To end Season 3 of the radio show, I was delighted when Alun Francis, the principal and chief executive of Oldham College invited us to record the last episode of the series at the campus business centre which has recently been constructed. It was a real pleasure to have such close involvement with the college staff teams and wider student community.

The end result is a version of the show on tour, in front of a live audience. My panel included:

~ Cllr Shaid Mushtaq, Cabinet Member for Education and Skills in Oldham
~ Susanna Lawson, Co-founder, and CEO of OneFile
~ Alun Francis, Oldham College’s Principal

With questions from:

~ Natalia Chudy, Level 3 Law student
~ Alexander Newton Hall, Level 3 Law student
~ Matthew Taylor, Level 3 Uniformed Public Services (UPS) student
~ Taylor Richardson, T Level Digital Production, Design and Development

What was great about this recording was getting a real appreciation, in just one local community, for the transformative power of further education. For the fact that FAB’s members, working with college tutors, are delivering literally hundreds of great qualification courses that are giving real life chances to young people. It includes, of course, the new T-Levels that will feature more prominently in FE from September 2023.

Crucially, we talked about the difficult issues in FE as well, like the fact equality and diversity debates need to move beyond the abstract and find more practical solutions.

I want to thank FE News and everyone for your support on this digital journey. And, above all, to say to those who are considering transforming your own digital delivery: don’t let your desire for innovation and change be drowned out by those miserable sceptics, who, let’s be honest, don’t like to see too much innovation and change, particularly when it roundly exposes their own mediocrity.

Season 4, with more innovations, will return in mid-October!