Provision Recruitment

The Education and Training Foundation (ETF) and its membership body, the Society for Education and Training (SET) have published a report exploring career progression within the Further Education and Training sector.

The research is the first of its kind to provide evidence for barriers to career progression including workload and lack of time, as well as identifying a desire for developing greater expertise and knowledge and the types of support needed to help these be achievable, such as gaining (further) on-the-job experience.

The National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) were commissioned to assist with the online survey which was completed by approximately 800 respondents (99% SET members)³ earlier this year.

Key findings of the research:

Career aspirations 

Respondents stated how they would like their career to progress over the next one to two years:

• a quarter ranked their main priority as developing expertise in their current role
• other main priorities included: taking on greater management responsibilities (16%); developing sector/subject knowledge (13%); and remaining in their current role (10%).

Barriers to career progression

The most significant barrier to career progression is:

• workload and lack of time preventing take-up of continuing professional development (CPD) or higher-level study (50%).

Other commonly reported barriers included:

• lack of encouragement and support from the institution’s management
• lack of promotion or development opportunities
• lack of appropriate subject-specialist CPD.

Only one in ten respondents reported that they had not experienced any barriers.

Motivation for joining sector

The most popular reason for joining the Further Education and Training  sector is:

• enjoyment in working with young and adult learners, inspiring the next generation, helping them realise their potential and transforming lives.

Chris Williams Director at Provision Recruitment said “Over the years there has been a lot of talk around career progression trends in Further Education. For the first time we now have a detailed report which provides concrete findings. It is clear that there is a desire for more training and career progression.  The issue for the sector is how to turn that into reality. Due to the fact that we need to modernise technical education, coupled with the increasing role workforce development will play, this research will be pivotal in enabling better decision-making and analysis on how we improve career progression.”