qualifications, independent providers have a ready supply of subject expertise, industry links, and potential students. They already have a rich offer of professionally-focused courses. 

Culinary schools like Leiths are primed to create a new suite of courses at Level 4 and 5 to meet a need for training in food and nutrition education. Film schools like Raindance are already offering HNDs, as well as a suite of short specialist courses. STEM providers like TIRO are keen to expand their offer beyond apprenticeships to meet evolving student and employer need in specialist areas. 

Clearly, it is not a shortage of provision that’s the issue. Most of our members don’t have awarding powers, meaning they rely on awarding bodies or university partners. The sad story of Higher Technical Qualifications (HTQs) is that many of our members have been blocked by the reluctance of awarding bodies to put qualifications through the system. Working with a university partner can be complex and lengthy, even more so in applying for Degree Awarding Powers (a process designed for traditional universities predominantly offering academic qualifications). Both of these options require significant resource, and sometimes take so much time that qualifications risk becoming outdated before they have even been validated. 

The very nature of the industries technical institutes work within means they need to be flexible, agile and responsive. Take as an example emerging fields such as data science, AI and sustainability, where existing occupations are evolving rapidly and there is a need for new qualifications to upskill both current employees and new entrants to the workforce. IHE members are already responding in these areas by looking ahead and developing new specialist provision to meet future needs. Without an accessible route to gaining recognition for these qualifications and access to student funding, only students (or their employers) with private funding will be able to upskill, thus narrowing the potential workforce. This is just one example of where, once entrusted with awarding powers, independent providers could be transformative – spotting and responding quickly to emerging trends to create a pipeline of skilled graduates for what industry needs now and in the future.

2. Targeted investment 

However, developing new provision to meet industry need is going to take more than regulatory reform. It also needs investment. 

Designing and developing high-quality qualifications, especially those that offer experiential learning and real-world experience, requires significant resource. This includes staff costs (especially where programmes are led by experts in their fields), dedicated marketing and recruitment activity, and investment to build partnerships with industry. This is before even considering capital investment in the specialist facilities or cutting-edge equipment these programmes need. 

We are calling for a reorientation of grant funding so that it no longer disadvantages smaller providers and entrenches the status quo. Capital funding, with its resource-intensive bidding process and all-or-nothing allocations, rewards capacity and experience. Too often it means that SME providers are left without. Funding for specialist providers, with its emphasis on ‘world leading’, currently results in well-established institutions gaining further funding for exclusive provision. We need to turn this on its head and, instead, actively target those providers who are looking to scale up and (arguably, more importantly) those that can demonstrate they are widening access to specialist provision and creating routes to skilled jobs for those who would otherwise not pursue them. 

But we also need to go further than this, with new funding streams targeted at the development or growth of industry-specific provision in areas where there are skills gaps. Businesses need to be incentivised too. Those who collaborate with tertiary education should be prioritised in bids for grant funding and public sector procurement. Without this targeted action, we won’t drive innovation or growth. Instead, we will continue to miss opportunities to connect industry needs with what independent providers have to offer. 

Reform and investment are critical to the creation of a more responsive and efficient technical education landscape – one that matches the pace of change in industry, creates opportunities, and widens access to specialist training and jobs. We call on the next Government to recognise this potential and fuel the growth from which everyone will benefit.