DfE Update further education: 12 November 2025
Published 12 November 2025
Applies to England
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1. Information: Publication of the updated college oversight policy
Following the publication of the Post-16 education and skills white paper and changes to the Ofsted inspection framework, we have now published updated college oversight, improvement and intervention guidance. This sets out how government supports the improvement of further education colleges, sixth-form colleges, and designated institutions.
The updated guidance:
- explains the role of the new regional improvement teams
- introduces a tiered offer of support
- introduces new mandated support where needed
- sets out a strengthened approach to risk management to identify where colleges need to improve
- updates existing intervention triggers, including to reflect Ofsted’s move away from single headline grades
We remain committed to working with the sector to ensure clear communication of this framework through published guidance and information, stakeholder engagement activities and the work of the Further Education Commissioner and our regional improvement teams.
2. Your feedback: Further education workforce survey
We have launched a new survey of teachers, leaders and managers in further education (FE). We are interested in hearing from staff in general FE colleges, sixth form colleges (including 16 to 19 academies and free schools) and independent training providers. This survey will capture important evidence on topics such as workload, recruitment and retention, pay and professional development.
All FE providers were sent an email on 6 November 2025 from our contracted researcher, the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), containing a link to the survey. The survey will remain open until mid-December 2025.
We encourage senior leaders to share the link with your staff and encourage them to complete the survey.
The survey will provide us with valuable feedback directly from the FE workforce and help inform DfE’s future policy and funding decisions for the sector. We will issue a feedback report to those providers with 10 or more survey respondents which will compare their responses to the wider sector.
For further information, or if your college or provider has not received a survey link, please contact Matt Walker: m.walker@nfer.ac.uk at NFER.