What can Sir Michael Barber's review accomplish for FE? Asks Professor Tom Bewick

Sir Michael Barber is an educationalist whose own academic background and career reflects those of other recent ‘skills advisers’ to occupy the space: Baroness Wolf, Lord Sainsbury and Sir Philip Augar.

Like these other luminaries, Barber went to an independent fee paying school followed by Oxbridge.

To many who have spent a lifetime working in further education, it is more than a little odd that the choice of people to review the post-16 skills and vocational system over the years have (more often than not), originated from a background, with little or no personal experience of the state education sector.

State schools were certainly not where these advisers were taught themselves; and it is very unlikely they have sent their own children to an FE college or enrolled them in a formal apprenticeship. Yet still, these are the people government regularly ask to pontificate about skills and FE.