
A New Deal for FE
9 September 2024
A New Deal for FE is an ambitious set of campaign demands for which we will support every FE branch in England in engaging in intense local bargaining in every college, and bring pressure to bear on our employers nationally. This is the first step towards winning binding national bargaining.
Members are at the heart of this campaign and we will be asking every FE member to get involved. This campaign is calling for a new deal for FE workers involving:
- a 10%/£3000 pay rise
- parity with schoolteacher pay within 3 years
- a minimum starting salary of £30,000
- reform of the pay spine
- close equality pay gaps
- national agreements on workload
- a return to national bargaining
- putting FE at the heart of a new government's plans.
Your questions to the Minister of State for Skills
In January UCU general secretary Jo Grady met with the Minister of State for Skills, Baroness Smith of Malvern. This was an opportunity to put our concerns about the state of post-16 education, and what the Labour government should urgently do about the sector, directly to the minister. Find out what she said below.
National bargaining in FE: sign the petition for a new deal
Staff in FE have suffered some of the worst real terms pay cuts in the education sector. Part of the reason for this is the current broken model of pay negotiations where the outcomes of national talks are not binding and colleges are not required to implement recommended pay rises. We need a fully funded settlement that all colleges are required to deliver for FE teachers.
Sign our petition here calling on the Association of Colleges to agree a New Deal for FE.
Read more about why we need national bargaining in FE here.
Ofsted: reform needs to be right not rushed.
This week Ofsted has announced proposals to replace the current inspection reports with a new system based on a "more nuanced view of a provider's strengths and areas for improvement" from 2025-26. FE colleges and other providers will no longer be subjected to overall headline grades, they will be judged on a colour-coded five-point grading scale from "exemplary" to "causing concern" across up to 20 areas - compared to a maximum of 10 under the current system. The details of the new framework will need to be carefully considered however from a UCU perspective, the vitally important thing is for DfE and Ofsted to accept the current instruction framework is fundamentally flawed, not trusted and needs wholesale change rather than presentational tweaks of process or language.
UCU members have grave concerns about the stress, anxiety and adverse impact on health and wellbeing they experience as a result of Ofsted inspections and preparation for an Ofsted inspection. Our findings show that Ofsted inspections create a major health and safety risk for staff who experience significant levels of stress and anxiety both during and in the lead up to inspections.
UCU is calling for Ofsted inspections to be abolished in the further education and skills sector. There should be a co-designed, collaborative, sector-led, peer improvement model that is valued and trusted by staff, students, parents/carers and the wider population. UCU is to be consulted on the new inspection regime in both FE and prison education settings. Ofsted's duty of care towards staff in the sector must be enshrined in law. Government should commission an independent review of Ofsted's inspection practice and methodology. This should include looking at perceptions of inspection and patterns of sector improvement in Wales via Estyn and in Northern Ireland via the Education and Training Inspectorate to learn the lessons of 'light-touch' inspection adopted across the nations.
UCU submission to the School Teachers' Pay Review Body (STRB)
In September, UCU was invited by the secretary of state for education to make a submission to the School Teachers' (Pay) Review Body (STRB) 2025/26. This was followed up in October with direction from the secretariat of the STRB along the lines of 'We are specifically interested in your views and evidence in relation to the impact of our pay recommendations on the further education teaching workforce in England.'
UCU submission to the STRB [311kb]
Parliamentary lobby: making the case for a New Deal
Congratulations to everyone that joined our lobby of Parliament on 23 October. Further, prison and adult education members came from across England to press MPs to support our campaigns. Politicians were matched with constituents in a packed committee room where they also heard briefings from the general secretary and UCU officers. This was a fantastic event aimed at boosting political awareness of the issues facing FE, adult and prison education staff ahead of the autumn budget.
Call for an end to the neglect of FE
In July 2024 the new Labour government confirmed there will be no new money for further education in England. This failure to invest in further education is unacceptable.
We all looked to the new Labour government to put an end to the awful underinvestment across FE in terms of wages, site investment and student funding. What we have seen and heard so far is hugely disappointing and we are looking for this to be rectified in upcoming budget statements in Autumn. It is completely unjust for us to sit and watch teachers in pre-16 education be offered generous pay rises, whilst FE staff and students continue to be ignored. This disrespect will not be tolerated, and we will continue to fight and sound the alarm until we see change.
We want to make sure that the voices of our members are heard loud and clear.
We have prepared a template letter that you can use below:
- email your local Labour MP:
-
open and copy the draft text here [1kb]
- find your Labour MP's contact details here and edit the draft text to send your email.
About our New Deal for FE campaign
UCU is at a critical point in FE. The union at employer level continues to grow in organisational capacity, bargaining strength and confidence and is winning for members on pay and other terms and conditions. However, the rate of growth and depth of our capacity and density is unevenly distributed.
The Respect FE campaign, built on the union's experiences in recent years, is about laying the foundations for a New Deal for FE. It covers pay, workloads, and national bargaining. It represents a fundamental challenge to the status quo at college and sector level. It resonates with members, has traction with the core activist group but is actively resisted by the AoC and a wide range of college leaders as it is a direct threat to their power and control.
- National bargaining (in England) does not function. It has failed to meet the aspirations and demands of members and needs fundamental change. The national FE bargaining framework and agreement (NJF) is specifically set up to result in recommendations not binding collective agreements.
- Since FE incorporation in the early 1990's FE colleges and college groups have been autonomous legal entities covered by legislation and regulation with their own governance arrangements. It is at this level, not the national level, where the power lays.
- The UK government, via the DfE has an arm's length relationship with the sector. The various funding streams have a range of conditionalities attached to them, often linked to government policy priorities, such as skills and employment initiatives.
- The DfE has no role in setting terms and conditions or pay in FE. The DfE are not part of the NJF. The DfE position and by extension the position of the UK government is that pay and related matters are legally devolved to each FE corporation.
- FE funding is complex and distributed via mechanisms covering 16-19, Adult and Community Education, ESOL, apprenticeships, skills, BTEC and T-Level. It is also a source of control for the UK government and other agencies with whom UCU does not negotiate.
- Any fundamental change to the status quo within the sector and a potential new deal for FE in line with UCU aspirations must recognise and be able to strategically react to the existing structural, legal, and power realities.
The central premise of a New Deal for FE is that UCU is not yet ready to achieve fundamental change at sector level and any precipitate move, specifically an aggregate ballot on national bargaining in 2024, will most probably take the union and our strategic demands backwards rather than forward.
Instead of committing the union's resources on an aggregate ballot now, we should be actively focusing on continuing to build branch capacity and membership density and continue to build confidence by winning for members at branch level. The campaign needs to be built through all the unions' structures, so that the decisions of the FE Sector Conference and the FEC are anchored in what the union does not have a reasonable prospect of securing at this time. Members must be regularly engaged and consulted as must the branch reps.
The unions comms, campaigning and political lobbying work should be clear and consistent in articulating and explaining what the New Deal for FE is and use all means at our disposal to champion and repeat the core demands.
We should be bold and ambitious and shift resources to build the biggest unified campaign rather than move to an aggregate ballot that does not have the building blocks in place at this time.
Resources
A New Deal for FE - poster [1mb]
A New Deal for FE - leaflet [219kb]
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