Education and Skills in England: more narrowing of horizons for adults?

The Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper for England was published on 20 October 2025.

The British government's long-awaited Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper (PDF) is a substantial document: 72 pages of new measures and tweaks to further and higher education in England. It contains everything from guaranteeing a college place for all 16 year-olds to hiking the Immigration Skills Charge (by 32%!), along with giving the Secretary of State new powers to bar 'unsuitable' people from managing colleges and tighter controls over Initial Teacher Education (ITE) for the FE sector.

I'm not the first person to vent about adults being little more than an afterthought in this White Paper - you can read this excellent piece from Dipa Ganguli and Caroline McDonald if you want all the key arguments:

feweek.co.uk

The post-16 white paper misses the mark by omitting adults

The post-16 education and skills white paper could have led to a lifelong learning revolution but instead became the pre-19 paper, by neglecting adults: Holex

But sadly leaving adults behind is part of a trend that seems to have embedded with successive British governments over the last decade and a half. The curriculum and assessment reforms proposed in the White Paper are solely for 16-19 year-olds: new V-levels as a more closely regulated (straitjacketed...?) replacement for Applied General qualifications and much of the rest of the Technical/Vocational qualifications market that has not already been supplanted by T-levels.

The maths and English GCSE resits policy (that I've never been a fan of - see Observing England's GCSE resits policy as an outsider) is retained, albeit with some clearer guidance that continually re-entering learners for exams might be a tad demoralising and unlikely to aid progression. Sadly, policymakers still seem stuck on this flawed notion of GCSE as an effective measure of numeracy and literacy capabilities (rather than a tool for sifting and stratifying 16 year-olds). I get that GCSE has perceived value because employers have heard of it, but if that's all that the case for the so-called 'gold standard' is built upon then surely it's possible to build a case for something better, as Tomlinson sought to do two decades ago when he critiqued GCSE for lacking real-world relevance and advocated a more 'functional' alternative that would prerequisite achievement at grade C.

The waters are then muddied further by this idea of a new Level 1 qualification to act as a 'stepping stone' (agghh, I hated that term last time!) towards GCSE. Where this leaves Functional Skills and the current range of unit-based maths and English awards (including the Mathematics/English Skills suite I introduced during my time at City & Guilds) is anyone's guess. There's a separate commitment in the White Paper to review the 'essential skills' offer for adults (more about that below), but it's not immediately clear if/how these two things will be joined up.

Where adults are mentioned, it's solely through the lens of getting into or on at work, with an emphasis on prioritising those furthest from the labour market. Again it fits a pattern of discourse that has dominated within Whitehall over recent years, and is likely to be amplified now adult education is under the remit of the Department for Work and Pensions. There might be some positives in terms of better cooperation between jobcentres and adult education providers, and maybe a bit more recognition of adults needing greater flexibility than that allowed through an increasingly regimented 16-19 offer.

Adult learners, and the full societal benefits of adult education, seem barely at the races for the British government

But standing outside England, this hegemonic framing of adult learning as just about 'skills' and the workplace is pretty depressing. Even the new Lifelong Learning Entitlement loans scheme for higher-level study is framed around job progression.

At least in Ireland there's still an acceptance within government (at least rhetorically) of adult education having wider societal benefits that need to be supported - not least as a counterweight to the tidal wave of disinformation and intolerance that's sweeping across western societies.

One possible crumb of comfort within England is the continued push to devolve responsibility for adult skills provision to Strategic Authorities (as Mayoral Combined Authorities are now officially known); so far most of these have seemed keen to use their powers imaginatively, although there's now a giant Lincolnshire-shaped dark cloud on the idea this will necessarily yield progressive results.

As I indicated, the White Paper reiterates a previous commitment to review the essential skills (defined as English, maths, ESOL and digital) 'offer' for adults. It, rightly, mentions the 8.5 million adults in England with low proficiency in English and/or maths and 7.3 million without digital skills, although again the impact of this is only framed around worklessness or getting on at work. This could even be seen as a watering down of this commitment, as it now appears only the Essential Digital Skills standards will be reviewed.

This is actually the only time ESOL is mentioned in the whole document, which underscores the need for those of us wanting to see a clearer and more coherent commitment to supporting language acquisition across England to keep pushing.