FE Panel 2025

Dear FE Panel Members,

Thank you again for those of you who were able to join us for the FE Panel last month, and those who have engaged with us in other ways. The passion and enthusiasm on display has certainly energized us all and reaffirmed our joint pursuit of providing learners with the best possible outcomes from their study.

We came away from the day with a lot to think about and have shared the insights gained from the Panel across the various teams at UAL Awarding Body.

The overarching takeaway from the day for us was a feeling that there is a clear mandate for UAL Awarding Body to represent the interests of creative education in front of regulators.

Portfolio consultation

Our first activity of the day was a chance to use the vast experience of delegates to give an honest assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the current UALAB portfolio of qualifications.

A wide range of strengths were identified by delegates with a central theme of ‘Flexibility’ taking the spotlight. There were also several linked comments around the supportive nature of delivering UALAB qualifications, whether it's the resources, moderation, or the general support from UALAB staff it came up multiple times in various forms.

Delegates were also able to pick out aspects of the qualification portfolio where they would like to see improvements. The lack of recognition from some Universities being mentioned multiple times as well as a firm desire to see more entry level 3 qualifications developed.

Temperature check, how are you feeling?

Our 2^nd activity was a fun little exercise to see how everyone was feeling given the context of the creative education landscape and the information that was shared around changes in policy and regulation. This produced an extremely endearing outcome in the form of 26 unique and individual gingerbread templates full of colour and character. We didn’t want to read too much into some of the images that were produced but we did want to share with you the fruits of your labour!

Hopes for the future/looking forward

The final activity of the day directed our thoughts towards the future of creative education. We have taken pages of notes from this exercise and have now had some time to synthesise the information gathered. What has emerged from this were some particularly strong themes that arose across the discussion groups. These were:

1. To keep the focus on practical application
2. Retain and extend the accessibility of the qualifications
3. Safeguard qualifications from becoming too prescriptive
4. The importance of retaining internal assessment with external moderation
5. The value of fallback awards for learners
6. The need for large sized qualifications

These themes were passionately expressed by delegates and aligned positively with the views of the senior management team of UALAB who also shared their vision for the future of creative education at the FE Panel.

Of the above themes, there are certainly some areas that are within our control, and the takeaways from the day have been shared with the relevant teams across UALAB to act as a reminder of their ongoing importance and the need to retain these features within future qualification development activity.

There are few themes that sit further outside of our control and arise a result of government policy and regulatory requirements. However, ‘outside of our control’ does not mean that it is outside of our influence, and we want to capitalise on the takeaways from the FE Panel, along with other ongoing pieces of work at UALAB, to build some momentum and present a case to regulators for the themes that we are all passionate about and feel activated towards achieving.

We are in the process of launching a campaign to fly the flag for the educational principles that we share with you. There will be a landing page, and the opportunity to feed into the campaign as it is developed, and we will be sharing these details with you as soon as they are available so you can have an early look at what we believe is important for us to come together and make some noise about.

Let's Keep Talking...

It was great connecting with so many of you at our inaugural FE panel. The conversations on the day gave the senior management team lots to think about, and it would be great to follow up on some of the key themes that emerged from our discussions.

As you know, we're always looking at how we can better support our FE partners, and the insights you shared highlighted some really important areas we'd like to explore further. We're planning some follow-up conversations with colleges to get a deeper understanding of what you're experiencing day-to-day.

We'd really value the opportunity to have a 30–40-minute discussion with any of you who might be interested, covering areas like:

• AI and its impact on your operations.
• Funding pressures and guided learning hours challenges.
• How qualification changes are affecting you (external assessment, smaller qualifications etc.).
• Planning cycles and their effectiveness.
• Shifts in student needs and expectations.
• Staffing and workforce pressures.
• Ways we can provide better support.
• Any other challenges you're navigating.

The insights from these conversations will feed into our broader understanding of what's happening across the sector and help shape how we work with you going forward.

I appreciate everyone's schedules are packed, but if you have some availability for a chat, please let me know when works best for you and I'll do my best to accommodate. You can contact me through email d.latham@arts.ac.uk and I will liaise with the appropriate team members to set up a discussion around a topic(s) you are passionate about.

I look forward to continuing these important conversations and sharing the outcomes at a future FE Panel.