Here’s what I’ve been up to over the last couple of weeks:

• I spent an evening at the Trade Union Congress Annual Conference in Brighton and attended the GMB/T&G and Compass fringes. Unfortunately I couldn’t spend longer at the conference because I had meetings in London but I saw Richard and Gemma (who were both great!) deliver their speeches to the conference on BBC Parliament

• I had a meeting with representatives from the Learning and Skills Network and various other organisations to discuss the challenges for colleges in ensuring they are meeting the requirements of the Disability Equality Duty.

• Wes and were invited to give evidence to the Labour Party Policy Commission on retention in post 16 education. It was a two hour meeting with a couple of members of the commission, party policy officers, Jim Knight DfES Minister, Phil Hope another DfES Minister and Alan Johnson the Secretary of State for Education. Some of the things I talked about were need to close the funding gap between FE colleges and schools, the need for a national transport strategy and guidance for FE colleges on hate crime and intolerance.

• Attended a “Bricking It?” Conference at Channel 4 buildings. It was a really interesting event and I had a chance to discuss issues ranging from what the role of the education system is in helping Britain compete with growing global economic forces such as India and China to the value of vocational learning (thanks again to Gareth for the invite)

• DfES Personalisation Project Group meeting- this is the group that is carrying forward the recommendations in the FE White Paper on personalisation and learner voice.

• Worcester College of Technology freshers event

• Newcastle College freshers event

• Management Team meeting

I was supposed to be at Labour Party conference for most of this week but unfortunately when I arrived in Manchester on Sunday my registration form hadn’t been processed- very frustrating!! Unfortunately that meant I had to miss speaking at NUS’ joint fringe with the National Institute of Adults Continuing Education (NIACE) on adult education but Veronica filled in for me and by all accounts was brilliant! Luckily I did manage to attend a really good fringe event which wasn’t in the secure conference zone hosted by IPPR and the Association of Colleges on education and social mobility.

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