For many young people in the UK, navigating post-16 education and training can feel unnecessarily complicated.
Understanding qualifications, choosing between academic, technical and vocational routes, identifying progression opportunities, and connecting education choices to future careers all require learners to navigate a system that can appear disjointed and complex.
This challenge sits at the heart of the Pathways for growth and prosperity report, a partnership between further and higher education providers across Greater Manchester, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce.
The project was established to better understand how the education and skills system can support individual opportunity while also responding to the needs of employers and the wider economy in our city region. It also sought to address the government’s post-16 skills white paper and align with the Local Skills Improvement Plan, especially the growth of Level 4 and 5 in line with a broader aspiration to grow the supply of higher technical skills within the labour market.
And as national attention increasingly turns to growth, opportunity and skills, our experience in Greater Manchester offers an important lesson – collaboration is complex, but when it is purposeful and underpinned by shared goals and clear structures, it can begin to reshape the system, co-evolve provision, and ultimately improve outcomes for learners and employers alike.
Our work identified four areas that require particular attention and that are providing the focus for our collaborative work moving forward.
Four focuses
The first is data.
For too long, decisions about provision have been based on partial or incompatible information. Our work bringing together FE, HE, and employer data across Greater Manchester revealed some gaps in progression and mismatches between supply and demand that were previously obscured. It also exposed the limits of existing data systems.
Without consistent standards and a shared framework, it is impossible to track learner journeys end-to-end or to plan transitions effectively at a system level.
The second area is information, advice, and guidance (IAG).
Many providers already deliver excellent careers support and guidance, but learners often experience the system through the lens of individual institutions rather than as a coherent set of opportunities. This can make progression routes beyond Level 3 difficult to understand, particularly for those without access to strong informal guidance and support from those who have previously achieved higher-level outcomes.
Learners need better visibility of the options available to them, the qualifications required and the opportunities those pathways can create. Good IAG should support learners to look beyond their immediate choices, providing a clear understanding of longer-term education, skills and career opportunities and how to access them.
This is particularly important in supporting social mobility and widening participation in higher-level skills development.
Third, employer engagement remains critical.
Employer engagement must move beyond ad hoc approaches and relationships tied to individual providers, towards more coordinated and system-wide models. Businesses consistently highlight the need for higher-level technical skills alongside transferable capabilities such as digital fluency and problem-solving. The issue is not a lack of willingness to engage, but the absence of structures that allow that insight to shape collective provision at scale.
A more coordinated approach to embed employer voice in curriculum design and delivery is required, including enabling smaller firms to participate. Local partnerships are essential for responding to employer demand, but learners also need confidence that the skills and qualifications they acquire will be recognised and valued beyond their immediate locality. This requires national coherence alongside local responsiveness.
The final area is progression and flexibility.
As the post-16 landscape evolves beyond the white paper, learners increasingly need opportunities to move between different forms of study, institutions, and learning modes throughout their lives.
This requires aligned curricula, credit transfer, and pathways that remain clear and navigable even as they become more flexible. Progress towards lifelong learning depends not only on modular provision, but on the ability of learners to move between institutions, sectors, and modes of study without unnecessary barriers.
Collective action
A consistent theme throughout our project was the value of partnership working.
GMCA has played an important convening role in bringing together education providers, employers, and civic partners around a shared set of priorities.
Through GMColleges, general FE colleges have embraced the need to work in partnership to deliver on both learner aspiration and employer need, while universities, through the Greater Manchester Civic Universities Board, have sought to collectively understand and respond to the ambitions of both the city region’s economy and its citizens.
Collaboration is not always easy, but it is essential to ensure stronger economies, more resilient workforces, and clearer opportunities for learners.
This collaboration is not about reducing institutional distinctiveness. Different institutions have different strengths, missions and areas of expertise. Rather, it is about recognising that some challenges can only be effectively addressed through partnership working.
The findings of the Pathways for growth and prosperity report reinforce the importance of taking a whole-system view of skills development. Creating better opportunities for learners depends not on a single intervention, but on sustained collaboration, shared evidence and a collective commitment to improving progression.
For Greater Manchester, that work is already underway. The challenge now is to build on the partnerships that have been established and continue creating a system that is easier for learners to navigate, more responsive to employers and better able to support growth, and prosperity across the city region.
