Technical and Further Education Act 2017

Overview of the Act

Reproduced verbatim from the Explanatory Notes published with the Act on legislation.gov.uk (Crown Copyright, Open Government Licence v3.0). Explanatory Notes are prepared by the responsible government department and are not part of the Act.

This Act takes forward policies relating to Technical and Further Education which support the government’s social mobility agenda and seek to boost the country’s productivity by addressing skill shortages and ensuring high quality technical education.

The Technical Education (TE) measures in the Act focus on supporting the implementation of the reforms to post-16 TE which were set out in the Skills Plan (published in July 2016). It takes forward provisions which extend the Institute for Apprenticeships’ remit to cover college-based TE in addition to apprenticeships. It also includes measures which support the Institute’s establishment and remit regarding apprenticeships.

The Further Education (FE) measures introduce an FE insolvency regime which seeks to support the financial resilience of FE and sixth form colleges, and build on the ongoing area-based reviews of the sector. The regime follows a consultation that was launched in July 2016. There is also an additional measure regarding FE information which ensures the continued provision of information on FE to the Secretary of State after the budget for and certain functions in respect of adult education have been transferred to combined authorities. There is also a provision requiring Ofsted to comment on careers guidance provided to certain students at FE institutions.