Event report: Friday News Round
The sixth Friday News Round of the academic year was held online on 28 April.
After a warm welcome from Andrew Jones, the Director of Linking London, and Jakub Kowalewski, Partnership Officer, we started off with a short quiz on recent events in the education sector.
We then updated attendees on the latest Linking London activities and resources including our new Guide for Staff Supporting BTEC Learners Post-course. We also highlighted the resources in the pipeline, e.g. mapping of university top-up provision and London LMI report. Our resources are available on the Partner Area.
Following from this, we offered some news headlines, including Rishi Sunak's plan to tackle the 'anti-maths' mindset, the record high number of university student complaints, and the worrying quantity of teacher vacancies.
We then offered an overview of the new approach to regulating equality of opportunity proposed by the Office for Students. We summarised the key priorities for improving fair access and participation, and discussed the Equality of Opportunity Risk Register (EORR).
In our regular data corner, we discussed the recent data releases covering the labour market, FE and skills, and apprenticeships. We then touched on a recent report on parents' attitudes towards apprenticeships, and on the UCAS apprenticeship resources. We then provided an update on Level 3 qualifications - including the recent Education Committee recommendation to pause axing BTECs.
Finally, we covered UCAS's Journey to a Million campaign, the key challenges for the sector in the coming years, and the Humanities vs STEM debate.
We concluded the session with the likely and the less likely future policy developments to look out for.
Feedback from attendees at our News Round events has been really positive:
- 'Great digest of what is happening in the world of education.' University colleague
- 'Extremely useful! Will be attending the next one!' University colleague
- 'Very informative.' College colleague
The next News Round will take place on 19 May 2023.
Slides and recording
View the slides and the recording from the day.
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