The Edge Foundation

Reading Alan Milburn’s interim findings on young people who are not in education, employment or training, I felt a real sense of recognition. The reasons behind the current NEET crisis are varied and complex but I am struck by how much infrastructure connecting education and employment has quietly disappeared over the last twenty years. The challenge the Milburn Review describes is not only about new external pressures on young people but, in part, the accumulating consequences of that neglect.

Boardroom diversity has been a hot topic for years. But in further education, it carries particular weight – decisions made by a small number of people can have an outsized influence on everything from curriculum direction to student support and community engagement, impacting the future for thousands of learners. However, governance is often overlooked in conversations about education reform and inclusion.

This month, after 12 years on the Edge board of trustees, I step down. I feel privileged to have played this role for so long. Not many people get to sit across worlds that rarely overlap: on one hand, running a business, on the other working alongside academics and policymakers to shape the future of education. What has struck me most is how the two sectors often talk past one another, despite largely wanting the same things.

Edge Foundation and 12 leading skills organisations have written to Pat McFadden MP, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, urging action to protect funding for apprenticeship brokerage hubs across England. The letter calls on the Government to provide a sustainable funding stream for apprenticeship brokerage services outside the MSA pilot areas.

During my years as a civil servant in the Department for Education, I was struck by how often well-intentioned policies turned out to be something our predecessors had already tried. But knowledge departs with personnel. Improving this institutional memory is a key part of Edge’s Learning from the Past series, and a necessary step to halt a seemingly endless education policy merry-go-round.

Edge is expert at highlighting pockets of innovation in education, and nowhere has that work evolved more than within island communities. What began as shining a light on singular examples of best practice has grown into a busy collaboration with Island Innovation and our own Island Education Network. We are able to play a brokering role between unique communities, cross-seeding practice between both geographical islands and figurative ones – isolated communities on the mainland for example.

I’ve been working on events – mainly weddings and parties – since I was 15. Although I didn’t know back then what I was doing was called events and hospitality, I knew I had the bug! I started a Hospitality Management diploma at my local college, the Colchester Institute. I’d never planned on getting a degree until one of my college professors told me how he once applied for a job at the Hilton in New York and they wouldn’t touch him because he didn’t have one. That really stuck with me.

Often in education, wellbeing and academic achievement are pitched against one another. Focusing on wellbeing is seen as softer than the “real work” of teaching. But in communities facing numerous social challenges, from housing pressures to financial hardship, it’s inevitable that children will carry these through the school gate every morning. In these contexts, wellbeing becomes impossible to ignore.

Why does Edge use accessibility software? One in five (20%) people in the UK have a disability One in ten people in the UK don’t speak English as their first language 15% of the UK population have learning difficulties 2 million people in the UK have a visual impairment How could the the toolbar help me access this website? The Recite Me toolbar has a unique range of functions.

The economy is shifting rapidly and we need a skills system that can keep up. In the face of growing skills shortages, apprenticeships offer a vital mechanism to provide the skilled workforce we need for our economy to thrive. But it has the potential to become even more ambitious and relevant to the skills needed for the modern workplace.